#1 - Perfect the new client onboarding experience

A positive onboarding experience is one of the most critical factors in establishing a successful client relationship. It’s during this initial phase that trust, credibility, and a foundation of proactive collaboration are built.

For many organisations, partnering with an agency is a significant investment. That’s why it's essential to start strong.

Begin by reaching out to the client two days before the official project kick-off to outline what the upcoming month will look like. This helps set clear expectations and ensures a smooth start to your partnership.

Send the new client a thoughtful welcome gift:

Let's be honest, no one really likes being sent a box full of company merchandise, pens and mugs. At NOVOS we like to send our clients a welcome pack, filled with goodies from our existing clientele. These include products from brands like Piglet in Bed, TRIP, Myza, Beavertown and TALA etc.

A handwritten note  addressed to the main point of content and their team adds a nice personal touch. 

If you are including alcohol in your welcome packs, we recommend reaching out to the client first to check if they would like it to be included or left out. It’s a thoughtful gesture that goes a long way.

Set expectations for the first 3 months of working together

We like to include a more informal Welcome PDF with our onboarding email. This document gives clients insight into our agency’s day-to-day operations, highlights opportunities for service expansions, training, and even promotes our free events.

The PDF is designed to set clear expectations on our communication style, typical response times, and preferred platforms, while also emphasising that we remain fully flexible to their needs.

Having this information in writing is not only reassuring at the start but also serves as a handy reference point throughout our collaboration.

Keep in regular contact during the research and data analysis stages of the project:

Avoid periods of silence between project sign-off and delivery. Keep clients updated on progress, even with brief updates like "This week we worked on your content gap analysis" or "We held an ideation for campaign ideas."

Reach out as soon as the first project is delivered:

Once our audit is delivered, our client services team promptly follows up to ensure the delivered project meets the client’s expectations and to gather any feedback on how we can enhance our service. Addressing any initial concerns early helps us avoid issues later on.

From there, we schedule bi-monthly calls to maintain regular communication and keep the feedback loop open.

#2 - Continue to build on the relationship during your ongoing retainer work

Post-COVID, many meetings are virtual, but in-person interactions like lunches, dinners, or coffees are invaluable.

If clients are further afield, sending gifts for anniversaries, birthdays, or promotions are a nice way to show your appreciation outside of work.

Send the client regular value adds outside of the day to day delivery:

Outside the day-to-day,  offer value adds to show clients you care about their success beyond standard deliverables.

‘Value add’ examples:

• Keep them in the loop with Industry updates 
•  Saying you saw that a competitor has launched a new product you just want to keep them in the loop, 
• Letting them know about any new softwares that is being developed that would be of interest to them e.g. a new Shopify app, a UX idea for the website.
• Latching onto a new TikTok campaign that’s relevant to their product offering.

These types of small bitesize tips show the client that you really care about the success of their business and show that you're constantly thinking ahead rather than just focusing on the day to day deliverables like tech tickets and pre-planned mailers.

Use project management tools to prioritise and prepare the next steps:

After the delivery of a major product or strategy, it’s tempting to take a breather and focus on other client accounts. However, it’s crucial to proactively drive the strategy forward right from the start, so the client doesn’t need to chase for next steps.

Project management tools like ClickUp, Monday.com, or Asana are invaluable for mapping out deadlines and ensuring the strategy stays on track.

Clients also appreciate clear guidance on what to prioritise first, allowing them to allocate their team and development resources effectively.

Nail the basics:

Even with the best onboarding experience, if an agency fails to meet basic expectations, the relationship can quickly become strained.

• When delivering substantial work, always provide a prioritised summary of tasks. We recommend using an ICE score, which ranks tasks by Impact, Confidence, and Effort.
• Ensure all calls are structured with clear agendas that are sent to the client at least 24 hours in advance, and promptly follow up with detailed call notes.
• Take the time to thoroughly review their brand guidelines before making big recommendations.
• Always be the first to join meetings, whether online or in person.

Check in with your clients regularly:

Maintaining regular communication with the client isn’t just the responsibility of the delivery team—Client Services and senior leaders also play a key role.

These interactions don’t need to be formal meetings or involve extensive slide decks. Casual catch-ups over coffee or meals are excellent ways to keep the relationship strong and communication flowing naturally.

Simple prompts like “How’s business going?” or “Any major marketing changes on the horizon?” can spark meaningful conversations and uncover new opportunities for collaboration.

If in-person meetings aren’t feasible, a brief 15-minute call every couple of months can still be highly effective for staying connected and fostering discussions.

#3 - Keep the feedback stream between you and the client open

Regular feedback is crucial to ensuring the client consistently receives the level of service they expect.

