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These days, teams of all shapes and sizes — from NASA to charity: water — are using the real-time messaging app Slack as a tool for communication and collaboration.

Over the past few years, it’s become a robust platform thanks to all of the fun and useful integrations folks have built on top of it. Nowadays, there’s a whole lot of really cool stuff you can do in Slack, from polling your teammates, to tracking bugs, to adding GIFs to your conversations.

The Slack App Directory is the best place to find apps and integrations you can connect to Slack. But with so many available, finding the best of the best can seem like a bit of a crapshoot. That’s why we created the list below of 11 of the best apps and integrations on Slack. Check ’em out, and consider implementing the ones that make sense for your team.

Before we get into the apps and integrations themselves, let’s quickly make sure we all know how to add an app or integration to our Slack teams.

(P.S. We’d love for you to join HubSpot’s open Slack team, #inbounding. Request an invite here.) 

How to Add an App or Integration to Slack

You can add an app or integration to Slack either through the Slack App Directory or by clicking on an individual app’s “Add to Slack” button.

To add via the App Directory: Either click here, or open Slack and click your team name at the top left-hand corner, and choose “Apps & integrations.”

To add apps via an “Add to Slack” button: Look for these “Add to Slack” buttons around the web to add your favorite apps in one click. They look like this:

If you’re having trouble adding apps and integrations to your team’s Slack, it may be because you don’t have the proper permissions. Team owners and administrators can limit who can add apps to a Slack team, so talk to one of them if you have questions.

Note: Want to see which apps and integrations your team is currently using? Check out the Slack App Directory and click “Configure” at the top right. You can filter this list by app name, who added it, or the permissions it uses.

15 of the Best Slack Applications, Integrations & Bots You Should Try

1) Simple Poll 

Poll people easily right within Slack.

Simple Poll is a great polling app that’s super easy to use. It’s easy to create a poll, for your team members to respond, and to figure out which answer got the most votes.

Once you add the app, all it takes to poll your team is a simple slash command. Type /poll “Poll question?” “Option1” “Option2” “Option3” and a poll will be created for you and sent out by a bot, without any specific team member’s name linked to it.

For example, a poll written in Slack like this:

/poll “where should we have lunch?” “chipotle” “2nd street cafe” “that new hummus place”

… Will end up looking like this:

By default, it’ll add the “1,” “2,” and “3” icons to the bottom of the post so folks can easily respond by clicking on the number emoji that corresponds with their preference, instead of having to fish for it in the “Reactions” option.

2) GrowthBot

Ask questions about marketing, sales, and growth.

Here’s a Slack app from the desk of HubSpot Founder & CTO Dharmesh Shah. Slack users who work in marketing, sales, and other growth-focused organizations can ask GrowthBot simple questions about different systems, analytics, and trends.

To ask GrowthBot for help, users can either:

• Start a private message by chatting @growthbot.
• Use Slack’s “slash” command to chat with GrowthBot by typing /growthbot. 

Here are some examples of questions GrowthBot can answer:

3) Marker

Send annotated screenshots directly to Slack.

If your desktop is anything like mine used to be, it’s flooded with screenshots that you take — which are tedious to look through and move later. But the process of saving screenshots, annotating them, and sharing them with your team doesn’t have to be so manual.

Enter Marker, an incredibly useful Chrome extension for folks who regularly find themselves sharing screenshots with teammates on Slack. (It also integrates with Trello, GitHub, and other apps.) Once you install the extension and the app, you can capture your whole screen or a selection, annotate it, and send it to a person or channel on Slack.

On top of letting you annotate the screenshot with arrows, text, and emojis, the app automatically attaches the URL of the page where the screenshot was taken and sends it along with the picture.

Here’s a video showing how it works:

Although the main use case the folks at Marker talk about is bug-tracking, you can use it for a lot more than that: reporting small typos, capturing parts of interesting articles, sharing ideas for where to go to lunch, and so on.

4) Intro

Pool your team’s connections into a single network.

If you’re looking for ways to leverage your network and soft connections better, here’s one way to do it using Slack. This app lets you set up a private professional network for your Slack team. Mitali Pattnaik — the app’s co-founder — calls it, “the professional network for the messaging/conversation era.”

