September 2025 – so what makes for a happy client? In our first Client Service Excellence Pulse Tracker, we flipped a coin with this question – why do clients fire their agencies? We asked agency leaders and in-house senior comms management for their opinions. Each gave us different answers.
41% of PR & Comms agency leaders said it’s down to a failure to deliver outstanding work. The view from the in-house ‘bench’ was more nuanced with 25% saying it’s down to a lack of trust and proactivity. Never mind the ninja-moves agencies make to imbue their clients with respect and affection, how can they make their client really trust them?
Wisdom came from this Agency CEO – “Clients don’t fire agencies because one thing has gone wrong. Relationships normally end because a sequence of problems makes the client feel that it’s just too much work to resolve them. For example the agency team can churn, damaging the chemistry, which leads to a lack of proactivity as the agency team feels awkward engaging a client where the relationship isn’t great. This will ultimately prevent the team from being able to deliver outstanding work, make the client see less value and chip away at the trust between client and agency.”
An in-house PR & Comms leader embellished on the point of trust – “While most of the options are valid reasons, an agency relationship fundamentally boils down to trust. There will be churn, there will be times when it’s hard to see the value or proactivity but with a solid relationship – built on trust – all these issues can be addressed through open and honest communication. Without trust, the whole relationship falls apart.”
So what is the silver bullet for making the client/agency relationship stand the test of time? A senior Comms director had this to say – “…too often the retained agency (whilst charging very substantial fees) adds little or no value to the in-house team which has become increasingly valued by senior management in the last 10 years.”
So if this value is defined as less monetary and more cerebral, then perhaps the starting point is to prove how much you truly understand the clients’ business sector and target audience. Then, when that box is ticked, show your client where they are missing a trick with their PR & Comms strategy with a bunch of proactive ideas.
Fortuna fortiter favet.