Client interviews with Remeny Armitage

Hey everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. Today I'm really excited to have Remini Armitage with me and we're talking about everything to do with getting feedback in an objective way from your clients so that you can improve your services and retain and grow your relationships with your client. And Remini shares some key tips that you can start implementing in your agency today to ensure that you retain your clients for the long term. Now, before we jump into today's episode, I just want to apologize for the quality of the audio today. We had some issues using the usual podcast recording software, so we had to record this episode via Zoom. But you can still hear what we're talking about and the quality of the content is really good. So I wanted to make sure that I got this episode out there. So let's get on with today's show.

Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host, agency owner and coach, Rob DaCosta.

Welcome to today's episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast. I am really excited to have Remini Armitage from Brilliant and Human with me today. Now, Brilliant focuses on helping agencies understand and retain customers and then turn those customers into advocates. Now, this seems a particularly relevant topic in the isolated, slightly disconnected world that we live in where word of mouth referrals have been on the incline. So welcome Remini, is there anything else you wanted to add to that intro?

No, that was great. Thank you very much for having me.

Tell our listeners a little bit more about what you do, how you help your customers, and why it's so important.

I help turn clients into advocates. I work with agencies to understand what their clients want so that they can service them better. Typically, I will interview my clients, clients and customers, find out what's working and what's not, and look at patterns that may arise from what your clients are saying. And because I'm impartial, clients are very honest and actually feedback really good intelligence that helps me to advise agencies on how they can improve and how they can work with their clients better so that they can actually service their clients better. One of the things that you know in this weird world we live in, understanding what your client's challenges or indeed what their opportunities might be in the way they may be needing to change and how their clients might be needing to change is really important to understand at the moment. So when I interview your clients, I can find out a lot more in a very honest way that can then be fed into how to develop your business. Processes and services to help your clients better.

Yeah, brilliant. And tell us some of the typical bits of feedback. Are there any sort of typical themes that you hear over and over again from clients about their agencies?

Well, the thing that I find most extraordinary is when I speak to my clients, clients, there's always incredibly strong themes that come out from all of them. Their clients always seem to be saying the same thing. But I think the three things that come up again and again when I speak to clients is the lack of communication, lack of processes and lack of proactivity from clients. And there's often little niggles. It might not be that the clients are completely unhappy, but if people could look at how they could be a bit more proactive, a bit more engaging with their clients, talking to them a bit more on the phone and actually looking at those processes within their business, they could improve a whole host of different things within the business as a whole and improve. So those would be the three things that come up the most frequently when I interview my clients.

Clients, yeah. So that's, that's really interesting. What do you think the typical impact of having this kind of intervention with clients can have for an agency? And how do you measure, measure that impact?

Well, the work that I do can inform everything from people's marketing strategy through to their business strategy through to their. The way they implement their new products or services. Because when you listen to what your clients are saying, you can find out what they actually want and need. So the impact can be huge. I often find I often get compared to marriage counsellor for businesses and agencies as the in between person to help get that feedback. And the feedback I get will help with client retention, their marketing staff improvements and positioning. And obviously it can save relationships as well. I've had clients where they've had real problems with their clients and they've been losing clients and actually finding out what those issues are can really help to improve that and help improve that bottom line. So, I mean, I always do it mainly it's a qualitative project that I do when I do it because it's a lot of true kind of feedback, but when I actually also do it as a quantitative. So I do put scores against things so that you can start to see where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are across the board, across the business. But also clients might be your advocates, which ones might be at risk and might be unhappy and which ones maybe just need a little bit more nurturing. Because if you start seeing the numbers, it becomes a lot easier to measure where you can improve.

It's interesting, isn't it? Because it's a bit like me going into my clients. It's amazing what people will tell a stranger that they won't tell their boss or they won't tell, in your case, the sort of client. So I think having that objectivity to talk to their customers, knowing that actually you have no agenda except to get genuine honest feedback is probably really powerful.

Yes. And I think, I mean the thing that I always get really pleased about is when I speak to people's clients, they're always really grateful that I'm doing it because it makes them feel like that their agency actually really cares about them and that they do want their feedback. And the thing that I always try to do, follow up interviews, sort of six months or a year later depending on how happy the client was so that the actual agency is then accountable to their clients. And you know, hopefully before that their clients can see what changes might have been made off the back of what they've said. And when there are these really key themes that often come out of these interviews, they start to feel quite proud of the fact they've helped to mold and improve their, the experience that they are having. I mean one of my clients I worked with is a really well respected digital marketing agency. They did have the typical problems with communication and processes but actually when they really actively changed the way they were doing things and engaging with their clients, when I did those follow up calls, I started to get that the theme that started coming out wasn't the communication, proactivity, etc. It was that they wanted the me to be more strategic. So the business put in a new strategic arm into their working products and within a year they were making 40% profit off the back of what their clients were wanting.