When you install the app, it’ll give your Slack a full member directory of your team, and it creates a private network for each Slack team by combining team members’ social connections. The members of your team will get a notification to create and edit their profile. For folks who aren’t Intro members, the app will collect data from various public sources like LinkedIn and Twitter, according to Pattnaik.

Then, you can use your new Slack team network to source potential job candidates, find new prospects, and ask for introductions from you coworkers. So if you want to know whether anyone on your team knows someone in Google’s San Francisco office, or whether anyone on your team went to business school in Europe — then you can at least start your search right in Slack.

Image Credit: Intro

To search for people and companies in your team’s network, you can use the slash command /intro with a person’s Slack username, full name, email address, or you can search for people at a company using /intro (company name).

5) Giphy

Add fun, random GIFs to your conversations.

Ever wanted to share an emotion or a reaction that would be better described with images rather than words? Enter Giphy.

In Giphy’s Slack app, all you have to do is type in the slash command /giphy and any phrase — from “awesome” to “bagels for days” to “WHAT IS HAPPENING.” (Yes, they have GIFs for pretty much everything.) Then, the app will use that phrase to call in a random GIF from their gigantic library of GIFs, and it’ll post it along with the command.

Image Credit: Giphy

Use it to express yourself, to lighten things up, and to set a maturity rating for your team.

What’s fun — and sometimes weird — about the Giphy app is that you never quite know what you’re going to get. You could type in /giphy need pizza ten times and get ten different GIFs. So if you’re looking for accuracy, here’s a pro tip: Use the /giphy command a few times in direct messages to Slackbot, then save and share the GIF you like best.

6) Diggbot

Discover great web content curated by Digg.

If you’re looking for a way to discover new content like news and video right in Slack, Diggbot is the best app for it.

Every day, Digg aggregates 10 million RSS feeds from virtually all publishers, and collects 200 million tweets daily — 40 million of which include links. Their algorithms process all of these links in real time (about 7.5 million per day), and then human editors come in and cherry-pick the best stories and videos.

Diggbot sits on top of all this data and gives you the resulting stories and videos right within Slack. They’ve done it in a way that feels natural and conversational. You can use Diggbot to search for the latest news on any topic or from any publisher, get trending news alerts, and get the twice-daily Digg Edition right to your Slack channel.

Image Credit: Gary Liu

Here are a few of the top slash commands from Digg CEO Gary Liu:

• /digg: Gives you a cool, fresh link. Simple.
• /digg (keyword): Lets you search content by keyword.
• /digg (domain): Lets you see top trending stories for a domain (e.g., “/digg nytimes.com”).
• /digg trending: Gives you a list of stories that are trending on the internet.
• /digg fun: Gives you something fun.

7) Kifi

Save every link you and your team share on Slack, and easily find them later.

If you and your team send a lot of links to one another on Slack and find yourself scrolling back through conversations to find these links later, you’ll want to check out this app. Kifi is one of the best bookmarking/curation tools in Slack’s App Directory. 

Here’s how it works: Every time you or someone on your team shares a link on Slack, that link is automatically saved, or “kept.” Kifi creates a full-text index of every webpage shared, which makes them much easier to find in Slack later. Anyone on your team can search all sent links using the slash command /kifi (search term). (Learn more about setting up Kifi integration with Slack here.)

Even cooler? Using the Kifi browser extension, you can also find these links in Google Search. Search for anything deep within a page, and Kifi will redirect you to where your team was talking about it on Slack.

Image Credit: Eishay Smith

8) Humblebot

Get daily messages with ideas for practicing humility.

Success, happiness, and effective collaboration rest upon things like humility, integrity, patience, modesty, and courage. Humblebot is a really simple Slack app that addresses the first of these character ethics.

Here’s how it works: When you install the app, you’ll receive a little message in Slack every morning with a tip or task for how to be a better person. Examples include “Send someone a thank you note today” and “Ask someone for their opinion today.” 

Image Credit: Humblebot

These little reminders will help you be more humble on a more regular basis. Being humble shows you have a clear perspective and you’re self-aware, which is a sign of emotional intelligence. And despite the app’s simplicity, it can make a big difference in your day — and your coworkers’.

