Sometime within a business we can forget a fundamental rule of working for a client.
We can become buried in the detail of a job, the pressures of delivering, the risk of scope creep and the internal challenges that come with multiple clients and multiple projects.
We may have project managers who want to push back to tell a client no, often a studio manager may want to deprioritise one projects versus another, or the account guy may want to reign-in a creative team in order to manage the budget.
All these tasks are both valid and valuable as part of the internal operations of an agency.
However, they risk forgetting the fundamental rule of working in a business that works for clients.
Clients have a choice! They can choose who they work with.
This highlights the role and skills of the Client Services team. The good account lead must balance internal pressures with client needs. I’m not suggesting that the account team should always say ‘Yes’, but what I am saying that internal teams need to remember that the client can choose who they work with. Sometime a decision may be made as it ‘works best for the internal studios’ as opposed to being the best for the client.
Building a long term client relationship is not just about the quality of the work, it is also about more intangible things like the relationship, the easy of interaction, and the way a client is made to feel.
by Richard Wright
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