Event
Happy Clients
Event details
Join the world’s best agency client services conference
This is your chance to hear how other agency client services leaders are engaging clients, growing accounts and developing their roles. Get inspired, and take away ideas to implement in your agency.
📅
⌚
–
📍
Event Manifesto
The Account Management &
Client Services Summit
Event curated by:
-
Niamh Kelly
Agency Hackers
Something’s been quietly shifting in agency life.
It’s not dramatic, but the effects are starting to be felt. Clients are becoming more cautious. Budgets are tighter. Retainers are shorter. More work is project-based. Fewer people want to step outside the box of their Zoom call and meet at the pub. Everyone is busy. Everyone is stretched.
And relationships feel … thinner.
Harder to build.
Client services has quietly become one of the most important parts of an agency – but it’s still often treated like a delivery role instead of a commercial one.
The reality is that growth isn’t coming from flashy new business wins. It’s coming from retention. From expanding existing accounts. From being the partner clients trust when things get complicated.
That trust doesn’t happen by accident. That’s what we’re here to figure out.
It comes from better onboarding. From asking sharper questions. From having the confidence to challenge a brief. From starting renewal conversations long before the contract ends. From knowing your client’s entire world – not just their project.
At Happy Clients, we’re going to talk about all of this.
- How do you grow accounts without the awkward ‘selling’ tone?
- How do you build meaningful relationships in short-term project work?
- What does strategic partnership actually look like in practice?
- And where does AI help client services – and where does it just add unnecessary noise?
This isn’t about shmoozing or taking clients out for drinks (although that might still help).
It’s about building relationships that are strong enough to handle pressure, procurement reviews, feedback, and change.
The agencies that thrive won’t just deliver good work. They’ll build relationships that last around it.
Speakers
SPEAKERS
The Relationship Recession
Simon Rhind-Tutt argues agencies are in a “relationship recession,” where client relationships are becoming harder to maintain. Factors like remote working, fast-changing teams, and uncertainty erode trust and clarity.
While relationships aren’t collapsing, they’re strained and misunderstood. This talk explores these tensions and offers practical ways agencies can rebuild trust in treating relationships not as part of the business, but as the core of it.
When Client Comms Get Out of Control
Agencies often juggle multiple disconnected tools, creating chaos. Facing this, Adam Mobley built their own solution, co.agency, a white-label client portal combining conversations, files, tickets, and updates in one place.
Originally an internal fix, it gained Innovate UK support and wider adoption. Adam Mobley and Rebecca Cox will share their insights.
Why Clients Leave and How to Make Them Stay
Jo Rogers argues agencies focus too narrowly on delivery instead of the full client lifecycle, missing early signs of weakening relationships like slower responses and reduced access to decision-makers.
While the work may be strong, clients increasingly see agencies as transactional. This talk explores how to build “sticky,” trust-based relationships by adding value beyond delivery and embedding deeply from onboarding onwards.
Building a Commercially-Minded
CS team
Jemma Long explains that when agencies have strong client relationships, they gain the best opportunity to ask insightful questions and link their work to client outcomes.
The session explores how to build commercially-minded client service teams without being pushy, focusing instead on curiosity, strategic thinking, and connecting delivered work to the results clients truly value in meaningful, measurable ways consistently.
What’s AI’s role in Client Services?
Clients want to feel heard and supported. While AI offers efficiencies like insights, drafting, and problem-solving, it falls short in relationship-building.
Joe Wright, Adam Reaney, and Catherine Warwick share their practical uses to explore where AI adds value, where it risks harm, and why human connection remains essential.
The Golden Moments That
Grow Project Clients
Adam Millbank argues agencies miss opportunities by treating projects as linear delivery. Instead, his team identifies “magic moments” when client trust and engagement peak, using them to deepen relationships and spark future work.
By mapping project flows and spotting these points, agencies can grow accounts naturally and make clients feel supported, not bugged, even without ongoing retainers.
The Missing Piece to Account Leadership
“Briefs are being left on the table not because clients aren’t asking, but because teams don’t recognise the moment to act.”
In this session, Rachel Raphael explores why the shift to account leadership so often fails. She argues growth isn’t blocked by talent, but by three siloed pillars: disconnected leadership, structure, and capability. She’ll show you how to fix the system that unlocks more strategic, proactive client relationships.
Have Agencies Lost the Basics?
Jonathan Dale, Client Director at Strategiq, argues agencies lose client trust by letting the basics slip.
In this session, he shows how consistently turning up prepared, reliable, and on top of the details builds stronger relationships, helping you really understand what your clients need and setting the foundation for longer-lasting partnerships from day one.
👀 Who will you meet?
At Happy Clients, you’ll rub shoulders with the agency industry’s finest client services leaders. Here’s a few of the people you’ll meet and learn from at the event.
FAQ
Event FAQs
