The biggest agency frustrations working with clients

There’s a phrase that gets passed around fairly regularly that an agency can
only ever be as good as the information and relationship they get from the
client and vice versa. Yet so often we hear at conferences, events or just in
passing, both agencies and clients complaining about frustrations with their
agency or client that get in the way of each of them doing their job or
getting results.

So I thought I’d explore this in a two-part piece where I’ve asked various
agency bods and various people client-side what their biggest frustrations
are and I’ve included the most common ones from agencies in this piece
and the client-side ones will follow in the next piece.

1) Clients micromanaging the agency

This point came up fairly regularly whereby agencies feel that they’re being
employed by the client to devise a strategy that will deliver the best results for
a client according to the objectives and KPIs that have been agreed, yet the
client wants to micromanage that whole process and come up with the
strategy themselves – the question here is often why are you paying agency
fees if you want to do it all yourself? If you hire an agency as the expert in
something you should let them use their expertise to guide the strategy.

A second frustration under this point was clients that insist that they know
better than the agency when in actual fact their knowledge may be
outdated for example – this raises the same question why pay for our
expertise then waste time questioning it and stopping us doing our job?

Solution: Honest communication is the key here – as an agency you need to

have the conversation with the client that they’re paying you for your
expertise and will be judging you on the results therefore you need to be in
control of that to ensure they achieve the desired results. If the client cannot
accept that then they would probably be better hiring someone junior
internally to just execute the task work for them (which would also be
considerably cheaper for them).

2) Lengthy sign-off processes

Again a common frustration was around sign-off processes client-side and

that they seem to take too long and can therefore hold back results. I know
this can be tough from a technical point of view with SEO campaigns where
changes need to be made but can get lost in a development queue for
sometimes months on end. Although most clients will normally understand
that it is them holding the results back some then question why they’re not
seeing results which is what causes the biggest frustration.

Solution: There’s not that much of a solution here if the client has no control
over implementation but ways to minimise the issues can be to roadmap and
plan well in advance so that they can try and book things into sprints at
appropriate times to ensure things happen quicker. Also its important to be
realistic about what can and can’t be done and not just waste time forcing
an issue or waiting around for it to be implemented, focus the time elsewhere
on things that can still be done to drive results whilst waiting for the original
task to be completed.

3) Poor communication/briefs

This point covers various frustrations – one being that clients often feel like
they’re great at communicating exactly what they want when in actual fact
they haven’t done so and therefore the brief the agency is working to won’t
ultimately deliver the result that the client was looking for. Another being that
clients don’t always explain why they’re asking or pushing for something that
to the agency seems ridiculous, someone gave me an example of this where
a client was pushing a ridiculous deadline for a new website to go live which
was totally not feasible but didn’t explain why. The agency finally found out
the reason was that he had a massive bonus that depended on the set go-
live date which was the reason he was pushing for it.
Solution: Again the solution here, as simple as it sounds, is better
communication and there’s also an importance on not making any
assumptions. Go through every aspect of the brief you do have got, ask
questions on points that need clarification or if you can’t do that caveat your
strategy and plans with the assumptions you’ve been forced to make so that
the client can check that is in line with what they were thinking.

4) Poor manners/attention

Another bone of contention actually comes down to good old fashioned

manners; clients that sit in meetings or even pitches on their mobile phones or
tablets and blatantly not paying attention to what you’re saying. Even more
frustrating is when they then end up asking you questions which you’ve
already answered but they hadn’t been paying attention, this happens in
emails a lot as well where the client doesn’t read the whole email then ends
up questioning on points that have actually been made in the email.

Solution: This is a trickier one because it’s a difficult conversation to have,

essentially calling a client out for being rude. The best way to handle this if it is
an email is to point them to the point in the first email that addressed their
points, in person suggesting a short comfort break to make any calls may also
help to get the point across.

5) Response times

Similar to the above clients that just don’t get back to your emails or phone-
calls but again then question why work isn’t getting done. This often seems to
be the result of people far too busy and senior client-side wanting to sign
everything off when in actual fact they don’t have the time to do so but still
expect to see agile marketing from the agency. Another side to this
particularly from a PR point of view is that if you have a journalist requesting a
comment or assets then you really need to go back to them with it ASAP to
get the story yet if the client holds that up you can miss out on the
opportunity or worse still ruin the relationship with the journalist.
Solution: The best solution here where its possible is again good planning so
that you can set a client’s expectations on when you’ll be needing a
response from them, for example ‘We’ll be sending concepts over on X date
and ideally need your feedback by X date’ then its easier to chase them if
they don’t stick to those time-scales. Obviously this is not always possible as a
lot of the time you can’t plan for when you’ll need a response however
education on the possible implications of not getting a timely response in the
original email or phone call, e.g. delayed results or missed opportunities, will
usually help to get the response within the time you need it.

6) Unrealistic expectations

A final frustration revolved around unrealistic expectations from clients in

particular in relation to budget; some clients seem to expect the equivalent
of a Hollywood movie but on a school play budget. Our Creative Director
Andy showed this image the other day which pretty much sums it up quite
well and got a fair few laughs:

Client brief v budget

There are also unrealistic expectations in terms of timings whereby a client

expects you to get back to them with everything straight away when
sometimes that will not be possible.

Solution: Again (this is a common theme) but clear, honest communication is

key here. Clients aren’t stupid they know budgets only stretch so fair so be
reasonable and realistic explaining what they will be able to get for the
budget. If you can use any case studies or examples of previous to show how
different tiers of budget might work that will usually help as they have
something to help them visualise what you’re telling them.

