6 tips for delivering top customer service as a marketing agency

The old phrase “The customer is always right” should be taken with a grain of salt for marketing and advertising agencies, who provide services based on their experience, ability to strategize, and expertise. You’re hired to increase client brand awareness, reach, and sales—and because you know how to hit all of the above goals more efficiently than your clients could on their own.

Delivering superior customer service in marketing means delivering on promises without over-promising results. Within the parameters of a client-agency relationship, a promise extends far beyond assurances of dollars or increased percentages. A promise to a client also includes hitting deadlines and fulfilling the scope of work.

If you own an agency or work for one, find out how to deliver exceptional customer experience.

What is customer service in marketing?

Customer service in marketing is your ability to meet or exceed customer expectations during every campaign. Providing excellent customer service is imperative to your brand reputation. According to Gartner’s Top Priorities for Customer Service Leaders in 2024 report, 86% of survey respondents say that improving the overall customer experience is their top concern.

Delivering customer satisfaction is more than just fulfilling your end of a contract. To elevate your team from delivering good customer service to delivering great customer service, you’ll need to:

• Provide excellent communication (both written and verbal) so the client understands the status of the project at all times
• Understand the nuances of each client relationship and develop a unique marketing strategy for each project
• Meet all project deadlines (which should be communicated in advance)
• Establish trust and rapport with each client, addressing all customer inquiries, concerns, questions, and feedback quickly and effectively

Continuously building better customer service protocols will help prevent churn, boost client referrals, and increase customer retention rates. In other words, ensuring you have happy customers now helps you have more happy customers (and a full client roster) down the road.

6 strategies for excellent customer service in marketing and advertising agencies

Creating a positive experience for clients is essential to the success of any agency. Below are six concrete strategies to increase your customer loyalty, streamline customer interactions, and ultimately provide the best customer service possible—and there are some that you might be surprised to see.

1. Invest in a CRM platform

Customer service should never happen in a silo. This means that no matter who a client speaks to on your team, that person should be up to date on the status, key performance indicators (KPIs), goals, and potential roadblocks of the respective campaign.

Yes, it’s industry standard to assign a point of contact (POC) for every client relationship. But what happens if the POC is out sick, on vacation, or leaves the agency? When the next customer service agent steps in, there should be zero disruptions to your client support—which is precisely where a customer relationship management (CRM) system comes in.

While CRM systems are frequently used by sales teams in the process of signing potential customers, this marketing tool should really be utilized throughout the customer journey. CRM systems allow you to share notes, contact information, details about past purchases, potential upsell opportunities, and (in most cases) email correspondence with and about the customer. If you have a change in account management, your CRM system becomes invaluable in speeding up (or nearly eliminating) the onboarding process for your new customer service representative.

2. Get crystal clear about communication methods

For agency owners, your predominant expense will always be your people. Meaning, if you want to protect your bottom line, your number one concern should be protecting your people’s time and energy.

When clients don’t respect boundaries, particularly in terms of communication, it creates a negative experience for both your team and your client. And it’s your responsibility to make those boundaries known.

How and when a client can expect to communicate with your customer support team should be explained while they’re still a prospect, and this information should be included within the contract. Your customer base needs to understand what communication methods are appropriate (e.g., emails might be preferable to text messages), when they can reach support agents, and what a typical response time would be.

In addition, client-facing timelines shouldn’t just contain deadlines for deliverables. Instead, timelines should include meetings that have been scheduled in advance, such as for regular check-ins, follow-up conversations, or collecting customer feedback.

3. Specify the number of edits within your contracts

To keep your marketing teams’ projects on time and on budget, you’ll need to cap the number of edits that will be accepted—and stick to that number. Otherwise, you run the risk of a project that never leaves the editing process. Instead, a client might continue to request revisions on a deliverable long after it was supposed to cross the finish line.

Uncapped edits can be detrimental to your bottom line. And as revisions drag on, it can drain team morale—which, in turn, drains your ability to provide excellent customer service. To keep edits in check, communicate the number of remaining revisions upon delivery of each deliverable. Once a client submits their feedback, don’t hesitate to double-check that everyone’s on the same page, saying, “As a reminder, this is your final round of edits on this deliverable. Is there anything else you’d like to tweak?”

4. Stop scope creep before it happens

Typically, we’re taught that a superior customer service experience means going above and beyond for every customer. Which is true—but only if it remains within the contracted scope of your project.

Scope creep is the dreaded antagonist of many client campaigns, yet it continues to wreak havoc on even the most experienced customer service teams. When a client asks for something that’s not written in the contract, but it’s a tiny ask, you might decide to deliver to make the client happy, which makes you happy. But then, the very next week, there’s another tiny ask—and again, you give in. Over the course of a six-month campaign of paid advertisements or social media posts, those tiny asks add up to one big drain on company resources.

To avoid this slippery slope, even for the smallest asks, agencies must communicate to the client, “We’d love to do that, but it’s outside our scope of work. We’re happy to provide that service for a fee of $X.” If there isn’t a designated fee listed on your pricing sheet for extra tasks, be sure to add that in. Lastly, train new hires and junior employees to avoid promising anything that’s out of scope, directing them to always escalate additional requests to a manager.

Lastly, if you’re struggling with scope creep, remember: Every time you say yes to one thing, you say no to something else. In other words, every time you go out of scope for one satisfied customer, it means you have to pull people and resources previously dedicated to another project.

5. Build out an internal knowledge base

Sometimes customer problems must be addressed through a video or phone call. And, frankly, clients will appreciate those in-person conversations, feeling as though they’re receiving a white-glove, personalized experience.

But over time, you’ll find that the vast majority of customer issues pertain to the same questions. To support those serving on the front lines of customer requests (i.e., your customer service team), help clients answer their own questions through the use of an internal knowledge base.

An internal knowledge base (such as a simple checklist, an artificial intelligence chatbot, a collection of Loom videos, or a self-service help desk) should be delivered immediately after customer acquisition. The knowledge base can fulfill client needs by answering frequently asked questions (FAQs), assisting with troubleshooting requests, or providing additional resources. That way, clients can find the answers to their questions in real time without scheduling a meeting.

6. Never stop searching for new solutions

To provide high-quality customer service, you’ll need to have unparalleled problem-solving skills. Not every campaign strategy will be perfect, but creating a great customer experience means searching for your next-best strategy when a prior strategy doesn’t work out.

To fulfill customer needs and hit client goals, you’ll want to continuously try new channels. If a press release falls short, try an influencer push instead. If a social media campaign failed to get the organic reach you aimed for, try paid advertisements. If you’re looking for a new channel to pursue, consider becoming a Yelp Advertising partner. With exclusive pricing and discounts, campaign metrics, and profile optimization features, it could be the tool you need to make an impact.

Delivering exceptional customer service helps your bottom line

Providing superior customer service in marketing or advertising agencies is essential to the growth of your company. Building client happiness helps cultivate loyal customers, increase word-of-mouth referrals, and preserve your internal bandwidth.

The most effective customer service strategies include having excellent communication, meeting deadlines, and sticking to the scope of work. In addition, you’ll want to continuously refine your marketing strategy to get the results your clients want. To further your clients’ customer satisfaction even more, check out these best practices for client reporting.