How to Implement NPS for Agencies: FINALLY Agency Case Study with Amber Mackay
Key Takeaways
- FINALLY tried NPS through automated HubSpot emails first. Uptake was poor, so now the account manager asks the question live on the call.
- Retainer clients get asked at least quarterly, at the end of a review meeting. Project clients get asked at delivery. Everyone gets asked, including whoever writes the checks.
- At the time of recording FINALLY was running an NPS of 80 across roughly 25 clients, tracked on an agency scorecard the team reviews every two weeks.
- The score is the starting point. The feedback matters more, and Amber's team acts on it straight away. Communication and client input come up most.
- Detractors are rarely a surprise if you're talking to clients regularly. Take it offline in a separate call, away from the delivery team.
- Promoters become testimonials, LinkedIn posts, before-and-after case studies, and video shot during sessions where the agency is already filming for the client.
Gray MacKenzie hosted this episode with Amber Mackay, Head of Client Services at FINALLY Agency, an inbound marketing agency in Canterbury, Kent that specializes in engineering and manufacturing and is a Platinum HubSpot partner. Gray found her through a blog post on what an NPS score is and why it matters, and the conversation is a walkthrough of how FINALLY actually runs Net Promoter Score: who asks, when, and what happens with the answers.
The survey tool is a person on a call
Gray asked whether FINALLY sends NPS surveys through HubSpot. They did, at first.
We did use HubSpot, and we used automated emails, which meant that people would drop into workflows depending on their lifecycle stages and any of the specific categories we put them in. It wasn’t working. The uptake was not great. Everyone is busy. People’s inboxes are full anyway. I am the tool: me with my slide presentation on the call with my account manager. We’re the ones doing it now. So it’s technically a manual process, but it’s actually not really a process at all. It’s actually a conversation.
The wording stays close to the standard question, or with clients they’re close to, “how much do you love us?” Scores and the follow-up go into the agency scorecard FINALLY reviews every two weeks.
Retainer clients get asked at least once a quarter
We ask all of our retainer clients at least every quarter. That means every three months we have a proper meeting with them… where we might go over activities in the last three months, what’s coming up over the next three months, what’s going well, what’s not going so well. And then we always ask that question right at the end. If they are just smaller project clients, we’ll probably tend to ask at the end of that project on delivery.
Gray pushed on who gets asked: the marketing manager on the weekly call, or the owner writing the checks? Amber said FINALLY is always in touch with the decision maker, and if that person isn’t on the review call, the team calls them separately.
Running at 80, and why the number is only the start
We are currently running at 80. We have approximately 25 clients that we’re currently working with on various levels… Because the process is fairly new, we are still working our way through a lot of those, depending on where they are at in their lifecycle. But everyone gets asked regularly enough that we are constantly reporting on that number.
FINALLY doesn’t use the 80 in marketing yet. For Amber the number is the starting point for going to the clients they work brilliantly with, getting a testimonial, recording an interview, and reporting the project’s results. All of that together, in her words, is “such a fantastic story to sell.”
Clients expect the question now, and honesty runs both ways
Gray asked whether clients brace when Amber shows up on a call.
I think they see me on the call, they think, what have we done wrong now? But because it’s part of the process now - our project leads, we ask the question all the time - they expect it to come up. It’s not supposed to be an intimidating question… It’s supposed to be a conversation starter. It’s meant to be transparent. It’s meant to help our communication going forward. The more we ask our clients, the more they get into it, and the more that they see that it’s helpful… To me, the honesty is really helpful both ways. And if you’re not honest, everyone’s doing each other a disservice.
Gray’s own NPS setup separates the asker from the person the client works with daily, so nobody has to score a friend to their face. He conceded FINALLY’s approach works because the question is a stated part of working with them. The feedback that comes up most, Amber said, is communication, on both sides: FINALLY relies on client input to get technical content right, so when work stalls, the fix is asking how to make that easier for the client.
Detractors aren’t a surprise; promoters become case studies
Gray asked how FINALLY handles a six or below.
If you have a detractor who is not happy, the chances are you already know about it… You will know that things aren’t going well, and hopefully you would have already been starting to do things to make that better… We would always schedule a follow-up call. I would always say, we can take this offline and you and I can have a conversation separate from the delivery teams and really get to the bottom of it.
The team also runs retrospectives on every project and makes a point of covering what didn’t go well. The goal Amber kept coming back to: nothing should ever be a surprise. On the promoter side:
The go-to for us would always be to at least gather a testimonial, which we would pop on our website. We’re hot on social media. LinkedIn is a big platform that we use for our clients and for ourselves, so any testimonials, any client videos that we do, we’ll be then sharing on social… We do written case studies on our website as well, where, for example, if it was a rebrand, we’d show what the client looked like before and what they look like now.
Case studies take longer because the team pulls the before-and-after stats. Testimonials get grabbed in the moment, even typed up from what the client just said and approved later. Video gets shot while FINALLY is already filming for the client, so it doesn’t feel like work.
FINALLY’s site is finally.agency, and the team posts under The Engine Room on LinkedIn.