Welcome to episode 90, which is for you if you’d like to know what a non-billable CSD does in an agency.
Luke Bowler from Therefore Interactive joined me and he shares:
- How he went from studying to be a designer to moving to the account management role
- Why his CSD role is non-billable and how he decides where best to spend his time
- How he interacts with the project management team who are running the day to day projects
- How he cleverly keeps abreast of his client’s industry news despite the fact they’re spread across multiple industries
- The project management tools his agency is using as well as how they’re incorporating AI
If you’re listening to this episode before 20th July 2023 I’m running a free webinar on AI for account managers. Roy Murphy from Synthetic is going to provide an update on the current AI landscape, how brands & agencies are using AI, ethical considerations and challenges and we’ll be sharing some specific use cases for account managers. You can sign up to join live and also receive a recording.
If you don’t want to miss out on future free trainings, you can sign up to my newsletter here.
Transcript:
Jenny Plant
I’m delighted to introduce today Luke Bowler. He is the head of client service at Therefore Interactive, an award winning digital agency in Toronto, Canada. Now, Luke has over a decade of experience working in the creative industry, and I’ve invited him to share his perspective on the role of client services director and any tips for those in account management who aspire to be head of client service. Luke, a very warm welcome.
Luke Bowler
Thank you. I’m honoured, Jenny. I’ve listened to your podcast for a long time and probably started listening to it at a time when I really needed some structure and some organization around what it means to be in account management and especially what it means to be a client service director. So thank you. I really am honoured to join you.
Jenny Plant
I’m delighted to hear that. And it’s a pleasure to finally talk to you after so long of having interactions with you on LinkedIn. So just start off, Luke, by telling us a bit about you. How did you get the role of CSD? Tell us a quick summary of your background.
Luke Bowler
Sure, yes. It’s funny, I was reflecting on this the other day, and on paper, I don’t think it could be in any more of a linear journey to the creative industry, certainly, but it’s not felt, I don’t think it could have felt any more chaotic. It’s gone through many twists and turns.
I didn’t know what account management was. I saw myself as the designer in a design agency or the developer in a digital agency. I did not think about account management. But I guess when I look back now, books that my cousin bought me that I got really interested in, they were the ones about running an agency or managing a client. Think about ones like ‘How to Be a Designer Without Losing Your Soul’. It wasn’t really about being a designer so much, but about being a good client and being a good agency owner and setting up the right environment. And likewise, even that experience of going into the room and having to kind of sell myself and my abilities and my passion with really not a lot to show for. It proved to me, I guess, well, I guess you’ve got some sort of skill for selling, so maybe you can probably zero right in to account management.
So I would definitely say I fell into it. But most of the account managers I’ve met have said the same thing..
Jenny Plant
I agree. And it’s interesting that you say that you came from the creative route, so you were creative. You thought you were going to be a designer, but you’re interested in the business side of the agency. Do you want to be an agency owner at some point?
Luke Bowler
Yes, I think it’s definitely always been an interest. And I think one of the benefits of now being a client service director is you are exposed to everything. I’ve read Robert Solomon’s book ‘The Art of Client Service’, where he talks about being second best at everything. And that so resonates with me and I think the recent interview that you did touched on this as well. That almost reframing what it means to be an account manager is to be a practitioner and you end up knowing a little bit of everything.
And I think when you then go through the ranks and you get to that kind of client service director role now you really are seeing behind the curtain and you are seeing all of the inner workings of an agency and what makes it work and more importantly, maybe, what makes it not work and not be profitable. So yes, it’s still an ambition for sure. I’ve probably got more organization to develop first, but no, for sure, it’s always been a lifelong dream.
Jenny Plant
Well, I think it’s the perfect pathway into agency ownership, I really do. And maybe there’s some people listening to this that are already in the client services director role. Maybe they have considered it, maybe they haven’t. But it’s always inspiring to hear someone else’s story. And I noticed that you have got a pink book on the shelf behind you, do you want to read out which book that is?
Luke Bowler
Yes, this is the ‘Grow Your Agency To The First 5 Million Pounds And Beyond’. Got to convert that to dollars now, but ‘5 Million Pounds And Beyond’ by Agencynomics. And this has been a great framework, really, to look at and to benchmark against. It’s very useful in my previous agency. Totally different environment and different stage of growth to where the agency therefore is. But it’s really nice to have something to look at and say, well, that’s what good looks like. How close am I to that? That’s very helpful.
Jenny Plant
Great. That’s a great plug for the Agencynomics Group as well. So we will put a link in the show notes for anyone that wants to read that book because it is really good. Luke, in terms of the agency you are at now, what’s your business set up? Tell me about the model. What kind of clients do you serve and do you split the AM and the PM team? Tell me about the model. Tell me a bit about the inner workings of the agency.
