Scaling Client Service Excellence

At Inkhouse, the past 12 months have brought the highest rate of growth in our agency’s 15 year history. As we continue to grow, client service excellence is our top priority.

Our commitment to supporting, training and empowering our employees keeps retention rates high and attracts new talent — even in an ultra-competitive hiring climate — and translates to an engaged workforce committed to winning together with our clients. 

During a recent Inkhouse all-staff meeting, I had the opportunity to chat with our CEO Beth Mognahan in a Q&A style session. We talked about scaling client service excellence and how we all individually and collectively play an important role in preserving and enhancing the essence of Inkhouse as the highly sought after partner to change-making brands for their integrated marketing and PR needs. 

Here are five guiding principles that support our mission to deliver top quality client service:

#1: THE STORY IS THE STRATEGY

It all starts with a great story. Storytelling is the best way to drive change, action and community. A fully integrated PR program brings together earned PR, content marketing and digital strategy all underpinned by a central goal: telling a unified story with a clear and compelling moral or “revelation.” Our proprietary Inkhouse Storycrafting Method & Workshop crystalizes the story for clients, which in turn, becomes the strategy. Our integrated expertise then allows us to expertly assess which tactics and channels make sense to use, in order to get that story seen and heard by key audiences – and most importantly, to influence those audiences to take desired actions.

#2: DATA INFORMS EVERYTHING

Data drives our decision-making related to everything from story crafting and channel (or distribution) strategy to campaign execution and, of course, data is central to evaluating program results. Whether we’re talking about assessing a client’s brand presence online, that of their competition, understanding market opportunity, analyzing campaign-specific performance in real time, and more — data plays a critical role.

• During program planning cycles, we use data to inform our channel or distribution strategy. 
• Day-to-day, live dashboards of campaign-relevant data sources keep us agile and on track to optimize results.
• At regular intervals, our branded Inkhouse Impact Report for clients provides in-depth quantitative and qualitative analysis of the ways our work moves the needle for their business. From there, we extrapolate the learnings and use them to inform the strategy for future initiatives. It’s a closed loop effort.

#3: “SEEK WHAT WORKS” TO DELIVER RESULTS 

We actively listen to clients’ business goals (and challenges) and we seek what will actually work — not what we think is supposed to work or has worked in the past — to support them. We take calculated and creative risks to figure out what works. If we hit a roadblock, then we persist while at the same time acknowledging that there comes a point where we may need to question the process or tactic and try something new. We are “thinking partners” to our clients, we’re honest and transparent about all things, including the things that aren’t working, and we proactively suggest workarounds that get us to desired results. That’s the Inkhouse Way.

#4: DEEP SPECIALIZATION = DIFFERENTIATED THOUGHT

Resource allocation sits at the heart of great client service. At Inkhouse, we put a big emphasis on building account teams with people who have the right combination of ability and experience to provide the counsel and capabilities that clients’ need to stand out in competitive markets. Our 150+ employees bring uniquely specialized market knowledge and connections in the industries we serve, including B2B tech, healthcare, energy & climate tech, education, venture capital and others, and they draw on a broad range of PR, content marketing and digital media skills to fuel success.

#5: TRAINING SUPPORTS CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

“The best get better when they focus on continuous improvement,” said a client CEO to me recently. We share this same focus at Inkhouse and we are heavily invested in a robust and formal Inkhouse Training Program led by our SVP of Training Julie Sellew. In complement, my role as EVP of Client Services is all about maintaining a standard of excellence for client work agency-wide as we continue to rapidly grow and supporting Inkhouse’s ability to anticipate and exceed clients’ needs.

To learn more about our approach, subscribe to our weekly newsletter by completing the form to the right or contact us directly at workwithus@inkhouse.com.