Yeah, that's really, really, really interesting. So tell me, what's a typical pain that an agency has when they reach out to you? What's been going on for them to say actually we need to do a service like this and we need to employ Remini to come and help us.

It varies. I mean the biggest thing of course is client retention. They might have had problems with, you know, unhappy clients, their clients complaining they can't quite get to the nub of it because they're just, it's difficult to have those conversations and sometimes it a bit personal and uncomfortable. But it might also be a marketing positioning piece and they don't know why they're different. I'm working with an agency at the moment who again their clients love them but they want to be able to position themselves and they don't know why. They're struggling to define why they're different in the market, what makes them shine and why should people buy them. And by interviewing their clients a, I'm able to find out where they could potentially improve, but also what is it that makes them different and why are they clients working with them and what marketing are they doing and can they possibly replicate. So it's important to understand who your ideal clients are and try to replicate those and mirror those. So it varies, as I say, from client retention, unhappy clients through to just actually, you know, that marketing piece. When you think about the importance of engaging with and nurturing those existing client relationships, probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 to 70%, whereas selling to a new prospect is 5 to 20%. So I think it's really important to see what you've got.

Exactly. And none of us want to be taking the sort of mobile phone or utilities approach to new business which is winning a client. Don't care whether they stay with you or expect them to leave you and then focus on all your best energy and deals on new clients and not on existing clients. I've never understood why that is the business model that the utility sector takes when it's such a cost. We all know, as you say, it's much cheaper to retain and grow a client than it is to win a new client. So I completely get that. And I also think it's interesting what you just talked about, about understanding your ideal target client and the niche that you work in, because you know, the listeners will know that I'm a massive advocate of that as your starting point for all of your marketing. And some people really struggle to work out what their niche is or they have these fears about committing to a narrow niche because they think they might lose other opportunities. And I always talk about the ways to work that out, but you've kind of given a third or a fourth dimension to that, which is to go and talk to existing ideal target customers and understand from them why they bought from you rather than somebody else. I really like that as that sort of extra dimension to not only work out from your own perspective what you think your niche is, but actually hear what the market says as well.

It is fascinating. And actually people always get surprised by the response that their clients give people. I think, you know, it's human nature to assume people think certain things, but actually ask them, you'll find out so true.

I mean, you know, we make all the mistakes about Having idea of something and going 100 miles an hour to develop that idea without first researching, validating it. And that's true whether it's product development, service development, or breaking into a new niche, or thinking you understand your customers without actually talking to them and finding out.

Yes. I mean, the other thing, when you think about your clients, and you might assume you've got happy clients, and obviously, hopefully you do, but it's important to understand why they're staying with you as well. And you don't want it to be because you're cheap or they're tied to you. You want it because they actually really value what you're doing. And you know, again, having that external person talking to your clients helps get that kind of intelligence. And often what happens when I'm speaking to people, the issue can often be the owner of a business or the manager themselves. And so they can't feed that kind of thing back. And it could be that the stranglehold, the top that the client is feeling and they can't move forward and so they can't feed that back to the. It's very difficult to feed that back. They'll just leave.

Yeah, that's a very, very true point. And you think you've answered this question already. But if a company is starting to get this sort of 360 feedback from their customers, how often would you advise people to actually be running that process?

Well, again, that was an interesting one. I think one of the things I always recommend is putting an actual client advocacy process into place. So look at the key points that you're engaging with your clients and look at, you know, the beginning of a project. You should be interviewing your clients, whether or not it's yourself or an external person. But you should be interviewing your clients at the beginning of a project. Why did you buy the middle of the project? How's it going? How are you feeling? Any feedback? How could we improve? We want to do better. And then at the end, at the end of a project, again, you know, how do we do, what can we do better, what could we do to improve, etc. And then again, remembering to speak to them six months later or a year later when the project may be finished, to see if you can continue to come up with new ideas and keep engaged with them, because people move on or they've got new projects coming up and if you don't speak to your clients regularly, you, you won't know that. And, you know, out of sight, out of mind. It's really important to keep engaged as Far as having an external person doing it, typically I'll speak to people kind of mid project or towards the end of a project. And ideally, what, you know, the ones that I'm working on a kind of retainer side is I'll do the initial piece and then touch base six months, a year later. As an external, I tend to say, if your clients are really happy, do it once a year. If they're not as happy, touch base within six months. And obviously, you know, whenever I've spoken to someone's clients, I always say, okay, now you've got to. You now need to speak to them and address anything that they've brought up straight away and look at how you can answer what their issues may have been there and then.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I just wanted to pick up on one of the points that you just made, which some people might think is strange thing to say, which is, you know, when you've won a new client, that is also a really good time to do this interview because I think it's really important that we understand why people buy from us. And if we can talk to them at the beginning and we understand the pains that they had that they feel we can solve for them and the transformation they're looking for to get out of that pain. Asking those questions at the beginning is really important because it's fresh on their mind. Whereas if you've worked with them for, say, six months and then you try to ask those questions like, why did you buy from us in the first place? The client will often have forgotten those real reasons why. And that will also have been clouded by the experience that they've had with the positive or negative in that six months. So actually doing this interview at the beginning to understand why people bought from you, what's the thing they're trying to get done when they buy from you? What's the pain that they were in? What's their expectation? And so on and so on. How will they measure success? Everyone should be doing this. And actually having this sort of third dimension of having someone externally doing it is also a really good way of getting a very honest piece of feedback from a new client.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think actually one of the clients I'm working with at the moment, I'm asking that question, why did you choose them? And they, again, there's a really clear theme coming out, is that they were really came across as really honest and had a very good process and were very quick to understand what their clients wanted. And I think if you can understand why people are buying you straight away. That's really valuable. Equally, I think it's really valuable to. If you can interview the people when you've lost a pitch, you know, why didn't they buy? Because then that can both the winning or the losing can then help you to pitch in the future and be more successful. Because if you find out what went wrong, you can then hopefully not do it again. And equally, if you lose a client or a client's, you know, unhappy, it's really important to understand why they're leaving you. It might be totally nothing to do with you, but actually it could well be something to do with you or the people or your processes. And that's definitely conversation that's valuable to do for an external because that can be quite a difficult conversation.