9) Google Drive

Share Google Drive files in Slack, and find them easily later.

A lot of people use Google Drive to store files securely online, access them from anywhere, and collaborate with others. If you’re one of these people, the Google Drive app is a great way to make sharing files among teammates a lot easier.

First and foremost, the app lets you share Drive files right in Slack. All you have to do is paste the shareable link in a Slack conversation, and it’ll import the files in Slack. Here’s the message you’ll get the first time you share a Google Drive file in Slack:

If you haven’t already connected your Google Drive to Slack, then Slack will guide you through the quick process of letting it “read” the file. (It’ll only read and index files you decide to import.)

Once you have everything set up, you’ll be able to share the document right in Slack. The message will look like this:

The best part about this app is that the files you import are easily searchable. Note, though, that they won’t be actually stored in Slack — they’ll continue to be stored in Google Drive. (Read this blog post for more Google Drive tips.)

10) Google+ Hangouts 

Easily start a Google+ Hangout with team members in your Slack channels.

Here’s another great Slack integration for those times when you want to take a conversation face-to-face on a video conference call with a team member who isn’t in your office. To do so, simply type /hangout to launch a Google+ Hangout in a new window:

That command will provide you with a link that you can use to quickly hop on a video call. 

11) Statsbot

Get analytics updates for specific metrics on-demand.

If you use analytics tools like Google Analytics, New Relic, or Mixpanel, then Statsbot is a great app to add to Slack. Quite simply, Statsbot integrates with these tools and monitors your metrics. Then, whenever you want an analytics update, all you have to do is ask Statsbot for the number and you’ll get it instantaneously.

This saves you the time of opening up a new browser window, signing in to your analytics application, and searching for that number manually. Plus, you can ask for an unlimited number of data requests, reports, and alerts and the app stays free.

In the example below, you’ll see the user opened up a conversation (either with his or her team, or with Slackbot) and @-mentioned Statsbot. He typed in: @Statsbot: new users this week. Check out the conversation that follows to uncover some of the bot’s capabilities.

Image Credit: Statsbot

12) Tomatobot 

Set work and break timers to boost productivity.

Ever heard of the Pomodoro Technique? It’s a productivity technique where you work for 25 minutes, followed by a five-minute break. This is more effective than forcing yourself to commit to long periods of uninterrupted work, which can often have an adverse effect on your productivity.

When you add the Tomatobot app to Slack, you’ll be adding a few useful tools that’ll track your work using the Pomodoro Technique. For example, you can chat the Slackbot and tell it when you start working with the simple slash command /startwork, and you’ll receive a message when it’s time to take a break. Use the command /completed to indicate when you’re done with a task.

You can also record any reminders that might distract you so you can forget about them until your next break by typing in /distraction. (Learn more about the slash commands for this app here.)

Note: Without adding the Tomatobot app, you can set up manual reminders using the native /remind command, kind of like you would with Siri on your iPhone. For example, type in /remind me to take a break in 20 min and you’ll get a message from Slack that says:

Twenty minutes later, you’ll get another message that says:

13) Monkey Test It

Test your website for common bugs.

Here’s a great Slack app for smaller organizations. Monkey Test It offers what they call a “hands-off approach to automated testing,” which tests for common issues like broken links, missing images, and JavaScript issues. It sends out “monkeys” to click every element of your page and look for any common errors that pop up.

Normally, you’d go to their website, plug in the URL of your website, and click “Test now” — but if you use Slack anyway, why not trigger a test using the free integration?

With the Monkey Test It app installed, anyone in your organization can test your website for common bugs using the simple slash command /monkeytest (http://ift.tt/1ZIrtTJ). From there, the results will show up right in your chat window, no code required.

Image Credit: Product Hunt

14) Lunch Train 

Plan group lunch outings without spamming your channels.

Use Lunch Train to plan group lunch outings with the help of one simple Slack message. Instead of asking a large channel to lunch, then proceeding to pester them with notifications as people chime in, users can kick off a group outing by typing /lunchtrain. The bot will send one Lunch Train invitation that other users can “board” without the Slack channel itself receiving multiple notifications whenever another user joins the lunch plan:

Lunch Train only sends users notifications when they join a Train and when the Train is leaving the “station” (get ready for funny train puns):

Source: Lunch Train

15) Trello 

Work on your team’s collaborative to-do list without changing tabs.