Luke Bowler
Sure. Yes. So I guess in terms of who we serve, we are in the business of digital experience and enterprise digital experience. We are typically working with the VP of marketing or the VP of technology or both. And I guess the common pain point that they tend to share is that in the past, getting teams to create content was like blood out of a stone. That’s very much not the case anymore. Now the issue is more curatorial. Now there’s so much content that it’s enormously difficult to manage at scale when we’re talking about lots of internal teams, lots of local markets, lots of languages, lots of currencies, et cetera. And they will generally tell us that the tools that they are using are really letting them down. Quite commonly, they have been sold a bit of a dream by the DXP digital experience platform vendors, that doing all of that in one place can solve all of your problems.
And I think the reality quite often is because those platforms have grown out of merger and acquisition, they are a bit of a Frankenstein. And so what was a very small box of a single website becomes a much bigger box, but it’s still a box at the end of the day. And our clients are trying to break out of that. And so that’s really where we help them. We architect a solution that can scale and that can help them to keep on top of the content that’s been created in the company. In terms of how we are set up, this is one of the things I think that drew me to. Therefore, I think there’s lots of different personas almost of client service people. I was always quite operational. I think I reached a point where because at my previous agency, account management and project management were tightly coupled together, I was doing a lot of project management and not really feeling like I knew what to do.
Especially when the bigger the project, bigger the company, the higher the stakes. I felt quite definitely a sense of impostor syndrome and that I needed to go and train in this, I needed to have some basis to lean on. So I went away and I did an Agile Course and that was enormously helpful. It gave me lots of stakeholder management tips and just general project management framework to work with. And so that just naturally turned my focus. I was already passionate about creativity, I was already somewhat strategic because I freelanced in the past. I had to be to generate business. I didn’t have that operational organizational framework to fall back on. So it gave me that and it probably made me a little bit more have an eye for what was going on operationally. When I started speaking to Therefore, I was really impressed with how they were set up.
They do separate between account management and project management. So account management actually at the moment is just myself and it’s entirely non billable and it’s all about just generating new business in part, but also continuing to retain and grow existing client revenue. And then we have a completely separate project management function, which I’m so grateful for because despite some training, they are a lot better at it than I ever will be. And we also have what we call “Therefore Care”, which is everything that happens after a project is delivered. And that, I would say, really is the business. And that’s probably true of a lot of agencies. Obviously most agencies want to have that recurring revenue, something that’s predictable. And for that reason, “Therefore Care “sits almost as a business within the business. It’s got its own P&L, it’s got its own ring fenced resource pool.
So when clients invest in an ongoing program, inevitably they want to know that their resource is their resource and the next big project is not going to come along and everyone’s going to move like iron filings for that project and they’re going to be left at risk. So having that separation between not just account management and project management, but also within that, I suppose, a bit of a pod like structure really, where this group of people are being managed independently really takes a lot of risk out of being an account manager and everything becomes that much more predictable I suppose. So definitely one of the things that draw me to Therefore.
Jenny Plant
Very Interesting. So can you give us a bit more detail about this “Therefore Care”, and actually if a client wants that – sorry, I’ll back up a bit. You said that you work typically with global enterprise level clients who are looking to curate their content over multiple regions, territories, et cetera. And do you stick to a certain client in a certain industry as well? Or is it across industry?
Luke Bowler
Cross industry, yes, we have probably developed something of a not just a specialism for, but a passion in travel, partly because not only is travel booming at the moment. It’s a great time to be in travel, but also there’s so many opportunities for digital to play a role in the customer journey. There’s so many opportunities for personalization. It just happens to fit really well with what we do, but it is fairly sector agnostic.
Jenny Plant
Right, okay. So if a client wants to work with you, would you say that you do projects as well as retainers? So this retainer is your “Therefore Care” service, is that right?
Luke Bowler
That’s correct. So it’s most common that there will be a project, as always, that like jumps you quite a long way forward. You can get a lot done within the confines of the project. So that will be a gateway. Most of the time, that is the gateway to then a longer term relationship. It’s within “Therefore Care,” where I think then the opportunity to really build and sustain that relationship happens. And we are talking about ways that we can continue to develop that. We have got a really good model now because it’s ring fenced in terms of resource. It’s quite predictable. And now we can start to think about what other services can we bolt onto that on an ongoing basis that our clients are really going to value. But yes, projects and retainer, the typical kind of agency model is always there, but I think we put a lot of emphasis on the ongoing “Therefore Care” piece because really that is not only the predictable revenue, but also it’s incredibly well managed and very operationally mature. So it just makes sense to continue to build that.
