Recently a few TVGla executives were at a conference hanging with some potential clients. We were all in line to get a drink before sitting down for dinner at the event’s awards show. The lines were long, and everyone was thirsty. The circumstances threatened ruining what, up until that point, was an upbeat mood. With that in mind, we decided to solve this inevitable frustration for ourselves and our new friends. We realized we could either stand in line like lemmings for 20 minutes for our free drinks, or we could walk downstairs to the hotel bar and buy our group a round. We chose the hotel bar.
Smart choice indeed. We were sitting down enjoying a beverage within a few minutes, and frustrations were eliminated before they even started. Did it cost us a little extra money? Sure. Was it worth it? Totally. It set the tone for a positive night during which we began some great relationships. Whether we ever work with those folks or not is beside the point; we made great connections, and that’s always a good thing.
So why tell this story? Because avoiding frustration is at the heart of our engagement strategy with clients — and this, in a nutshell, explains our goal. Don’t just sit and complain or suffer in silence. Be proactive and find a solution. It’s instilled in our agency from top to bottom, and it’s part of what makes our work with our partners so much fun and so rewarding.
To have satisfied clients, we must have healthy teams.
We like to joke that our clients trust us with their sanity. But what makes you feel more insane than frustration? So, here are our five keys to avoid frustration in the client agency relationship:
- Communication – Clear, transparent communication. Good news or bad, make sure you’re communicating. Nobody likes delivering bad news, but it only gets worse the longer you wait to share it.
- Build Relationships, Not Business – As an agency, get to know your clients’ business so well that you can anticipate their needs before they ask. At TVGla, we work hard to retain the same personnel so that our clients feel like our team is an extension of their own — and they know they’re in good hands with people they trust.
- Proactive Solutions – As mentioned above, you can’t just complain; you have to solve problems. If we notice pressure points building, we release the pressure by providing a solution before it causes frustration. By proactively assessing processes and workflows, we prevent recurring issues. It sounds easy, but unless you empower your teams to actively solve for frustrations, you’ll be amazed at what people will put up with.
- Knowledge & Expertise – If you assign a team of people who don’t have the experience or knowledge required to complete the task, that’s going to create all kinds of frustration. Our teams are built not only based on budget, but on knowledge and expertise. Sometimes, like the drinks at the bar, it costs the agency a little more in the short term, but it makes for much smoother and more fruitful long-term relationships.
- Team Sizing – You can avoid a lot of unnecessary stress and last-minute scrambling if you make sure you have enough team members to address client needs as they arise. We create our teams to fit our clients’ needs. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. We don’t always get it right immediately, but we are always watching, learning and making the necessary adjustments to make sure we hit the mark.
Notice in those points, we don’t mention speed. Pressure to produce quickly is not the way. Cutting resources and expecting the same results and work output? Also not the way.
This excerpt from a Financial Times article featuring a quote from Huggy Rao, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford, really nails the point we’re trying to make. (Side note: We love his nickname!)
“Rather than pushing everyone to move faster, leaders should think of themselves as trustees of others’ time,” Rao says. “When you emphasize speed, you’re creating time poverty in the organization. And whenever people encounter a time famine, good people can easily do bad things.”
Rao was speaking about internal communications and workflows at companies, but this concept of being “trustees of others’ time” and “time poverty” are core concepts that impact client and agency relationships. The five points to eliminating frustration all connect directly to Rao’s recommendation. Increased speed and efficiency are the by-product, but not the solution.
At the end of the day, it’s all about keeping our clients happy, isn’t it? But what people often overlook is that this requires a holistic approach. To have satisfied clients, we must have healthy teams. We must communicate well and anticipate issues before they arise. We must be willing to think outside the box of how “business” has always been done and sacrifice a little overhead in the short term to build those long-term relationships. When we do these things, the rewards are plentiful, the frustrations are minimal, and everyone can sit down together, sip some full-priced beverages, and enjoy the rewards of all our hard work.