We’re rewarded for giving our own clients the best possible experience – and are finalists in Leadership Team of the Year, as well as the Best Place to Work categories.
Not bad for our first year as entrants to a showcase that attracts around 10,000 submissions!
As an agency, we talk a lot about creative ways for clients to keep their customers happy. But what about us? Do we offer the best possible experience? That’s what we strive for every day – and thanks to a company-wide restructure, we now have the strategy, the tools and the confidence to truly reflect our value. To have the Drum recognise our efforts at The Drum Business Awards 2022 – well, that’s truly the icing on the cake.
What are the Drum Awards for Agency Business?
The Drum Awards for Agency Business celebrate agencies that excel through strong workplace culture, effective management, and excellent performance. This year’s roundup rewarded some of the world’s top agencies for outstanding work, attracting tens of thousands of submissions to the overall showcase. In our first year, we were finalists in the Best Place to Work and Leadership Team of the Year categories, as well as taking home the winning entry for Best Business Development Initiative category.
The journey to excellence
This category looks for fresh approaches to retaining clients and bringing new ones on board. The timing of the award entry submission couldn’t have been better. Back in 2021/2022, we’d achieved our best ever year in revenue terms. All around us, we were bringing on board new clients, and new contracts. But with growth comes change – and to be an elite agency means doing things in a grown-up way.
With our target pipeline driving every thought and action, we began a mission to streamline every aspect of our processes to give our clients the best possible experience. It needed to meet three objectives:
- To clearly define what we do – and how we do it
- To define our customer experience
- To create a single view of every client
The Best Business Development Initiative category looked for fresh approaches and new thinking to customer retention and attraction. Here’s how we did it.
Three steps to customer experience excellence – the StrategiQ way
Step 1: The customer journey.
Through agile yet methodical mapping of all the stages that our customers go through, we can help anticipate needs and create a positive experience that keeps customers coming back. We deployed our customer experience and client service team on our tech stack and customer segmentation and re-engineered the whole journey.
Step 2: Chemistry meetings
We ask questions that unlock real needs, presenting them in concise, user-friendly reports. The result? The groundwork for a partnership built on trust, and a clear brief built around measurable targets – not ‘finger in the air’ based metrics.
3. Channel plan and operating system
With our clients’ needs in mind, we can quote accurately – providing them with services that they need. Nothing is off-limits – our specialists are actively encouraged to unlock exciting opportunities for clients. But – and this is the critical part – services are only added to their plan if they are a stepping stone towards their vision.
Once built into the channel plan, everything is seamlessly incorporated into our agency operating system, giving everyone in the business a 360 view of every client. The impact? More achieved in less time. Less duplication, fewer errors. A clear view of what your marketing agency is delivering and the value that it brings.
Finalist: Leadership Team of the Year and Best Place to Work
Our submission for Leadership Team of the Year showed evidence of innovative and inspirational leadership, making them finalists in this category. In addition, we were a finalist for the Best Place to Work.
Andy Smith, StrategiQ CEO, under employee spotlight
Andy Smith, our CEO, went for his first gong as CEO of the Year, putting himself up against the industry’s most inspirational leaders. Congratulations to the finalists and eventual winner, Tim Hassett of UNLIMITED. We had fun putting together our submission – which included a montage of employees commenting on Andy’s leadership in a frank series of videos. Andy gets to react, of course, and talks of our plans for growth in 2022 and beyond.
Having joined StrategiQ in early 2022 as a Non-Executive Director, I have been blown away by the process and commerciality behind their business growth. Of which I’ve never seen before in our agency world – Truly world class team – Gellan Watt
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