Jenny Plant
Okay, so given that you’ve got the title of CSD, but you are hands on account managing principally for those clients who have signed up for the “Therefore Care” service, do the project managers report into you because you have that senior title or do they report into head of ops?
Luke Bowler
That’s a really interesting question. We have actually got another guy, David, and he really runs “Therefore Care”. So actually the project management office really runs into him. And then he and I work closely together. So it’s slightly unique in that fashion. And I sit sort of slightly as an umbrella over that. So I find that quite helpful because I think as a client service director, one of the benefits, one of the luxuries, is to be slightly removed from the day to day running of projects and even retained work. So that you can build a relationship with clients which is a little bit more personal, and you can sit on their side of the table a little bit more, and you don’t have to get quite so ingrained into the detail. And when I speak to senior clients, that’s what they want. If there’s an issue with the work, well, give me access to the people who are doing the work because probably I can help.
But if it’s not that, I just want to have a relationship with you. I want to feel that we can talk about things that aren’t just work and when I need an opinion, you will have one and it will be aligned with my business because you know me so well.
Jenny Plant
Right, okay. So this leads me quite nicely onto your role as CSD there. So what are you doing on a day to day basis to retain and grow those relationships?
Luke Bowler
I see my role as straddling almost two sides of the fence. On the one hand, it’s making sure that what we are delivering today is aligned to the clients objectives and objectives of their business. Obviously that’s important because if we are not doing that – that is just the baseline. However, there’s also looking ahead and saying what does this agency need to look like in 18 months time to still be delivering on those objectives? And so I split my focus between making sure at a high level that everything that we are doing at the moment is not just going well. that we are delivering on time, we are delivering on budget. It’s really speaking to what the client wants and we are delivering on some objectives, we are meeting some tangible business goal and we are not just – on time and on budget, that’s the baseline.
That’s what clients expect. I think I heard from you three or four years ago that in order to retain a client you need to go beyond just what’s been asked for and provide something that they haven’t asked for but you know that they would value and that they need. So I think the flip side to that is are we delivering on actual tangible business objectives and are we doing something that proves to the client that they are front of mind, that we are thinking about them, that we are looking at their industry, that we are trying to stay ahead on their behalf? So that the next difficult meeting that they are going to have internally they have got something that we have spoken about that they can drop into conversation and that we are working in partnership together. So it’s kind of partly present day, partly and I think probably the most exciting part is looking forward to the future and what do we need to look like in 12 to 18 months time?
Jenny Plant
And can I assume the fact that you are non billable makes that easier? Because it takes the pressure off having to bill against certain jobs? Because what you’ve just described is nirvana for a lot of account managers, to look up from the weeds and look at where are we now. How can I solve the problems that the client has now, but also where can I lead them in the future? Tell me about – because I’m sure a lot of agency owners, particularly listening, I’ve met agencies that have a non billable account management team, but some people think that it’s quite unusual. So can you talk to us a bit about how that works.
Luke Bowler
Yes. So I guess at the moment it’s a little easier in so much as account management is predominantly me within this organization. And as we grow and as the team grows, then the pressure on account managers to be somewhat billable may grow with it. And that certainly was the case in my previous agency. I was expected to be billable and that was a struggle because you are right, I think the moment you join a call with a client, especially if it is a client who is conscious of budget, and even if they’re not, to be honest, just as a baseline, they are aware that they are on the clock. And so I’m partly there to strategize with them, to directly add value to their business. I’m partly there as a conduit on the agency side trying to grow and develop more business. So there is that weird conflict of interest, I feel that happens in those scenarios.
And when you are not billable and you can just join to be almost on their side of the table, that’s enormously helpful. There’s no barriers there by default. We have certainly found that in the past, that having an account manager there and then knowing that it’s billable, you feel that pressure therefore to be adding value in every moment and otherwise, then you actually just get excluded from those meetings. And that’s the worst case scenario of being billable account managers. You don’t even get invited to be part of the conversation because they know that I don’t really need you to be, I want to have this direct conversation about my project or with a developer or designer or anything else. So I think there’s enormous benefits for the account management team to be predominantly, at least, non billable. And I think if we are doing our jobs right, then the clients are seeing value from us and the agency will see value from us because we will demonstrate that value in terms of existing client growth and retention.
So I really do think it works. I just think it takes a leap of faith from an agency owner point of view to really commit to that. And it doesn’t mean that we are not looking for opportunities to be billable. We are consultants at the end of the day, we can absolutely, and we do, on a regular basis, add value. And we shouldn’t just give that away for free necessarily. But I think being able to pick and choose when it’s appropriate is a real benefit.