Do you find that people tend to be more honest with you? I'm just thinking I've got a client at the moment that unfortunately has lost three pitches on the trot. And a couple of those pitches were really ideal target clients for them. And I asked the question of the client is like, do you understand why you lost the pitch? And the sort of responses they're getting in those kind of cliche things, like, you were a close slack and we really liked you, but this other agency just pitched you at the post and I don't think they're getting a true piece of feedback there because it makes the customer feel more comfortable to give, you know, a slightly less honest piece of feedback than it would be to say, well, actually we didn't like this person or whatever. So do you find that people are more honest with you if you're having that kind of conversation?

Definitely. And one of the things I always do is I always say to the people I'm interviewing, any element of what I'm talking to you about can be made confidential. So when I'm putting my report together, I can still put the feedback in, but I don't assign it. And it means that then people feel confident to truly share what the issues are and, you know, what the problem might be. And then, yes, it's extraordinary the honest feedback I get. And it can be quite uncomfortable for me to feed that back sometimes. But actually I know that when I'm giving difficult feedback back to my clients, I'm helping them because they can then look at how they can improve things. I had one client that I was working with and they had some of the biggest brands in the world as their clients, but they were very much brilliant at marketing. They were over promising. They were under delivering and their average client feedback scores were 22% because they were just not delivering and the communication was awful and their service desk was awful and they needed to address a huge amount of change behind the scenes. I actually had to say then we need to stop doing these interviews until you start to address things. I can't ethically be talking to your clients until I know you are actually wanting to improve things. Which they did. And then after four months, once they put some new processes into place and better communication and some new teams, they got rid of people as well. I then started interviewing people again and their satisfaction scores went from 22 to 74%.

And I guess that's a good point to say as well, is that if people are using this process, they've got to be genuinely willing to hear the feedback and action it rather than think, well, if I do a customer survey with my clients every year, that will keep the client happy because they'll think we're listening to them. And I guess in a way if they don't action it can have the absolute opposite effect.

Absolutely. That's why I say that I think it's really important to do follow up calls to make sure that people are feeling like they're being heard and listened to. And I mean, that particular job, I was obviously thrilled to see that the scores were going up. But I was saying, you've now got a lot of work to do because you've now got to perform on what you've promised. You can't stop at this and otherwise you're going to damage your reputation even more. So it is really important to action it and follow through.

And just thinking about the current strange world that we live in where we are much more disconnected from our clients. Have you seen any changes in that whole kind of customer agency behavior and interaction during this pandemic?

Well, I mean, I think what I've seen the most is the fact that people are recognizing that they need each other more. They need to be talking to each other more, and we need humanity more. Although we're now doing so much more on zoom. It's really important to be talking to your clients. And you know, when I, during the pandemic, I had to change track slightly and before it was more about getting that feedback. But now I believe it's much more about understanding. I may be repeating myself, but it's much more about understanding your challenges and your clients challenges and their clients challenges, working with them to help pivot where needed. And I think the thing that's so Great about the agency world, especially the digital agency world, is you can really help your clients, assuming they're in, you know, a business that can be, you know, can pivot. There's so many exciting opportunities there that you can't just guess what those might be. You need to be talking to your clients to understand that and whether that's me interviewing, you know, external people interviewing. So important to be reaching out to your clients. And actually, you know, now's the time to be nurturing those relationships more than ever because there's so much uncertainty. And actually, people don't want to be going out to pitch for new things and build new relationships. You need to be nurturing what you've got. Yeah.

