The Account Management & Client Services Summit
Tuesday 23rd May 2023, 1:30pm to 5pm, Shoreditch
• Meet other agency client services leaders
• How are people engaging clients, growing accounts and developing their roles?
• Get inspired! Take away ideas to implement in your agency
Client services and account management is the beating heart of an agency.
So, how are you engaging and nurturing clients? What makes a good client relationship? And how are you developing the roles within your client services team?
Happy Clients is an afternoon where you can learn from – and be inspired by – others within client services who are striving to make their client services function the best it can be.
- You’ll hear candid stories of failure and success from other agencies on a path to make their client relationships stronger.
- You’ll also get to talk confidentially about your business with people who know what it’s like to walk in your shoes… because they’re currently doing it.
- You can hear how other businesses are delivering an exceptional client experience and building long-term, successful relationships.
Who you’ll hear from 🎤
💬 These are the people we’re spotlighting so far. Like all our events, Happy Clients is heavily participatory – when you get a ticket, we’ll capture your questions and include you in the afternoon.
“Why You Should be Prioritising Your Client Services Function”
Client services is integral to an agency’s success. But it’s still seen by many clients as an unnecessary cost.
18 months ago, Hallam combined their project management and account management teams to better support each other.
“Our projects are more profitable than they ever were, and we’re getting fewer client complaints too” says client services director Bethany Sharma.
👉 At Happy Clients, Beth will share how her agency has adjusted its structure to better support and strengthen client relationships.
“How We Create ‘Moments of Delight’ for Our Clients”
Domenica di Lieto prides herself on keeping her clients as happy as possible.
While Emerging Communications doesn’t have a marketing team, it DOES have a budget for ‘wowing’ clients and making them feel part of the team.
“Clients start talking about us on LinkedIn, they agree to testimonials and case studies, they agree to speak at events with us – it’s pretty much where all our business comes from.”
👉 At Happy Clients, Domenica will be sharing the ways in which she creates ‘moments of delight’ for her staff and clients, and how it has worked successfully in winning and retaining work – without even pitching for it.
“How We Keep Clients Onside with ‘Hero Content’”
Will Cookson, co-founder of Pangolin, had an idea: if you create content for your client counterparts to share on social that makes them look good — in turn, it makes you look even better.
So they started sharing copy and assets with clients to post on their personal pages and show off to their bosses how well they were doing.
“Clients love it, because it gives them a pat on the back, and it’s a very subtle way for us to keep them onside.”
👉 At Happy Clients, we’ll hear from Will about how his agency identifies which client relationships need developing, and how they keep them close and committed by using social content to make them look good to their bosses.
“Strong Client Relationships Start with an Empowered Client Services Team”
For Louise Palmer, developing strong client relationships starts with nurturing the client services team.
She looks at Wildfire‘s client services from the team angle, making they’re empowered to question and challenge and make their own decisions.
“I challenge them with questions, not to catch them out, but to get them thinking from their own perspective, or even a client’s perspective,” she explains.
👉 At Happy Clients, Louise will be telling us how she has developed a strong, autonomous client services team – and why this is so important when building client bonds.
What Do Clients Really Value in Agency
Relationships Right Now?
Each year, Up to the Light commissions a survey of 650 creative agencies on what clients really value – and a big talking point is how agencies can strengthen and nurture client relationships.
“I think the trends we’ve previously seen of clients being very time-pressured, with smaller teams and tighter budgets, has become more accentuated,” says Jonathan Kirk, founder of Up to the Light.
👉 At Happy Clients, Jonathan will be extrapolating some of the more interesting facts and figures from this year’s report, and helping you get under the skin of what clients really value when it comes to their relationships with agencies.
Meet people who are interested in your story
Happy Clients is an afternoon that will helps you get inspired, and meet other people you can learn from. We blend interactive talks and group discussion.
- We dot you around the venue so you can interact – and we mix up the groups so you meet different people.
- We poll you before the event to see what you want to talk about.
- We make sure all the talks are original and interesting. We facilitate questions and reflections throughout.
Happy Clients – FAQs 💬
Q: What actually happens on the day?
We start the event at 1.30pm, so try to arrive by 1.15pm.
The afternoon’s format is pretty simple: you will spend some time hearing from guests with interesting stories that you can learn from, and you will also spend some time in small groups discussing your journey with like-minded agency leaders.
The event is hosted by an Agency Hackers facilitator who makes sure that everybody with something interesting to say gets heard. (We poll attendees before the event, so we know who to ‘pick on’ on the day.)
We will serve tea, coffee and sweet things to keep you going, but please eat a sandwich before you arrive. The schedule doesn’t leave us time to serve lunch, unfortunately.
Q: Who will I hear from? Who are the speakers?
The people you’ll hear from all have interesting stories about client services and how they’re serving their clients.
We also decide who to spotlight based on the information we capture in the weeks before. (Look out for our emails!)
We will publish the line-up a few weeks before, but mostly we hope that you will trust us to select interesting folk from our audience. We find that the people who choose to attend our events are overwhelmingly on fascinating journeys that will resonate with you.
Also, the ‘talks’ aren’t really linear presentations. They’re more like structured case studies, with lots of questions and reflections from the audience.
You could potentially call them ‘fireside chats’, but these are not rambling cosy conversations. They are planned and structured. We put a lot of work into researching our guests, out of respect for your time.
Q: Who can attend?
This event is for anybody in your agency who cares about their client services function.
That might be the founder or owner, it might be a client services director, or it might be somebody else.
