Staying true to your agency's mission gets difficult at times, especially when working with a dream client who is a substantial part of your business portfolio. Yet, there's a point where money, accolades, and even reputation are just not enough to keep you telling your team to put their heads down, do the work, and appease the client. Despite your best efforts to avoid it, you find yourself asking the question, “Is it time to fire my client?”
No one likes to be in this situation, and even though it’s uncommon, “the hard talk” is rarely a surprise. Usually client relationships don’t spontaneously crumble. There are indicators — obvious and subtle — that foreshadow the coming of “the hard talk.”
Common Signs That May Lead to the Hard Talk
- Project scoping and contract agreement delays: Is that statement of work ever going to be signed? While a bit of back and forth is expected, an extended negotiation period can indicate friction between the client’s approach and your agency’s methodology, especially if your agency is known for doing things a different way. While this unique approach is often why clients come to you, it can become an irreparable impasse if the client just isn’t right for your distinctive approach.
- Unexpected tension or distrust: Is there an elephant in the room? Sometimes things get messy as a project progresses, but if teams don’t communicate effectively and work together like they are in a partnership, then confusion starts to creep in and cause distrust and delays. Take heed when teams that usually hum along nicely with clients start to experience creativity and productivity slumps and start to require more oversight.
- A swell in emails or CC’d email chains: Are project emails a bane or blessing? Often the amount, length, and tone of emails are a good litmus test for how a project is going and if the client relationship is healthy. Sometimes I swear it’s possible to feel the email coming that’s going to prompt the hard talk.
During a recent user experience (UX) research project, the proverbial elephant in the room wasn’t my team, the project scope, or the deliverables — it was the client. We were hired to help its internal team with multi-tiered rounds of usability research and UX strategy design. The client was fairly traditional in its approach to usability testing and user interface design. It had approached us based on a referral from another client who was delighted with our anti-agency philosophy and innovative UX approaches.
We both knew our agency’s approach and UX strategy suggestions would challenge this client to depart from its usual ways (which is what the team wanted), but as the project progressed, it became clear our teams weren’t meshing on how to move forward from tactical usability improvements to designing a new user experience grounded in a UX strategy informed by user research. My team kept hitting project benchmarks, but their morale was noticeably subdued. The email volume gradually swelled, payments to us seemed to be delayed, and I started to receive passive aggressive correspondence from the client lead detailing how our agency’s team hurt our once thriving relationship.
Let me be clear. It’s never in anyone’s best interest to approach client or agency grievances via email. If you’re interested in true partnerships, then you need to go meet each other face to face. Just as projects can get messy, so can client relationships. I didn’t fire off an email to defend my team or appease the client. Instead, I took a walk to plan my next steps. Did I just want to be paid what was due and walk away? Yes…but not really. I wanted to get to the bottom of this tension and continue working with the client because I really believed in the partnership we were building together and the research and design work we were doing to help them realize their goals. So, I did my homework, investigating the current issues with my team and then met with the client.
Can the Hard Talk Be Easy?
Was this talk hard? It was uncomfortable at times, but it turned out to be fairly easy. I knew I was taking the time to consider my client’s and agency’s best interests. I knew I couldn't continue to work with this client if it was committed to pursuing the current direction, and I was prepared to walk away from the business. I was firm, empathetic, honest, and collaborative throughout the hard talk. The end result might surprise you; I didn't fire the client, and the client didn't fire me. Instead (and much to my surprise), this talk initiated a constructive conversation about why they hired us in the first place — to push them outside of their comfort zone — and ended with both of us reaffirming our commitment to work together.
There’s no such thing as the perfect client or the perfect agency, but you can build some gloriously messy, thriving client-agency relationships if the two sides are committed to constructive honesty and working together in a true partnership. Sometimes rather than avoiding the hard talk, the best thing to do is to have it.