And I think especially at the beginning of this, a lot of people felt slightly uncomfortable reaching out to their clients to sell or to offer additional services because they recognized that everybody was struggling. But, you know, from day one, I said to people, if you're offering something that can really help your client, why on earth wouldn't you be out there trying to promote it and serve them? Because that's what everybody needs at the moment.

Exactly. And actually work together to try and figure out what it is. One of the things I also say when I'm doing this client advocacy piece, it's not so much about being transactional, but being relationship driven and making it so that you're working in partnership with your clients, not in, you know, as a supplier, you know, you should be trying to make your clients want to work with you and in partnership so you all do a good job and you can all be successful together and have pride and build that trust.

Yeah, it's that old cliche. And of course, all the cliches are so true. But at the end of the day, we want to be building partner, partner relationships with our. With our audience. Not that imbalanced customer supplier type of relationship where they customer beats the supplier up and the supply is very commoditized.

Exactly, exactly. And actually, you know, more heads are, you know, better than one. So if you're working with your clients and your clients are working with you and trying to figure out how to address the issues of this pandemic, then, you know, hopefully everyone will succeed.

So before we wrap up today's interview, have you got any words of wisdom or best practice tips on what agencies should be doing generally to make sure that they are retaining, serving, growing their clients and turning them into great advocates as well?

I suppose. I mean, there's two things that I recommend businesses do, which is obviously actually look at the client journey that you're making with your, you know, the interaction you're doing with your clients, how are you speaking to them, what are you doing? And if you use those three things that I mentioned before, which is better communication, better processes, and better and more proactivity, look at those core points of engagement and think of those three things and see if you can improve any element of what you do with your clients. And then hopefully you'll start seeing some rewards out of that. And then obviously, I think, you know, it is worth putting in processes where whether or not it's you or it's an external person or someone externally, as external as possible within your business to interview your clients to get feedback, but prepare, make sure you've got the right questions, know what you're going in for, be intentional in the way you want your clients to feel at the end of it and throughout your engagement with your clients, what do you want them to be feeling? And so that would be. Those would be the main things I'd recommend.

It's great having guests like you because we can provide, provide genuine, practical advice to people. And this is a topic that I think is super relevant at the moment. And to be quite honest, I think this is an area that agencies don't really focus on enough. It's not that they do their usual things, which will be have their monthly meetings with their clients, they probably have a 6 monthly review with their clients, but what they're not typically doing is standing a bit further back and actually just talking about what the relationship and if the client's happy and how things can improve. I don't think agencies do that enough. So I think that's why this is such a good topic. So, last question, which I ask all of my guests, which is if you could go back in time and give your younger self who's just starting out in business, one piece of advice, what would it be?

I think be focused on what you love to do and what you're really good at and go for it. Never give up.

Brilliant. That's a good piece of advice. Is that based on the fact that you didn't do that straight away or you figured that out later on?

I think, well, when I set up on my own, I was probably a bit too broad. And, you know, my background's marketing biz dev. Done that for like 20 years for agencies. But then when I went out on my own, I sort of thought, well, I'll do everything. But then the more I did it, the more I realized that what I really wanted to be doing was nurturing and building those relationships with clients and looking at how to engage better with clients to turn them into advocates and friends. And so I think it's being as focused as possible on what you really want to be doing as opposed to trying to broadcast everything you can do.

I think when we start in the early days, we think we need to do everything because that's going to be a way of earning money. But often going niche. And like you say, focusing what you really love, focusing where your passion is and focusing what you're good at is actually going to bring you a lot more success more quickly, isn't it?

Yes, definitely. You know, good old Seth Godin, the purple cow. It's good philosophy.

Yeah, absolutely. And last question, if people wanted to find out more about you and your organization, where would they go?

Thank you. Well, my website, brilliantandhuman.com or you can always link in with me, Remini. So LinkedIn and Remini Armitage is my LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn.

Fantastic. Well, I'll put both of those links in the show notes. And you know, big thank you for coming on the podcast today. Really insightful, really interesting, and I know that our listeners are going to find it really useful.

Well, thank you so much. It's been really good to chat.

So there you have it.

I hope you found that episode really useful. Sorry about the quality of the audio, especially from me. We had to use Zoom to record it because our usual software just didn't seem to work. But I felt that the episode was worth publishing because there was such a lot of good value in there. And I'm sure Remini will have got you thinking differently about how you interact with your clients and how you go about getting feedback from them. So as ever, if you enjoyed this episode, please make sure you've hit the subscribe subscribe button. Please share with your colleagues and I would love you to leave a review because as you know, that helps us be found by more people. Other than that, I hope you have a brilliant rest of your Thursday and a great weekend, and I will see you next week for the next episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast.