How Are We Supporting Our Clients in Today’s Digital World?

As the world becomes ever more digitised, it is reassuring for businesses to know how their agency can support success from afar.

Two years have passed since the initial talk of a worldwide pandemic began. During this time, many changes have occurred including the evolution of customer behaviour and fast acceleration in the digital space.

This inevitably affected businesses in all industries, including our own. We had to adapt, learn new ways of working and figure out how we could continue to best support our clients. As we have settled into this new normal, our support systems have risen to the challenge to continually provide high-quality support.

Talking to head of client services, Jen Milne, and team account director, Sophie Gilrain, we discussed how through exceptional client service, we continued to guide businesses in the ever-changing digital landscape and the benefits we’ve seen.

The creation of stronger relationships

Thanks to the likes of Teams and Zoom, video calls have become second nature enabling more personal relationships to be developed with our clients. Before video calls became the norm, client contact predominantly took place through conference calls, emails and regular face-to-face meetings. While these methods of communication were effective, they inhibited the chance to create a more personal connection.

“Not only are we speaking to our clients more, but we’re actually seeing them more too. Previously, we just used to conference calls over the phone, whereas now you’re actually seeing their face more than you usually would. Also, from a communications perspective, our reactions and responses are a lot quicker because we spend more time at our laptops on a day-to-day basis.” – Jen Milne

While remaining professional is still of the utmost importance, forging a more personable connection has inevitably been a by-product of witnessing a person’s daily life. Previewing home life has uncovered another level of camaraderie with video calls opening up a new world that encourages getting to know the people we work with.

“These ways of working have forced more conversation than you would usually have on a conference call. I definitely know some of my newer clients on a more personal basis now, purely because their kids have been in the room during a video call, and you see their life happening in the background, so it naturally brings those personal conversations about.” – Sophie Gilrain

Better communication

Between video calls and the building of more personable relationships, a less rigid approach to communication has developed. Although diarised meetings remain key to a client-agency partnership, we have found that speaking to our clients more often has also been enabled by a digitally-led work ecosystem.

Alongside this, as communication methods have adapted and face-to-face meetings have reduced, valuable time in the day has been regained. Significant time usually spent travelling between client meetings can now be spent responding to faster to client needs, making our team more proactive.

“We’re still busy, if not more so, but at that same time, we’re doing more valuable work. We prefer it and so do the clients as they enjoy a faster turnaround accompanied by a huge amount of detail and data because we have the time to collate and share this insight.” – Jen Milne

Sophie also agreed with this, commenting:

“If you’re at a face-to-face meeting and a client asks you to cost a certain element or to look into something in more detail, you couldn’t do it instantly. Quite often, you’d be back in the office the next day with a whole new to-do list to work through. Today, everything is more efficient and it’s easy to send messages across within a matter of hours which helps keep things on track and everyone happy.” – Sophie Gilrain

Making more of data

As markets fluctuate, it has always been important to keep one eye on the changes that could impact our clients’ businesses. Delving deep into market trends to understand changing consumer buying behaviour across the industries of our clients, this data has become paramount to influencing strategies and measuring campaign performance.

Another benefit we have seen as meetings move online and there is less travel is there is more time to analyse this data. Informing the strategies of our client, communication of real-time, valuable insight is highly beneficial.

Getting the most from your agency relationship

We have discussed the myriad of benefits we have found as we have moved onto a digital landscape and settled into our digital work life. Nevertheless, we have found that to build strong, long-lasting relationships, with your agency there are a few pointers worth considering:

• Don’t be shy:  When in video chats with your agency, put your camera on where possible. There is lots to gain from being able to see the person you are conversing with such as what their body language tells you.  

• Speak to us: Tell them the pressure points in your company along with insight you have so they can understand your company’s overall goals and mission. By sharing this data, your agency team will be able to build better strategies to reach your objectives.
• Share data: The more data made available, the stronger your strategies will be. As Sophie so eloquently put it… “The more information that clients can give us is golden because we can analyse it and apply it directly to their campaigns. It sounds pretty simple, but the more they can share, the more we can help.”
• Trust in the experts: Everyone iscontinually adapting to a changing digital environment. It is reassuring to know your business is backed by a team of specialists with the knowledge and skills to support you every step of the way so trust in their experience to get the best results for your company.

How can we help you?

Since business has embraced digital communication, the benefits are clear. We have learnt how to get the most out of these new ways of working while still forging strong, trusting relationships with our clients.

We strive for a collaborative approach between our team and our clients to form winning partnerships. Just like the rest of the client services team, Jen and Sophie are dedicated to their clients, skilled and experienced at nurturing accounts and guiding strategies to see results.

If you want to know how we could help support your business to reach its digital objectives, please do not hesitate to contact us today.