Jenny Plant
And also picking and choosing which client you should be helping and working on at any one time because that’s totally fluid as well. So what advice would you give for other people listening to this who perhaps are billable, they are in a senior account management role and they are looking to do what you are doing, which is being more consultative and looking at the business challenges. But they are frustrated because they keep getting pulled down in the weeds. How do you stay ahead of knowing all about the client’s business and looking at trends and customer insights and stuff like that? How do you manage that?
Luke Bowler
That’s a really good question. I think
you have to carve out time where that client that you know, has growth potential. I guess actually taking a step back, it’s knowing what clients have that growth potential to begin with and knowing where that time, if it is spent, will generate more business for the agency. I think if that’s already been done, then I think it’s just about carving out the time where that client is your sole focus and you know that you are giving all of your investment of effort and attention to just that one client. I don’t think I have ever found that by doing that it has not come up with something that wouldn’t otherwise have been thought of and be able to take that to the client and for it to be of interest to them.
So it’s always been beneficial to do it.
I think where it gets difficult is probably where the time hasn’t been taken to really categorize and classify clients upfront and say, we know that this client has the potential to grow and we won’t grow it if all we’re doing is just delivering on the things that they’re asking for today. We have to take a look at what’s coming, look at their industry, look at their competitors, and be able to bring something to them that’s going to expand their thinking.
Jenny Plant
What’s your criteria for identifying a client with growth potential?
Luke Bowler
That’s a great question as well. I think my thinking on this has evolved somewhat. I think we had a conversation as well about not looking quite so much at the lagging indicators of what revenue they put with you in the past, but the leading indicators of what suggests that they are a good client and there is the potential to grow. So I’ve created something of a bit of a scoring system, I suppose, for the accounts that we have that adds up those various different things of is it a profitable client? It’s one thing to get revenue from a client, obviously it’s a totally different thing for that client to be profitable. So is it a profitable client? Is it culturally aligned? Are we able to work together? Do we get the best out of one another? Are we strategically aligned as well? The CEO of the agency will always have a vision what the agency is meant to look like in 12 to 18 months.
Is the client going to help us to get there is another factor. And then I think actual pipeline as well. And having
one of the most useful things to do is to have that cadence of quarterly meetings with a client where they know that it’s time well spent, but we are going to take time almost out of the business, it might be half a day, could even be a whole day. It’s going to be as useful for them as it is for us, but for the agency it gives you that visibility of what’s coming down the pipe, what’s most likely to come off. And so we have got the great luxury, therefore, of having a nine month pipeline of really good visibility of what’s come in and then being able to work on that over that period.
So I think those kind of quarterly sessions where everyone just takes a step back and has a think about what’s coming, that’s really useful because it means that classification of growth potential is very real and tangible.
Jenny Plant
This is all music to my years. Anyone would have thought that you had come on my training course. Honestly, it’s so good because it makes growth so much easier. If you can stay close to their business and they see you then as being consultative. I call it working upstream with your clients because a lot of agencies only work downstream on deliverables and it’s very tactical at that level. How do you keep up with all of your different clients because you are industry agnostic, as you said. So how do you manage that?
Luke Bowler
Yes, I think that can be probably the biggest challenge and probably most CSD’s will say the same thing, as your agency grows, especially if you are set to agnostic, it’s very hard to feel like you are adding value as well because you really want to go deep into one industry, but you are constantly having to dance between them. So I think tools can be very helpful in this regard because you are constantly trying to maintain this bird’s eye view and you have a finite amount of time at the end of the day that you can apply within a working week. So I find it useful to have tools that will almost give a bit of a red, amber, green, system that I can keep a track of and where I see that things are at risk. If there are issues going on I can dive into those, where I see things are going really well and everything’s wonderful and green, then I know that focusing in on those areas are only going to make things even better.
Luke Bowler
So I think having that kind of bird’s eye view and having tools that enable that bird’s eye view is time well spent to get that right. As an agency, we are an Atlassian, Google based agency, and Atlassian tools, especially, we use a lot for the actual doing of the work, but we also use it as useful places for both status updates. So we use Atlassian’s Atlas tool, which is a great kind of Twitter length status update with a status of red and the green for at risk through to everything’s going great. I find that enormously helpful because I can just see that on a weekly basis and if I haven’t been able to keep touch with every single item that’s going on, it gives me that bird’s eye view. But it also keeps the whole agency up to date, which most people within an agency, especially like ours, which is fully remote, we have people dotted all around the world, people want to know how the agency is doing.
