Donna, we can't even get our staff to fill in their time sheets so that they get paid even with weekly reminder emails.  Only way is to keep that stick close at hand and hover over them until they understand that communication is part of the job.

Assign a project manager who handles client communications, either yourself or someone on the team. Clients should not be reaching out to team members who are not managers /  project managers. And there should only be one dedicated person to do that. 

I do weekly reports for my projects to clients, with weekly activity and plan ahead for next week and milestones. Its a dashboard with items pending as well as items pending client decisions in bold and highlighted. This can easily be done with excel or MS project, or similar. 

It sounds like your issue is that you haven’t been able to compartmentalize business from friendship. As Jordan Peterson would say: you are too “agreeable” and want to avoid conflict. Is your loyalty toward your firm goals or toward being at peace with everyone? If you can answer that question, you will get your answer if you are true to it. Business and friendship only work if you are able to compartmentalize.

Being Demanding in a fair way is a way to earn respect. Right now your staff is being disrespectful because they know they can get away with not following your directions and not being punished for it.

No- there is no way of getting results in business without setting boundaries for workability. It’s not personal, just business as they say

Asana and similar is oddly harder than the old days when we tracked hours and tasks daily with paper and colored pens. It's something psychological. Computer stuff is not real or something like that...

About the communication thing, the best system I have seen is when one person is put in charge of communication for a project. An assigned task, clearly pointed out and required/expected. IWhen it doesnt happen it becomes a point of discussion for job performance, and coaching if needed. When I see that fail is when there is more than one person doing the communication task. Each assumes or hopes someone else will do it, and it gets lost in the wash.

It does not need to be about the Jordan Peterson macho thing. That seems to me about as close to good practice as fantasy football is to an actual footbal team. IE, connected to it, but not the real thing. I have seen that too though and it can work, though it is easily toxic and not a good way to run an office and keep talent. 

Maybe more than a carrot stick approach it could help to make it about coaching with what needs to be prioritized and make sure communication as top of list. Client facing companies I imagine need to put communication forward even more than normal practice. 

@Donna , .Managing client expectation is always a hard gig and I am no way near an expert on this. But, to me , you're setting up to fail if you ( your team )  need to answer every email within 24 hrs.

From my experience , agreed expectations / protocol / rule of engagement (whatever you want to call) among all stakeholders at the beginning of the project is the most crucial thing in delivering/managing a good outcome.

I'm also a big fan of assign a name to a task in my team (with a supervision from me and other senior staff) . Weekly catch-up at the start of the week to see what everyone is planning to do during the week and also to clear up any outstanding items from previous weeks,  is also a good idea ( everybody is doing this isnt it / not a fresh new idea at all , sorry)

long time reader/lurker, first time poster

I would strongly recommends two things;

1. bi-weekly meetings with the client, with on-going written meeting minutes that track action items (& set weekly meetings with your team, 30-45min convo, Monday AM and Thursday AM to check in that they did their work)

2. be transparent. show your co-workers the complaints; (assuming your client is writing this to you)

other than that be clear about expectations, set minor deadlines in order to achieve actual deadlines, give your team expected time in order to complete tasks. if you're in a larger office environment, how are other project managers handling their teams?  I would expect your office to have a standard of care.
oh, and identify the critical path for them! I know i get bogged down in daily tasks sometimes because of something i'm interested in or just would rather focus on. sometimes, myself included, we need that conductor to set us on the right path

This is an excellent question.  

I would start off by asking your team members why they are not meeting deadlines and communicating with clients. 

Then I would layout the policies / procedures you've outlined in you OP.  

When I moved into management type positions I noticed a few things. 

1. Team members were a bit nervous to approach me as they would before because I am now 'in charge'.  I let people know they can still come an 'talk shop / complain' with me as before. 
2. The management styles of previous PM's had an impact on how team members interacted with me.  If previous PM's only wanted people to do things when told in certain formats (email, dm, in person) that's what the team members expected to happen with me.  I spoke with team members and explained how I'd be communicating and what I expected of them. 
3. Individual team member have specific management styles that work with them.  Some prefer direct conversation.  Some like emails, some like redlines / cartoon sets.  As a PM we need to figure out what works for each team member and try to accommodate them.
4. It's an ongoing process.  I'm sorry to say that the review and tweaking of you management style will never be over.  

Good Luck!  You've got this!

My first question when reading your post: how is it that your clients had to tell you there was a problem? 

Not meaning to needlessly attack you, but maybe to point to a solution. You should know this before it becomes an issue. 

In my office everyone from drafter to principal can see what's going in and out because there's a project email that is copied on every correspondence, and everyone on the team is "subscribed" to that email (obviously there's a more exclusive channel for confidential stuff). So, if someone isn't responding to or completing communications, it's clear to everyone. And it's clearest to the one who is aware of what each team member should be doing what: the manager. 

In other words, your staff may need prompting, not reminding, and you should be able to do that by "seeing" what has or has not been done yet. 

Other thoughts: I tend to put off things that stress me out, maybe some of them don't feel comfortable performing the task quickly. Like, they may need training on how to do it. Another thought: my projects have usually involved weekly team meetings. This could be a forum where pressure is applied by their work being public in a way. Obviously, there's a delicate balance between people reporting their progress and shaming lackluster performance in a toxic way.

At the end of the day, I echo what other's have said above. It's not about adopting big daddy JP authority, I think it's actually being neutral and emotionally present regarding the facts. The facts being that folks aren't doing their job, or don't know how to do it. They know that in the abstract communication is important, but you have to bring them down to earth and make it unavoidable to change how they work. In a productive way! It's totally possible. 

95% of my own success comes from this simple email line: "We will be proceeding accordingly unless directed otherwise within 48 hours [or a week, whatever]."

I know this doesn't help your problems with your staff, but I encourage my own to use this Lancashire language very often, and I swear it eliminates half of the issues we normally see. 

I'd make a counter point that if you're sending weekly updates about CD production to clients it's an inefficient use of everyone's time. Whenever I'm asked where we're at in a project the answer is "we're chugging along for our delivery date of ___ as scheduled."

It will usually be the same answer whether we've started or not. We agreed upon a specified delivery date, how the sausage is made is our problem.

Different story if the client is openly complaining about the lack of communication, depends on the project type, etc. though.

Don't you guys have daily meetings on the project? As irritating as that is, the WFH setting has made sure we have a quick meeting almost every morning for each project, with the team leader, PM and designers. Sometimes, before an important deadline, the Principals also join in.