Obviously the frustrations outlined above will not apply to all clients and
especially clients that have previously worked agency-side seem much
better at understanding these kinds of frustrations and try not to cause the
same challenges themselves.
As mentioned this is a two-part piece so the top client frustrations when
working with agencies will be published as my next article so stay tuned for
that! If you have any other common frustrations that you think I’ve missed
above do leave them in the comments below, and if you have any client-
side ones you’d like to see in the next post get in touch!

‘The biggest agency frustrations working with clients’

1. Agencies not understanding what the business does

Client frustrations. This seems like a no-brainer that for an agency to work with
a client they must first gain a thorough understanding of exactly what the
business does. It is no good just knowing the list of products or services but we
must understand the client’s values, KPIs, internal business challenges, targets
etc.

Martin Pezet who has six years’ experience working in-house currently as
Search Marketing Manager at World First said: “Unless it is an agreed short-
term or one-off project, it is really important for client-agency relationships to
be a true partnership. As such it is vital that an agency has a consistency in
staff and that they take the time to learn about the idiosyncrasies of the
client’s business and the market in which they operate. This means that
specialist agencies might actually have to have a broader appreciation of
other marketing techniques than it first appears so they know how SEO
and/or PPC fit into the business and what the real opportunity is.”

Jacqui Keep, Content Marketing Manager at Powwownow echoes this

frustration saying that one of the biggest frustrations for her is agencies that
don’t try to understand the brand and what it’s trying to do. Another related
frustration Jacqui mentions is agencies’ tendency to go off on a tangent and
not check in to make sure they’re staying on-brand.
Solution: The solution to this challenge is really for agencies to ensure the
commit a big chunk of time to getting to know the client’s business inside-out
right from the start. Processes such as a discovery process or onboarding
process can often help with this. The most important thing is to ask the right
questions at the start but also to keep asking them. From a client point of
view the solution is to make sure you give your agencies as much information
about your company as you can – most agencies would rather be
overloaded with info so that they can work out what useful than not receive
enough.

2. Agencies not understanding how the business works

In a related point another common frustration seems to be agencies not

understanding how the business actually works and therefore reasons why
some recommendations can or can’t be implemented. Interestingly this links
with some of the agency frustration points in my first post such as lengthy sign
off processes. Agencies get frustrated when clients don’t implement
recommendations in a timely way (or at all) but if they really understood how
the business works this might mean they know the reason the changes aren’t
being implemented and can make alternative recommendations.

Pezet again says: “I know it can be frustrating when an agency puts in a lot of
time and effort into recommendations and the client doesn’t implement it.
Let me assure you that this is often more frustrating for the poor person
working in-house! It’s not uncommon for larger companies to have dozens of
different systems powering their online presence and sometimes it can take
months (I’ve known over a year…) to get changes made to a website. That
is the sad reality for a lot of companies. Internal politics, conflicting
stakeholder needs, old and broken CMS systems… the list goes on! So it is
vital that agencies scope out the capabilities of the client before taking on
the work. As I like to say; sell me practical SEO, not perfect SEO.”
Solution: The solution for this is similar to the first one, spend time getting to
know your client including their internal processes, sign off procedures,
development queues etc so that you can plan effectively for them and not
make pointless recommendations. From a client point of view make sure you
communicate these types of things up front so that you know the
recommendations you receive will be realistic.

3. Slow response times

Another common frustration for clients was agencies either being slow to get
back to them or, in some cases, not getting back to them at all. Again this
actually mirrors what the agency folk said about clients too so shows that
both sides are wanting the same thing; regular, clear communication.

Solution: As in my previous post the solution to this is good planning ahead of

time when you need things where possible and when this isn’t possible
communicating how urgently you need something. From an agency point of
view you need to be getting back to clients as quickly as possible then they
ask for something.

4. ‘A Team’ pitch teams

A very common frustration I hear a lot surrounds agencies sending the ‘A

Team’ as the pitch team but then once they secure the business passing this
on to more junior members of the team to the client never actually sees the
team they bought into again. This can have a terrible effect not only on the
performance of the account but also the level of trust the client has with the
agency.

Niro Nirmalan, Head of Digital Marketing also at World First said: “During the
pitching stages, we usually get the big guns of the agency coming to us with
their grand ideas and plans. We are sold on these people but when we start
working with the agency, we end up with account management staff who
do not have the same level of knowledge as the pitching team.”
Solution: Agencies need to ensure that they’re taking at least the Account
Manager along at the pitch stage to meet the client as a lot of the time the
client isn’t just buying into the agency as a whole but the people they see.
They need to know they can have a good working relationship with those
people once the business is secured.

5. Perceived laziness of agencies

One frustration that is worrying is a perceived lack of laziness from agencies

this applies to both the strategies they work on and also on the level of
proactiveness clients receive from their agencies.

Lynzi Ashworth, Marketing Manager at Aon Risk Solutions said: “An agency
will try and roll out the same campaign structure across a number of different
products or sectors, where we feel that a different approach is needed for
different audiences. This causes a feeling of contention as we feel agencies
are being lazy and we’re not getting our money’s worth.”

This frustration is echoed by Nirmalan who mentions a lack of proactiveness

by agencies in times of a market downturn or sharing of industry insights as
another disappointment.

Solution: Agencies need to ensure they’re keeping their clients informed of

the work they’re doing, going to them with new ideas rather than waiting on
the client to request them. It’s also important that agencies stay abreast of
their clients’ industry news so that they can be providing relevant insight and
recommendations at key times.

So this concludes the two part series showing both points of view, the most
interesting thing here is that the frustrations that both agencies and clients
and talking about are very similar therefore better, clearer and more regular
communication between all parties should be the solution to this. Both have
said they’d rather receive too much information than not enough so that’s
perhaps the biggest learning point from this to ensure the best client/agency
relationships.