If your team shares to-do lists using Trello, try this Slack bot to easily share and add Trello cards and approve users. You can authorize Trello for Slack by typing /trello help and one-click logging into your Trello account. Here are some examples of how you can use the Trello bot for Slack:

What are your favorite Slack apps and integrations? Share with us in the comments.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in May 2016 and has been updated for freshness and comprehensiveness.

 

A central pillar for successful inbound marketing is the ability to forge a trusting relationship with your prospects and members. People can be influenced by the content your organization creates, but they love love love hearing from your current constituents more.

User generated content (UGC) is the ultimate form of social proof – that validation from outside sources that your organization is as awesome as you tell people it is. Over half of Americans trust UGC more than what you publish, and 84% of Millennials say they’re influenced by the UGC you share on your own website. 

Your members are your best advocates in encouraging your prospects to make the jump and join your organization. They have a credibility and authenticity that can’t be manufactured.

Even better, think of it as crowdsourced marketing creativity and intel gathering.  People are going to come up with fantastic memes and stories you’d never have thought of. They’re also on the leading edge of what your prospects are talking about and what new platforms they’re using to do it.

Time to get onboard the UGC train.

How to Use Your UGC at Every Stop Along the Inbound Marketing Path

You know your blog is an engine attracting new visitors to your website. Make it easy for those members with a good story to share it in their own words on your blog. You’ll get some more spots filled on your editorial calendar. Your prospects will get to hear a personal perspective on the work and impact of your organization. And you get social proof! 

Use various social media plug-ins throughout your website to encourage site visitors to spontaneously create and share their own UGC. You can embed a Twitter stream showing all your mentions, or a Facebook Comments box so you can distribute that content across both your website and Facebook.

Don’t forget about placing social media sharing buttons in all the right places throughout your website and blog. Complement them with call-to-action (CTA) copy that encourages visitors to share their thoughts about your blog and website content with their own social following.

When you’re nurturing prospects to become members, you might focus an email campaign on a member’s email that you received. She might explain what motivated her to join or how she’s benefited from her membership. Another option is to set up Q&A sessions between prospects and members as a live webinar, Twitter chat, or sub-reddit AMA – whatever platform makes sense for you. Don’t forget to record or compile it so you can repurpose this UGC content in other formats!

Member generated content also influences other members, which you can use in member retention and re-engagement campaigns. When you have in-person events, always get some video that shows attendees. In most cases, your phone camera will work just fine. Video and picture UGS are especially popular, so encourage event participants to shoot and post their own images. You can drop these videos and images into membership conversion emails, blog posts, and social media content.

Ecommerce companies have long proven how UGC can attract and convert visitors. There’s no reason nonprofit organizations should enjoy the same benefits.

“Alright, Sounds Great. How do I get all this UGC?”

That’s what you’re asking now. (This is us projecting some UGC on your behalf.) We’ve already shared a few ideas. A couple quick reminders:

• A huge portion of UGC is created and shared on social media. Take advantage of a platform’s tools to encourage, promote, and distribute what your community posts. 

• Some people will just naturally make UGC. If you want enough UGC to bring on a tipping point of usable content, you have to ask. Just like any other CTA you craft, be specific about what you’re asking for and how they can take the action requested in attention-grabbing language. But don’t forget to make it easy for them to share it with you, and the world, no matter what platform you’re on.

One of your UGC asks can be a formal campaign. Run a contest. Starbucks’ White Cup Contest got almost 4,000 pieces of UGC within three weeks. Read about some successful UGC contests to brainstorm some ideas that tap into your organization’s mission. You then have your pick of the best, most compelling UGC to drop place throughout your website and drop into reports and presentations, as well as share via social media. 

Your UGC is Already Out There

People are already talking about your organization, much of which is encased in the amber of the Internet. It comes up in Google searches and social media searches. Working with UGC isn’t just smart marketing, it’s a necessary part of staying in control of your organization’s online reputation. One study found that 25% of the search results for the largest brands are actually UGC.

