Client happiness
Chris Out
Ask an agency owner how happy their clients are and you get an answer within a second. An eight, usually. Sometimes a nine. Ask them when they last asked a client that question and the answer takes longer.
Let me turn it around. What you have is not a measurement of client happiness. It is a measurement of client silence. And silence is what a client sounds like three months before they leave.
In C.A.L.M. terms this is the first meter, Client happiness: a score from 1 to 10, asked to every client, every month, answered by the client. Norm: an average of 9.0 and no single client under a 7. It comes first because it is where Bad Growth shows up before the revenue graph does. Read how an agency coach measures it.
You estimate high for a simple reason: unhappy clients rarely tell you first. They tell their team. They tell the next agency. They stop replying quickly, they push back on the invoice once, they take longer to approve. None of that reaches you as a number, so you fill in the number yourself, and you fill it in kindly.
Renewals do not help. A client who renews is a client who has not yet found the alternative. A client who does not complain is a client who has stopped expecting anything. Both look like an eight from where you sit.
The measurement is smaller than you think. One question: how happy are you with us right now, on a scale from 1 to 10? Asked to every client, once a month, by someone on your team. The answer goes into one row per client per month, next to that client's margin and untouched status. That is the whole instrument.
Not NPS. NPS asks whether someone would recommend you, once a year, aggregated into a number you cannot act on. This asks the client how they feel about you, now, per client, so you know who to call this week and not just how many are unhappy in general. Not a survey with twelve questions either. Twelve questions get a response rate of thirty percent. One question gets an answer.
An average of 9.0 sounds ambitious until you see what it filters. A client who gives you a 7 is not a problem yet, but they are not going to refer you either, and they are the first to negotiate the next renewal. A client under a 7 is a decision you are postponing. Usually they are also the client under 40% margin and the client who asks for you by name. One number shows all three.
The norm is not there to make you feel bad. It is there so the team knows what good looks like without asking you. A 9 is the standard; a 7 gets a conversation this month; anything under a 7 for three months gets a decision. That is a rule your account manager can run without you, which is exactly the point.
Make a list of every active client. Next to each name, write the score you think they would give you. Then have someone who is not you ask them the real question this week. Put both numbers side by side. The gap between the two columns is the size of your blind spot, and it is usually bigger than one point.
Then make it monthly. Same question, same day, same sheet. After three months you have a meter. After six you will know which client is about to leave before they do.
NPS asks about recommending, once, and aggregates the answer. Client happiness asks how happy the client is with you now, per client, per month, so you can act on the individual answer. It is a steering instrument, not a marketing statistic.
Someone who is not the founder. If you ask, clients round up. If the account manager asks, the answer is honest and the meter belongs to the team, which is where it should live.
Then you have your answer. A client who will not give you a 1 to 10 is not a 9. Treat it as a 6 and have the conversation.
Client happiness
Client happiness
Client happiness
Autonomy