They want to know if it’s profitable. They want to know if we’ve got new clients coming in. They want to know how existing clients are responding to their work. They can subscribe to those updates as well as me and just see a cross section of how things are going. So that could be a really good way to keep in touch. And then I think the cross industry thing is probably the other challenge, I find it, and this obviously needs the buy-in of your agency leadership team. I find it really useful in the same way as personally you may have a mentor, to have some industry people spotted across the cross section of industries that you focus on, that you can draw insight from. They are totally unbiased because they are just in the industry. They don’t have any specific interest in, or conflict of interest, with any particular client, but they keep a pulse of how that industry is going.
I find that enormously helpful. And so I try to pick a few people within the industry and we will just meet on a monthly basis or even on a quarterly basis. What’s going on in your industry right now? What might my client be facing, but they haven’t told me yet. But you’re aware that they’re probably facing it because everyone in that industry is. So I think it’s being strategic about the time and knowing that you do have a finite amount of time at the end of the day, and you have to zero in where you think you are going to be most valuable.
Jenny Plant
And do you capture those insights that you gain from all of these mentors in different industries and share them with the rest of the team?
Luke Bowler
That’s right, yes. So one of the other Atlassian tools that we use is Product Discovery. And this is a space for ideas. So if we were going to go to our quarterly meeting with a client and talk about what’s coming up, we will put those ideas into that forum. You can roadmap that so a client can visually see, okay, yes, I agree. This is something that we want to focus on in the next six months versus something that’s a great idea. We may never get to it, but certainly it’s a further down the road thing. And so when I have conversations that align to those ideas and align to that roadmap, they go in as insights into that and then anyone in the team can pick that up and see it. And so I think we will try to do more of that as we go forward, especially within that realm of “Therefore Care”.
Continuous discovery is a really interesting topic. A lot of clients would love to have the time to do it, go out and speak to real customers, get their insights on how the service is affecting them. Quite often they don’t have the time and the resource to be able to do that, and they may lean on us to be able to do that. So to be able to bring not just an industry expert view, but from the ground up, this is how real customers within your industry feel about the products and services that you offer, that’s really valuable insight. To be able to then bring back to the client and say, we’ve done this independently, potentially, and this is what we’re hearing, and this is how maybe it might shape the next six months of your roadmap.
Jenny Plant
Love that, because clients, at the end of the day, they’re interested in their business and their customers. And anything that you can bring them in terms of insight, it’s hugely valuable. Just going back a step to the tool you’re using, the Atlas Tool, I thought that was great as well. So you are always looking at where am I going to most effectively spend my time? We’ve talked about categorization of clients to identify growth clients, but then you also said, I look across the projects and look if it’s red amber, green. So I know where I need to focus my energy. Now, presumably, the project managers are inputting into whether that’s red amber green. Is that right?
Luke Bowler
That’s right, yes exactly. So each project manager will obviously have their portfolio of projects and it’s their responsibility to then, I guess, amplify the status update for the wider agency on a weekly basis. So it never feels like you are too far removed from the day to day without actually having to be fully engrossed in the day to day. Where then. I think the flip side to that is that you never feel that you have time to be strategic. So I guess the goal is always to try to engineer time to be strategic without losing touch. At the end of the day, you have to know how those individual projects are going. It’s the lifeblood of any agency and it’s what your client is really looking to you for as their baseline and to be that reliable partner. But to be able to do that without consuming all of your attention and to be able to still feel that you have the headspace to be strategic.
It was always a challenge in the past and something I have worked really hard to try and maintain now.
Jenny Plant
Brilliant. I’m curious because you are all remote. I think this system sounds very buttoned up. It sounds like it’s working well and it gives you the information you need. Do you also have Zoom calls with the whole project management team? How often do you all get together as a service delivery team?
Luke Bowler
For sure, yes, we will still get together on a weekly basis. So we have our weekly management team meetings and project management office meetings. I guess likewise with things like resourcing. So at a bare minimum, on a weekly basis, we are always touching base and actually talking about things. I think what those individual status updates do is that they stop us from having a meeting to give the status update and they become a meeting to talk about what’s already been updated. And that’s a big change. And I think it again, it enables you to maximize your time. If I already know what the update is, but I don’t understand why or how I can help, then we can spend five minutes talking about that. That’s time much better spent than five minutes just giving the update. You don’t really have time to really take it all in and ask questions and you never really get to the heart of the issue.