So get pro-active about how your UGC is created, used, and found. In today’s selfie-world, people are obsessed with sharing their opinions and pictures. Fortunately, they’re also insanely curious to see what others are sharing. And that’s good news for you!

Digital advertising doesn’t have the best reputation amongst consumers. In fact, earlier in 2016, HubSpot Research dug into how people interact with digital advertising, and it confirmed what many marketers have known for a long time: Consumers are actively avoiding our ads.

Over half of the respondents said they used ad blockers or were planning to install one in the next six months — certainly not something most brands want to hear, but what’s the solution?

For many businesses, the solution is simple: inbound marketing.

But inbound marketing is a long-term play, and building a loyal audience and a constant flow of organic traffic isn’t an easy task. Is it so wrong to supplement your inbound strategy with digital advertising? Can digital advertising ever complement your inbound marketing and provide a positive, valuable experience for your prospective customers?

Absolutely, but it’s all in the execution. First, we need to understand why people are so turned-off by conventional online ads to ensure we can create better ones.

Why Do People Hate Digital Advertising?

The report from HubSpot Research on consumers’ relationship with advertising uncovered some truths behind why people are avoiding online advertising:

Here are the top three reasons …

1) It’s annoying and intrusive.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest reason people are turned-off by digital advertising is because they find ads to be annoying and intrusive.

We’ve all experienced those terrible mobile pop-up ads that cover the main content the second you get there and require multiple attempts to dismiss them. In fact, Google recently announce that it’s making a conscious effort to crack down on websites that employ those types of ads (read more on that here).

2) It disrupts browsing experience.

The second biggest reason is that digital ads are downright disruptive to a user’s browsing experience. Auto-playing videos and flashing banners exist to distract people from the content they’re actively trying to consume. Whilst auto-playing videos might succeed in doing that, it’s for all the wrong reasons. In other words, people are usually only paying attention to these ads because they’re scrambling to turn them off.

As for banner ads, it’s no secret that ‘banner blindness’ is real. We’ve become desensitized to this kind of advertisement because we’ve learned where it appears, and know when to tune it out. These ads are often poorly targeted and badly designed, meaning we’ve developed both a conscious and subconscious ability to simply ignore their existence so we can focus on the content we actually want to consume.

3) It creates security concerns.

The third biggest reason for people disliking digital advertising is the security concerns it brings.

Lots of websites host third party advertisements distributed by ad publishers. In this case, it’s difficult for websites to control the quality of the ads they display or ensure their security. The disconnect in quality and security between the website host and the advertising publisher has caused a lot of tech savvy browsers to use ad blockers.

How to Engage Your Audience Using Digital Advertising

There’s an obvious misalignment between brands utilizing these kind of advertisements and the consumers they’re trying to pull in.

For anybody who’s familiar with inbound marketing, you’ll know that what we’ve discussed so far doesn’t align with the fundamentals of inbound: to market your products and services to people in a more human, more helpful way.

But that doesn’t mean digital advertising can’t be considered inbound-y. We just have to adjust the way we’re thinking about advertising to create a more positive experience for the people on the receiving end. Here’s how marketers can start doing that.

1) Focus on native (or social) advertising.

In the same HubSpot Research report we mentioned above, we learned that in the eyes of consumers, not all ads are created equal.

Whilst no ads generated an entirely positive experience for respondents, some did receive a more neutral reaction:

In the above chart, there’s a commonality between the types of digital ads that received the highest score. They’re the types of digital advertisements that fall into one of two categories:

1. They’re something users have chosen to receive.
2. They’re non-disruptive within their platform.

Email newsletters are an opt-in form of communication, in which people can choose to unsubscribe whenever they want to. They tend to be less pushy in nature, and focus more on sharing great content or offers, so it’s no surprise to see that people don’t react negatively to them.

Sponsored Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter posts, however, do feel more like traditional online advertising in the sense that users don’t opt-in to see them. Yet there are a few things that set them apart from the likes of auto-playing videos and pop-ups, which received a very negative reaction.

