Pandemic? Time to Double-Down, Client Services!
Client Services is the “front line” for agency relationships with their clients and know first-hand how the current business environment is impacting both their clients’ business and their agency engagements. Some industries are actually booming right now, like healthcare, pharma, grocery, some consumer goods, while others are hit hard and reeling from the global impact of the pandemic — travel, hospitality, real estate, automotive, and many “non-essential” sectors.
Many agencies are fighting to stay in business through cost-cutting measures, including staff reductions, while many clients are postponing or cancelling projects, reducing their staffs, or reallocating their marketing expenses to optimize their investment. Most companies and agencies have mandated remote working and everyone is adjusting to this new dynamic.
In some cases, your projects are on hold or the work tempo has slowed these days. It’s also very possible that there are fewer scheduled meetings and fewer ad hoc collaborations throughout your day — those “let’s jump into a conference room and white board some ideas” opportunities. And so I’ve heard many client services professionals asking about what to do with their “free time”, which really gave me pause. Don’t take this the wrong way, but Client Services should really never have any “free time”. Not when the client services mantra is “What’s Next”. Here are some ideas to productively use any free time you find yourself with.
Research The Current State of Things
The global pandemic has impacted so many areas of our professional and personal lives. Invest time daily in reading about how the pandemic is impacting your client’s business. Understand intimately how their business has changed. What’s different about their supply chain? How is their product or service demand changed? Is there any change in how they need to engage with their customers or consumers? Any changes in the way they distribute or sell their product or service? Do you need to update your client’s consumer personas?
Also understand intimately how your particular marketing channel(s) have changed. If you’re a marketing agency, how have things changed within the channels you leverage, particularly when there is an offline/live experience involved. Are these changes anticipated to be temporary or permanent? How might your team need to adapt to the current situation? Does the current state increase or decrease the demand or cost of your agency services or products? Be proactive in addressing these changes with your clients. You may need to update contracts or adjust your work to accommodate environmental changes.
Survey Your Team
Now is a great time to solicit input from your team regarding what’s working, what’s not working, and any input on how to create or improve processes or deliverables. Use a digital whiteboard, a collaborative online document, or even Survey Monkey to pose open ended questions to gather your team’s input. This is something you should consider doing at least a couple of times annually, to ensure timely feedback and maintain an environment of continuous improvement in your engagements. Consider surveying all internal stakeholders, including finance/accounting, contracts/legal, and executive sponsors. Everyone who touches your account is likely going to have some feedback and ideas for improving things. And that’s all good.
Survey Your Clients
Similarly to regularly surveying your account team and internal support resources, Client Services should solicit feedback from your clients once to twice annually. Many agencies have formal programs for soliciting client feedback, often summed up with a Net Promoter Score (NPS). It’s also often valuable, particularly during times when the work tempo is slowed, to ask your most trusted client contacts for some additional feedback. Keep it simple and ask just a few open-ended questions: what’s working well, what needs to be improved, and anything new to consider. Whatever your clients share is gold and should be acted on. It’s really important to close the loop on any feedback shared by your clients — they need to see that you’ve embraced their feedback and are using it to improve your relationship and engagement(s).
Revisit Your Roadmap
Client Services should always have a client Roadmap that outlines the plan for delivering your scope of work along with future opportunities, and should revisit it regularly. Quarterly updates are ideal; semi-annually the minimum. Your roadmap should outline activities for the next 2-3 years. Leverage the timely and relevant feedback solicited from your teams and clients, as mentioned above. Then ask yourself and your team “What else can we do for this client?” Think outside the box, that is, the current scope of the engagement. Think big…really big.
Write Case Studies
Every engagement has a story, and case studies reflect your agency’s story about aspirations you’ve helped your clients achieve. Document your story with each client’s business in a way that highlights the value you deliver. Not the deliverables themselves. Not the service lines or products you’ve sold them. Focus on the client’s aspiration (i.e., their goal(s)), the roadmap to get there, and the results you’ve earned for them. A case study should ideally be no more than 1-2 pages Include a testimonial from a key client contact to add credibility.
Ensure you understand and accommodate any applicable confidentiality terms your client may have — these are normally detailed in the Master Services Agreement, Contractor Agreement, or possibly in broader Statements of Work. Some times clients do not allow the publishing of case studies; however it’s often valuable to produce internal case studies that can be used for business development or even when it comes time for your annual review. Case studies can also be used as supporting documentation for award submissions.
Summary
As the front line of any agency-client relationship, Client Services needs to intimately understand how things have changed recently for their clients, their agencies, and their engagements. It’s critical that Client Services provide the necessary leadership to navigate these challenging times and remain a valuable partner for their clients. To do so, educate yourself about how the global pandemic has changed things for your clients’ business environment, gather valuable feedback from both clients and internal teams about how to adapt and move forward, identify new opportunities, and make time to document your story. This advice will help you and your clients adapt to these challenging times and continue to strengthen your relationships. And it will properly occupy any free time you may find.