Jenny Plant
Yes, I’m sure everyone listening probably sat in meetings where everyone’s going around the room with an update and you just think, I haven’t said anything, nothing’s relevant to me, and it’s complete waste of my time. So that sounds like a very efficient way of going. So great tip there. Tell me more about – you are obviously attending these quarterly strategy sessions, which is fantastic, that’s kind of working upstream, working very strategically, and that’s where you want to be seen. What are your other touch points? Do the project managers run all of the projects? Do you show your face in project meetings, like whether it’s status and you are talking about the granular detail, or do you not get involved in that at all?
Luke Bowler
Yes, no I do and I think it’s worthwhile doing so. I think when you are non-billable and known to be non-billable, then you can dip in and out and from a client’s point of view it’s great to see your face. Likewise, they are not having to worry that it’s another line item on the bill. I think I try and keep a fairly predictable cadence to it. I think when it’s too random, then it’s very obvious when you join because you know that there’s a new opportunity that you’re going after and suddenly your presence is there.
Jenny Plant
Or you’re coming to the end of a contract.
Luke Bowler
Exactly. So I think making it a predictable cadence is helpful, but I think showing your face and being there, the flip side of not being too ingrained in the day to day, and even if there are tools that will help you to keep in touch and not lose touch of a project. From a client’s point of view, nothing beats FaceTime. And whether that’s personal, physical FaceTime or whether it’s on screen, a client wants to see that you are really invested in their business and that their business is your number one priority. So, try to stay in. It might be a fortnightly basis rather than a weekly basis or in some cases a monthly basis, but I think it’s important to be there and be noticeably part of the team. Plus, the team itself takes confidence from the presence in some cases. Sometimes a humble status update meeting is not a humble status update meeting, and it evolves into something else. I think being there and being part of the team and supporting the team is just as important as anything else.
Jenny Plant
Do you find that at the client side, different people from the client side attend a quarterly strategy session versus the clients that actually are responsible for the day-to-day tactics? Are they different people always or are there overlaps sometimes?
Luke Bowler
Yes, I think there’s definitely overlap. Sometimes they will be quite segregated, other times it’s the same individual and you are going to see them throughout. Probably another good reason to be both present in the quarterly meeting and present at least on a periodic basis in those individual day to day meetings. I think by virtue of it being quarterly there’s an inference that it is strategic so therefore more senior people tend to gravitate towards those meetings because they haven’t necessarily had the time to keep up with the day to day, month by month and it’s a really useful update for them as well. But likewise, the people who are actually running the project who are involved day to day are hugely influential within any organization and so to not pay attention to those areas and only focus on the senior leadership level leaves you very vulnerable, I think, as an agency. So I think you have to split your focus between the two.
Jenny Plant
I have got so many more questions but I’m just conscious of time and I want to squeeze so many in. We talked briefly about AI and obviously I have got a webinar coming up in a couple of weeks about some use cases that I think can make an account manager’s job a little bit easier. But talk to me about how you are using it in your agency.
Luke Bowler
So AI has been a topic now for a good few years and a keen interest of our CEO, so he’s really pushed the agenda on it. I think there’s some areas where it’s quite a mature part of the process. So, developers will use things like Co-Pilot, which is almost like an auto complete for developers in my mind, to assist them and to make sure that it’s adhering to best practice and that sort of thing. So, I think things like that are already very ingrained and it’s making us more efficient and obviously clients benefit from that efficiency. I think from an account management point of view, my current use of it is largely in, again kind of extending my time, I suppose from a research perspective, being able to prepare for meetings and to feel like I’ve got a good wealth of industry knowledge. Using Chat GPT as an example is a great way to cut through a lot of that.
And I’m always very aware that I’m getting a one-to-one answer and there’s nuance and there’s other things to find out, but it can be enormously helpful there. Enormously helpful also in making sense of and organizing ideas. Sometimes you can feel quite chaotic and you’re constantly writing messages and emails as part of your day to day. Having a little bit of assistance is quite nice and streamlining that process is really good. And we also use tools, generally if I’m in a meeting I have a tool called Tactic, which is a browser plugin that will record notes of a meeting and there’s a one click summarize this meeting. It’s amazing. I’m always quite amused by the fact that when you watch it transcribe it gets it so wrong in a hilarious way. But then when you hit summarize it does it perfectly. It’s better, and I don’t know how it does it, but it seems to work very well.
So I think there’s an awful lot of time saving techniques that AI is so helpful for. And I think now we are starting to work out how we can, not just pass on our own efficiencies to clients but also how can we add value. I talked earlier about the fact that the problem we are commonly solving is this ever-growing amount of content that the marketing team, sales team, various teams within an enterprise organization are having to keep on top of that naturally leads to content governance. And how do I know what content is old and in need of refreshing. How do I know what content maybe does not meet a set of standards that the organization has set? Again, it’s that kind of bird’s eye view. I need to be able to rush to the problem at hand and know where it exists. And so, we are starting to use AI in content governance models to try and make clients feel that they can use their time more effectively.