• They’re not disruptive: They match the look and feel of the platform they’re on.
• They usually provide useful content: They’re not simply asking you to buy something.
• They can be highly targeted: You tend to see content that’s relevant to you.

For that reason, native advertising on social media platforms can be a much smarter use of your digital advertising spend. It’s not as likely to be subconsciously blocked out by your audience, and it allows you to add value by offering something that’s relevant to them.

Google AdWords is a common advertising channel that can also be considered ‘native’ as it’s non-disruptive in nature and can be highly targeted based on what a user is searching for.

Because of the amount of data these platforms have collected about their users, you can segment your advertising on a really granular level, allowing you to serve up the most relevant content, to the right people, at the right time.

2) Add value with your ads.

Your digital advertising is still a form of content, so why aren’t you using it as an opportunity to add value to your audience, rather than push them into a purchase?

Nobody loves being advertised to, but not all ads have to feel sales-focused or pushy. Use paid channels to promote your content with the goal of turning the traffic generated by your ads into leads, and you’ll be adding far more value to your audience and positioning your brand in a more positive light.

But what does that look like in practice on native advertising platforms? Let’s take a look at how digital advertising can be made more inbound-y using Google AdWords.

When I search for interior designers using Google, I’m served four ads from companies trying to promote their services. But if I’ve never heard of these companies, how do I know which interior design company is right for me?

That’s where content-based pay-per-click (PPC) ads come into the picture. If you’re advertising an ebook titled “How to Find the Best Interior Design Company for Your Project”, it’s likely to stand out against the other ads and search results because it directly helps solve a problem. This means your ad is more likely to get the click and the conversion.

Here’s an example of a content-led ad for the keyword ‘blogging’.

3) Improve your targeting.

One of the biggest advantages of using digital advertising as opposed to offline advertising is the targeting options available to you. Here are some examples of brands using targeting to ensure they’re adding value to their prospective customers with their ads.

On Facebook

This ad from Contently was targeted towards Facebook users that are interested in content marketing according to the data the platform has collected about those users.

Rather than bombarding everyone on Facebook (including those who Contently’s post might be irrelevant to), this ad only appeared to the segment of Facebook users who are most likely to find it useful.

This example of digital advertising fits into the realms of inbound marketing as it’s adding value by offering useful content, driving relevant traffic, and turning those visitors into high quality leads.

On Twitter

Similarly to Facebook, Twitter can also be used as a paid channel to promote useful content to a segment of your audience. Twitter offers four main targeting options with its ads.

1. Followers: Target your ads based on people who follow certain users.
2. Keywords: Target people who are tweeting about certain topics.
3. Tailored audiences: Upload your email database and target people who are at certain lifecycle stages (your blog subscribers who aren’t yet leads, for example).
4. Remarketing: Set up conversion tracking and target users who have previously been active on your website.

After I visited this page which showcases Twitter’s various advertising targeting options, Twitter used their own platform’s advertising capabilities to remarket to me using useful content (see below image).

They knew I’d visited that page and must be interested in Twitter ads, but they didn’t serve me a message pushing me to advertise with them. Instead, they targeted me with some useful content to help me learn more about using video on Twitter to increase engagement, gently moving me through my buyer’s journey by adding value.

Via LinkedIn

When a user saw this advertisement in their LinkedIn feed, it was as a result of visiting Bupa’s website and entering their details to receive a quote for health insurance. Whilst this ad isn’t overly intrusive as it’s ‘native’ to the platform, it’s certainly doesn’t feel as inbound-y as the other examples. However, this is likely because of the intent this user has already shown by requesting a quote.

Whilst inbound digital advertising is generally content-centric, it’s smart to use the targeting capabilities of social media platforms to tailor your ads depending on where someone is in their buyer’s journey.

For example, in the example above, it wouldn’t make sense to target that user with a piece of content about different types of health cover. They already know they need the overseas visitor cover and have requested a quote, meaning they’re probably ready to buy. In this case, it makes much more sense to target them with product-specific messaging that demonstrates the value of Bupa’s overseas cover.

Inbound Marketing + Digital Advertising = More Loveable Ads

We’ve seen some example of how targeted digital advertising can add value to your audience, rather than putting them off your brand. The final example from Bupa however, demonstrates the importance of getting even more granular with your advertising to make sure you’re reaching the right people, in the right place, at the right time with your ads.

