Your best engineers aren't always your best client partners—and your producers aren't always equipped to bridge that gap. Learn how we turned "ticket closed" into "outcome owned" with a structured program that transformed both our technical and production teams into indispensable client partners.

Prerequisite

Assumes basic familiarity with agency operations and client relationship challenges

Target Audience

Agency leaders, project managers/producers, senior engineers, anyone involved in client services or team development

Outline

Client Experience is at the heart of everything we do in the agency world but we often silo the responsibility of just a few, specific team members. How do you make everyone in your agency a Client Experience expert? Enter: Client Experience Academy (CXA) an internal training program that goes beyond technical skills to build the professional competencies that make client relationships thrive.

This session will take you behind the scenes of creating, implementing, and iterating on a structured professional development program. You'll learn how we designed content that bridges the gap between internal team dynamics and external client success, the challenges we faced running it with both producers/project managers and engineers, and the measurable impacts on our client relationships and team culture.

Whether you're leading a small development team or managing client services at scale, you'll walk away with practical frameworks, discussion prompts, and implementation strategies you can adapt for your own organization.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:

1. Identify key behavioral shifts that transform team members from task-focused contributors to strategic client partners, including specific examples like "Signal Early, Not Just Loudly" and "Frame the Problem, Not Just the Fix"

2. Implement discussion-based learning formats using proven prompts and exercises that encourage peer learning and practical application of professional development concepts

3. Navigate common implementation challenges including resistance to "soft skills" training, adapting content for different experience levels, and maintaining program momentum over extended timeframes

4. Create sustainable change in agency culture by understanding how structured learning programs can become integral to hiring, onboarding, and ongoing professional development rather than one-time initiatives

Experience level
Anyone