Jenny Plant
Can you share with us what tool you’re using in that instance?
Luke Bowler
Yes, generally still Open AI based. We’re huge advocates for open-source technology, so we are really building small tools here and there. But there are lots of platforms out there that are using AI in really interesting ways. I sat in on a Twilio Segment Webinar the other day, which was like a customer data platform, and they showed an example in a live chat environment whereby AI could generate a response and the response would feel like it was written in natural language, and it was very human, but it wasn’t contextualized. And so it very quickly became very generic, whereas by plugging in this customer data platform now, it could feed that AI information specific to the person and therefore the AI could respond with a message that was actually really personalized and now felt not just more human, but also actually added value and became useful to the customer. So in some cases it’s building things of our own and in some cases, it’s recognizing that there are great tools out there already and just finding the right way to integrate them.
Jenny Plant
I think you’re absolutely right. I think we are at this point at the moment, I mean, it’s just moving so quickly. But the likes of Salesforce, HubSpot, et cetera are all integrating AI tools now and this predictive way of working. So, I think what I’m seeing and also what I’m talking to agents about is looking at your current tech stack, what are you currently using? Because inevitably they are just going to be AI driven. At the moment there’s this proliferation of different tools you could use for all these different things. But it makes sense if you are using Google Workspace, you are using Microsoft teams, that’s going to incorporate everything anyway. And I suppose by the time you have paid all these monthly fees for all these tools; it can get quite expensive as well. But that’s really interesting. Any tips for any prompts that you’re using with Chat GBT for your research purposes?
Luke Bowler
Interesting. I’m probably still learning in this space.
Jenny Plant
I think we all are.
Luke Bowler
I think to be honest, it’s just interesting to reframe as you give it a prompt and you get a response. I think the prompts that then start to become really useful are just a natural consequence of going back over and back, reframe this, add in this. What about this? Can you base it on this framework or this recognized piece of knowledge? I think that’s where you get a really useful response and I think I have certainly used it for research and come up with information that has not been quite right. And I have gone to my client, and I said, well, I’ve done a bit of research and this is what I’ve found out. And they say, well, actually, no, my experience is this, and it has never been a point of contention that I’ve brought that knowledge to them, even if it hasn’t been quite accurate, but it’s been a useful conversation starter and they have been able to then layer on detail and nuance that I would not otherwise have had.
So I think it could be a really great conversation starter as well. And you just come out of the meeting feeling like you have more than just general knowledge, but very specific knowledge that’s contextual to that client.
Jenny Plant
I love that. I mean, old school account management, 30 years ago, Luke, we used to have to read industry press and all of these. We used to have the press clippings book where you had to gen up before a client meeting. Nowadays we have got it all at our fingertips and as you say, it makes you feel more confident, you look more prepared, you look more professional, you look like you care and you give a damn about what’s going on. And this is now minutes rather than hours. So I love that. And you are right, when you are doing the prompting, the more nuanced you can get along the same thread, the more rich the data is going to be. So that’s great. What are your clients asking you about AI? Any conversations you’ve had with clients you can share?
Luke Bowler
For sure. Well, I think where it’s most obviously useful and I think some technology vendors have done this really well. I can think of Shopify as an example and their Shopify Magic tool, it’s the activities that a client spends a lot of time doing or requires a lot of resource to do that they wish they could use elsewhere and they can’t because it’s just so time consuming. So Shopify Magic creates product descriptions, at almost a click of a button. And that’s something . I have worked for a multi brand sports retailer before. That was a whole two or three peoples roles to sit there and take in the product and write product descriptions. And it’s hard, it’s really difficult. You have got to make each one slightly different, you have got to make each one adhere to a certain brand and tone of voice and it’s got to be accurate at the same time.
So I think any examples like that where it can be time saving, that’s probably the most obvious. I think what may come more now is not just saving time, but generating opportunity and at the same time, we are having lots of conversations internally about the legalities of Open AI and the use of AI, because obviously each country has its own take on this. Canada certainly has its own take on this and very aware that I don’t think at the moment our creative team is necessarily using AI to generate imagery, but many agencies are and it’s useful to know where does the IP sit in those sorts of scenarios. So I think they want to take advantage of it. They want to save time through it, but they also don’t want to expose themselves to more risk and they want to be educated in how do I make use of this and in a way that’s going to add value to my business, not put me at risk of taking value away later.