It’s totally possible for your digital advertising to coexist with an inbound marketing strategy. In fact, the two can work alongside each other really effectively to ensure you’re providing the best possible experience for your audience, whilst improving your business’ bottom line.

Ready to get started creating more inbound-y digital advertising campaigns? Download The Essential Guide to Social Media Advertising for free and learn how to create ads people actually want to click on.

When it comes to fostering strong client relationships, understanding the client’s experience is key. But some agencies may not be paying enough attention to the right details.

While most agencies are adept at digging into their clients’ customer experiences, very few agencies take the time to fully understand the customer experience of their own consumers: their clients. And this lack of attention could be seriously hurting client relationships.

Agencies who invest the time and effort to better understand their clients’ experience can uncover important insights: How do your clients truly feel about your agency’s services and team? Are they happy with your agency’s culture? What do they think about your reputation?

Armed with this understanding, agency leadership can form action plans to address issues before they have a negative impact. At Hallway Talk, we describe this process as “Let the Truth be Told” — and we see it as the first step to client retention and agency growth.

Here are four strategies you can use to get a complete understanding of what clients’ truly think about working with your agency:

Four Ways To Future-Proof Client Relationships 

1) Schedule regular pulse checks with your team, and leverage their direct knowledge of specific client relationships.

It’s easy for agency management to become distanced from day-to-day happenings and the overall status of any client relationship. After all, on any given day there may be dozens (or more) of back and forth exchanges between your team and the client.

Implement a regular “data download” meeting where your team congregates to share their thoughts on the status of each client relationship they’re involved in. Nobody knows your agency’s clients better than the teams working directly with them everyday, so this meeting is a unique opportunity to identify any potential issues with your overall client experience.

Encourage an open, honest, and non-judgmental atmosphere in these meetings. The goal is for agency management to better understand what’s really happening with the client relationship so that plans can be made to sustain or improve the situation.

2) Designate a client ambassador to keep tabs on relationships.

Assign a senior member of your team to take on the responsibility of monitoring client satisfaction levels. This client ambassador can help build a clear picture of client relationships by engaging clients in one-on-one conversations throughout the year.

This team member can set the benchmarks, measure success, and keep the rest of the team updated on how your agency’s client experience is performing. They can also serve as a sounding board for clients to reach out and resolve nagging issues before they negatively impact your relationship.

3) Conduct a regular qualitative survey to measure client satisfaction.

Have someone on your staff periodically conduct brief interviews with clients to determine their satisfaction level with the agency.

Spend time carefully crafting the interview discussion guide so that it reveals meaningful and actionable insights. Be sure questions are open-ended and thought-provoking so clients open up and express their true feelings.

If your agency doesn’t currently have the bandwidth for a full qualitative survey, don’t just ignore client feedback altogether. Sometimes the only option agency resources will allow is a simple quantitative survey, such as a follow-up email form asking clients to numerically rate various aspects of your services.

Typically these surveys are sent out at the end of a project or a few times a year. If that’s all you can manage, then by all means, do it — but make sure you get the most out of it. Include a write-in area where clients can give open-ended responses and comments in their own words.

4) Bring in a qualified third-party resource to conduct a thorough client review.

If you feel like your clients are holding back or unwilling to fully open up when your agency solicits feedback, it may be time to bring in a third party to help evaluate the health of your relationships.

In our work at Hallway Talk, we’ve found that a confidential third party effectively encourages clients to provide insights about their relationship with an agency. In a third party interview, clients are more compelled to share things they don’t or won’t share with the agency directly.

Investing in a third party evaluation also signals to your clients that you’re determined to optimize your agency’s client experience, and you’re committed to keeping their business long term.

Don’t just solicit feedback — Act on it

Understanding how your clients perceive your agency is necessary to build long-term relationships that last. Once your agency has made the effort to audit your client relationships, it’s important to close the loop with your clients. Acknowledge their specific concerns, and let them know what changes you plan to make (and what changes you don’t plan to make). The feedback process is a big step toward client satisfaction and agency growth.