Net Promoter Scores:

Many companies use Net Promoter Scores (NPS) to monitor the health of their client relationships. These surveys can be sent annually or quarterly, depending on business needs. At NOVOS, we prefer a quarterly cadence to maintain a steady flow of feedback and address any concerns promptly.

In the NPS you often find questions like:

1.  Please rate our service this past quarter out of 10 
2. How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or close contact?
3. How would you rate our level of communication out of 10?
4. How would you rate our project management out of 10?
5. How would you rate our innovation out of 10?
6. Where could we have improved over the past quarter. Please provide examples.
7. Where have we excelled this past quarter, please give examples etc. 

By tracking these scores over time, you can identify recurring issues impacting client relationships across the board. This also helps uncover training gaps within the team or potential resourcing challenges.

Tools like Typeform are ideal for creating NPS surveys. Not only do they offer ready-made templates, but they also automatically summarise the results, breaking down your promoters, passives, and detractors while tracking changes over time.

To extract actionable insights from qualitative feedback, consider using AI tools like ChatGPT to identify key themes. Just be sure to remove any names, sensitive data, or commercially confidential information beforehand.

This approach not only streamlines qualitative analysis but also allows you to compare trends quarter over quarter, leading to more informed decisions.

Thank the client for their feedback & provide updates on the status:

Client time is incredibly valuable, so it’s essential to show that their feedback is being put to good use. After gathering input, follow up with an email summarising the discussion, highlighting any actions or adjustments your team has implemented as a result.

Then, about a month later, check in to see if they’re satisfied with the progress made since your last conversation, and remind them that they can reach out anytime to discuss further.

#4 - Create a Client CRM 

Create a CRM to keep track of all clientele:

CRM’s are a great way to keep track of all your clients in one place particularly, if you're an expanding agency. 

In the CRM it's important to list the metrics that are most important to you as well as any key identifiers of problems or upsell opportunities.

Everybody's CRM will look different. 

Some examples of the metrics you can include would be

• The package there on
• How long they have been with you as a client
• The services they're using, 
• What industry they're in
• The relationship health of the client (we like to use a traffic light system called green number and red)
• Their next contract renewal coming up 
• If they're located in the UK or internationally
• If they have a physical store. 

We like to use Click-Up to host our CRM because you can filter different views. However Hubspot and Moday.com are also great platforms that are available.  

Quantifying client relationships:

Agencies can often find themselves overly-relying on long-term relationships and focusing their attention on the new shiny clients coming through the door.

However one of the top reasons that clients do leave is there no longer feeling the love all that they're no longer important to the agency. 

One way to ensure this doesn't happen is to keep track of all the different activities you're doing outside of the day-to-day count management to monitor the strength of the relationship.

Click-up, the CRM we use,  allows us to create this data into a dashboard so that we can compare the level of attention each client is receiving across the board.

We allocate the following points to each relationship building activity:

• Client Services or SLT check in call: 1 point
• Client gift: 2 points
• F2F coffee: 1 point
• In person meeting: 2 points
• Taking the client out for a meal and drinks: 3 points
• Taking the client to a sporting / cultural event: 4 points

Here at NOVOS we like to track this over a six month period so that it's enough time for a client to be onboarded and then have the first 12 weeks of BAU.  We then refresh it every six months so that we can make comparisons over time and ensure that our relationship with legacy clients don’t tail off over time. 

This information is also useful to refer back to when clients handed in their notice, to reflect on how strong our working relationship was.

#5 - Stay organised so you can predict client trends!

Create a contract renewal calendar to keep track of client lifecycles:

We like to keep a contract renewal calendar so that we have live information of which clients have contract renewals coming up, and what length of contract they are on. We’d rather have this information in advance to ensure we are giving them top level service at all times, even if someone from the team is on annual leave.

It's also an interesting metric to use when establishing trends between clients that are leaving and starting and how that fits in mind of the financial year. There are many API’s you can use to connect Google Calendar to Slack or your CRM system so that you can get instant notifications .

If a point of contact changes on your client account, be the first to book a call in with them:

Often, when a new client point of contact comes onto an account, they will conduct a review of all the agencies that their company is working with. To avoid any doubt towards your agency, book a call with the new point of contact as soon as they join, to get ahead of any decision making and find out what their business priorities are. 

This means that you can control the narrative from the get go, and pivot your strategy to suit their own initiatives.

To summarise...

The onboarding period is the most important phase of a client relationship as it sets the tone for the rest of your time working together. Be proactive, organised and constantly check in with your client to ensure that their business needs are being met. Continue to work on that relationship throughout the time working together - you don’t want it to become stale around the 6-12 month period. Face to face time is invaluable and can really help build a lasting rapport with the client. 

To find out more regular updates on how we manage our client relationships at NOVOS, follow us on LinkedIn here.