“The worst time to find out a client is unhappy is when they’re already walking out the door.”
Client satisfaction and retention are the lifeblood of any agency. Yet, too many firms rely on assumptions rather than actively measuring how their clients feel about their service. By implementing a structured Client Feedback System, agencies can identify issues early, strengthen relationships, and improve service delivery before It’s too late. This system should include both passive and active methods to gauge satisfaction.
Passive Feedback Monitoring
Not all clients will voice their concerns directly, so it’s crucial to observe subtle behavioral indicators:
- Meeting Engagement – Are managers and key stakeholders consistently attending meetings? Are they engaged, asking questions, and discussing reports?
- Report and Insight Sharing – Are they proactively reviewing reports and seeking insights, or do they seem indifferent?
- Senior Management Involvement – Are decision-makers participating in discussions, signaling the account’s strategic importance?
- Proactive Interest in Collaboration – Do they initiate quarterly check-ins or request face-to-face meetings and include you in future related project meetings?
- Contract Growth Opportunities – Are they open to discussing contract expansions or new services?
If a client starts missing meetings, disengages, or limits interactions, it may be a sign of dissatisfaction brewing beneath the surface. If they are not getting value from the meetings, they feel there is no need to attend and let junior staff participate. This is often a clear sign they do not feel this is a good use of their time.
Proactive Feedback Gathering
Beyond passive observation, agencies should actively seek client input through structured touchpoints. Unfortunately, for most people, this is like their fear of going to the doctor because they may tell them they have something serious. The sooner I know, the quicker I can start trying to fix it. I have never been able to reconcile the idea that we don’t ask because we don’t want bad news.
- Direct Feedback Requests—Regularly ask how you’re doing, not just from the main contact but also from their manager.
- Performance Tracking – Maintain a transparent tracker aligned with expected and agreed-upon goals. We used to call this our NO BS report but changed it to Opportunity Realized report to be more corporate-facing.
- Quarterly Check-Ins – Send a simple email with a subject like “Engagement Checkin” to gauge their sentiment. A short response or quick comment can reveal early warning signs. Key questions:
- Are you feeling the love from our team?
- Are we meeting or exceeding your expectations?
- Are we helping you or your boss achieve key KPIs?
- Do you have any challenges where we can provide insight?
- Semi-Annual Reviews – Conduct a structured performance review with a senior manager and the client team, ensuring you’re prepared with:
- Achievements and KPI contributions
- Challenges faced (both by the agency and the client)
- Honest discussion about expectations vs. implementation
- Mutual Rating System – Implement a four-way rating system:
- The agency rates its performance (outcomes, deliverables)
- The client rates the agency’s performance
- The agency rates the client’s implementation and collaboration
- The client rates their internal execution If the agency gives itself a 90 and the client provides a 60, that’s a clear disconnect that needs to be addressed.
Example: The Importance of Expectations
A midsized agency invited me to participate in their six-month check-in with a client. In the prep meeting, I realized everyone had multiple expectations for the meeting. Agency management wanted to use this to increase their retainer and lead it with innovations. The account manager hinted they might get some pushback for some challenges, and the client stated clearly in the meeting invite email that their management wanted to talk about the performance to date.
The client VP opened out of the gate with, “We’re six months in and at less than 10% of our target performance,” I need to explain to my bosses why we are so far behind. The client reiterated that the goal was to help them recover the traffic lost in the migration and then increase it by 20 over the previous year’s high. The agency’s Account Director pushed back, stating that the client had failed to implement significant recommendations and most team leaders stopped attending meetings. The back-and-forth escalated into blame-shifting.
Asked to investigate, I found that the client’s organic traffic had dropped 50% after their previous agency botched a migration and was fired. However, no proper root cause analysis had been conducted. Within 15 minutes of reviewing Google Search Console data, I identified that most lost traffic was tied to 18,000 unaddressed 404 errors. A simple triage—mapping high-priority pages and issuing redirection tickets—resulted in a 10% traffic recovery within two weeks and back to pre-migration levels in a month.
The big problem was that the agency treated the account as a standard engagement and made recommendations to chase incremental gain targets only by recommending new content and edits. The migration recovery was not even on their tasks and priorities. This is why the leaders were not attending the meetings. They did not believe adding new content was the answer to the migration catastrophe. No one was communicating, and this meeting blowup could have been avoided if the agency had monitored client satisfaction and expectations more closely. similarly, if the team leads believed other actions were necessary, they should have equally pushed back, demanding more of those recommendations.
Why No Feedback is the Worst Feedback
One extreme example involved a hreflang client who passively let their consultant run on autopilot. Nine months into the engagement, they realized they hadn’t received any updates, and their organic traffic was declining. Not able to reach the consultant by phone, they sent a letter and were informed by his wife that he had died five months earlier. A well-structured feedback system would have flagged the lack of communication much earlier.
Showing and Feeling the Love
In Epiphany 8, Showing the Love, I discuss this concept at length and how we have implemented it in my agencies. It is a process that allows us to ask a simple question to both our agency team and the client: Are you feeling the love? We would typically get a single answer: Yes or No.
Best Practices for Effective Feedback Systems
- Time Feedback with Key Milestones – Gather insights long before contract renewals, quarterly reviews, and significant financial decisions.
- Keep It Simple – Avoid overly complex evaluation processes that burden clients.
- Use Meaningful Scoring – Numeric scales (e.g., 1-5 or 1-10) often fail to capture nuanced sentiment. A 100-point system allows for more gradual shifts and actionable trends.
Integrating Client Feedback into Evaluations
At GSI, we tied client satisfaction scores directly to individual and team performance evaluations. If clients weren’t “feeling the love,” fixing the issue became a team-wide priority. This accountability ensured proactive engagement and continuous improvement.
It should not need mentioning, but sometimes, personality clashes between a team member and a client cause an evaluation to be skewed. In these cases, time must be spent sorting this out so that neither is unfairly rated. There have been a few times when it was best to change team members, and in a few cases, we needed to end the client relationship because they were just too toxic and uncooperative.
Final Thoughts
A robust Client Feedback System prevents churn, strengthens partnerships, and ensures that agencies and clients stay aligned on expectations and outcomes. By combining passive observation with proactive outreach, agencies can catch dissatisfaction before it turns into a crisis. After all, knowing whether your clients are happy isn’t just about retention—it’s about delivering lasting value and growth for both sides.