So we are trying to keep in touch with and on top of that as well and pass on anything that we learn to them. And in most cases they have their own legal counsel as well. So we can just have a collaborative conversation. So we have heard this and potentially that poses a bit of a risk. How do you feel about that and have a dialogue around it?
Jenny Plant
I think it’s really important to have a dialogue at this stage while the legalities and the rules are being formulated. There is actually, and just FYI, you probably know this already, but the Marketing AI Institute, who have a fantastic podcast and also a free webinar about the overview of AI every month, and it’s live, they have on their site an AI policy document that you can adapt for your business. And I think what I’m seeing amongst other agencies, they are starting to formulate a bit of an AI policy for clients because this is a topic of conversation, particularly coming up with procurement. And I think you touched on it before saying ultimately we want to be able to pass on these savings, that we are being more efficient to our clients. And I suppose it leads me on to a question around the future. Do you have any thoughts for where the agency industry is going? Who’s going to be most successful in moving forward in the next kind of 5 years at least?
Luke Bowler
I think certainly we, as an agency, are obviously we are very technology driven. It’s really the large part of what we sell, I guess, and we are definitely seeing that. I think the advances in technology over the last even 2 years is really challenging the status quo of how we might have developed digital experiences two years ago versus today. Maybe this is an easy answer, but I think the agency that continues to evolve and question the technologies that they are using and use them in different ways, is definitely more likely to succeed than others. And I think in that technology space that is a problem because there are many agencies who might specialize in one type of content management system, as an example, and you can develop deep expertise in that and that’s fine and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think things move so quickly that obviously there is also risk in going just pigeonholed into one technology over another.
So I think just having a willingness to be open to change, I suppose, and not get too precious about what happens today and how it happens today, but be willing to reflect and evolve and change things and experiment on anything else.
Jenny Plant
I think that’s really great advice, Luke. And so that’s really for agency owners and agencies in general. Any specific parting words of advice for account managers? You have mentioned having mentors in different industries, I thought that was a great tip. Any other pieces of advice you can share with those in account management who are on that pathway? Perhaps CSD, perhaps agency owner, to keep evolving themselves?
Luke Bowler
I think it starts with a baseline of just passion for the industry that you are in, and that doesn’t change, that hopefully only deepens as new technology comes along. So I think having a passion and continuing to evolve that passion is a key thing, I guess, as a client service person you definitely have to invest time in your own skills, and I think what you do for account managers is enormously helpful. When I started out in account management, like I said, really fell into it. Likewise, project management became just a need that sprung up organically, but I had not been trained in it. So, again, getting training, that really helped. You mentioned in the previous podcast about Mark Kitts and the impact he had on your career. I think there’s a point in account management where if you didn’t start from a sales or strategic point, you started from a creative point.
Certainly took me a long time to realize that I was in any kind of sales. Just wasn’t on my radar. That’s the profession that I was in and so the basics of good negotiation and everything else, I really didn’t have. So, yes, I think if you can encourage your agency owner to put you on training, absolutely do it. If you have the luxury of being able to put yourself on training, if you don’t have the backing of the agency, it’s worthwhile doing it. I appreciate that not everyone has that luxury. To be honest, since I have come here, because it was such a big move from the UK to Toronto, I have very deliberately picked one or two of those mentors, and I speak to them every week because it just gives me that confidence. It’s probably three or four people in my career who I still speak to, I try to make a point of speaking to them every month, if I can.
I can take specific issues to them. This is what I dealt with this week, this is how I dealt with it. Do you see any gaps? Is there anything else I could be doing? No way that I would feel as confident about my role today if it wasn’t for those relationships. So I think if there was one thing to do, it would be, if possible, try and find that mentor for you that can, not just give you confidence, but actually help you to learn and grow as well.
Jenny Plant
I think that’s a great piece of advice Luke and so much there that you have said, which resonates, and having also the courage to ask for that feedback, to share with them what you did and then get that feedback, I think that speaks volumes about your character as well. And you are obviously doing well through it because you have managed to travel with your job, get more senior positions. So fantastic. Luke, this has been brilliant. If someone wants to talk to you about what you do in the agency and what the agency does, because it sounds very compelling, what’s the best way that they can reach you?
Luke Bowler
Well, I’d say LinkedIn. I probably use LinkedIn more than any other social channel. I find it a really great source of community and knowledge. LinkedIn would be a good place.
Jenny Plant
All right, we’ll put a link to your profile in the show notes. Luke, thank you so much for your time. The time is just, well, I knew it was going to happen, whisked away. So thank you again.
Luke Bowler
No, thank you so much, Jenny.
