In this episode, Chip and Gini focus on the issue of employees over-servicing clients. They discuss the reasons behind over-servicing, including fear of client dissatisfaction and insufficient initial project scopes.

The hosts emphasize the importance of educating employees on the long-term negative impacts, both on agency profitability and client relationships. They advocate for involving employees in strategic planning and scoping processes to ensure accurate budgeting and foster accountability.

Chip and Gini also highlight the benefits of regular communication and collaboration with team members to prevent recurring problems and enhance overall agency efficiency.

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, I don’t really have a, a cute opening to this one, so I’m just gonna dive right in, which I don’t, I don’t know, I just, in, in the 10 seconds that I had waiting to, you know, to start, I come up with, come up with anything that, okay.

That was even halfway lame or useful or anything. So it is what it is. We’re gonna talk about over servicing, but not the way we’ve talked about it before. Because we’ve talked about over-servicing in terms of how big a deal it can be to the profitability of your agency. We’ve talked about how to identify over servicing.

We’ve talked about how to, how important it is to show your employees when they’re over servicing. But we’re gonna talk today about how do you solve that with employees who understand that they’re over-servicing, maybe they understand that it’s a problem, but they continue to do it anyway. And it, it’s not out of malice.

They’re not doing it because they want, you know, you to suffer from a profitability standpoint as an agency. They’re doing it because, as I think I’ve shared previously in my earliest role in an agency, I would overservice a client because I knew that they were gonna be unhappy with me if I didn’t do it.

And, and so I didn’t want to be yelled at by the client. Mm-hmm. Other people might over-service because they’re afraid that if they don’t do something today, it’s just gonna cause more work for them in the future. And so in their minds, they’re making a rational decision for their own situation. But it may not be right for the business.

So how do you handle that? I mean, other than just firing the employee who refuses to stop over-servicing? Because that’s, that’s not a great solution in most cases. No. Sometimes I, I imagine it might get there, but, but that’s what we’re gonna talk about. How do we, what strategies do we have for dealing with those employees who are over-servicing despite our best efforts?

Gini Dietrich: I’m sure I’ve shared this story before, but I’m gonna repeat it for those who have not heard it. Um, I had an employee who was doing exactly that and was over-servicing and it was a really tiny client. It wasn’t a huge client. I think she really enjoyed working with the client and wanted to do more work for her, just because she enjoyed the work.

She enjoyed the client. She didn’t want to have to tell the client no. And after, I think she was here probably six or seven years after she resigned, the client said to us, well, this person used to do this, this, this, and this. And we were like it’s not in the scope. She’s like, but she did it. And so we had to kind of back, I backpedal to say like, I understand that she did it.

She was over-servicing. We’re really sorry, but we have to get this in line with the scope. If you want to change the scope or you want to add budget, we can do that. But like we can’t continue to do $20,000 worth of work for 5,000 a month, which is essentially what it was. And the client ended up, ended up leaving because of it.

You know, to this day, I’m reminded that even though you think that your, your employees think that they’re helping a client in the long run, it’s more upsetting to them to find out that you’ve been over-servicing all this time. And they’re not, they, they’re not paying for those things. So I think it’s, it’s a double edged sword a little bit from that perspective of it’s not just that they’re you know, spending $15,000 more a month in time than the client is paying. But also on the client side, it’s really upsetting for them to discover that that’s been going on, especially when you, you have to have the conversation to scale things back.

Chip Griffin: Right. And, and I think that, that if they understand the long-term damage they might be doing to the client relationship, that might help them to better understand it.

So like a lot of things, you know, a good first step is more education and, helping the team members understand the consequences of that action beyond just it’s eating into our profitability. Right. Because I, I mean, I think that that’s the, that’s the most obvious thing that, that employees will Oh, sure.

It’s, it’s eating into our profits, but we’re still doing the right thing. We’re still right. We’re still helping them out. And, and unfortunately it, it takes away the opportunity for the agency to solve things in a different way with the client. That’s right. If the solution is simply to continue over-servicing.

And so, you know, it might be that you have to work with that team member rather than just saying, stop over-servicing. It’s, okay. Why are we over-servicing and how can we go about solving that problem. Because the over-servicing in, in many cases, particularly if it’s the, that you’re afraid the client will be unhappy.

The real problem is not the over-servicing, the real problem is meeting expectations. You know, changing the scope of work. There are a lot of things that you can do to address it apart from just saying, Hey, stop doing that.

Gini Dietrich: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. One of the things that we started doing, I think in, during the pandemic, I think it was during 2020, is we moved from annual planning and annual contracts to quarterly. And what that’s allowed us to do is get on top of the over servicing because we, we all, I mean we certainly, you know, set goals and KPIs and all that for a year, but then we break them down by quarter and we say, okay, with the client.

These are the goals. These are the things that we’re going to do to achieve those goals. These are the kinds of results we expect. And then we get, we get to work. And in the next quarter we’re able to say, these are the things we worked on. These are the extra things that we’re doing because the teams are over servicing.

These are the results. These are the things that we didn’t, that didn’t work as well as we thought they would. So we’d like to tweak. And you have that ongoing conversation with them. So that they are part of the decision to say, oh, I see if we do this and this, we’re gonna have to either scale back on this or we’re gonna have to add budget.

And there it’s an ongoing conversation so it becomes less conflict ridden. So it doesn’t, it doesn’t feel like we’re having to go to the client and say, you know, if you add that we’re gonna have to scale back or, and, and it doesn’t make the team feel like they should just do the work because there’s this ongoing conversation where they’re part of it all of the time, and that has really helped us scale back on over servicing.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and I think, you know, just as you want to avoid that, you know, creating those points of conflict with the client, I think that that owners, managers should be trying to avoid those points of conflict with the employee as well.

And so it’s not simply about saying, Hey, stop over-servicing and instead you want to make them part of the solution. And so, you know, my suggestion is, as I often suggest with these problems. Ask them what they would do about it. Love it. Ask them, how could we scope this better in the future so that we make sure that we’re incorporating all of this work that we actually need to do in order to produce the results that the client is expecting.

What could we change with our pricing? What other changes could we make internally in order to get there? Because if, if you start making them part of the solution as opposed to simply saying, stop doing that, right? You might have a better chance. Not always, but you might have a better chance of getting a successful outcome.

So, try to make it less confrontational with the team member and try to involve them in the problem solving more than you probably are.

Gini Dietrich: And I also think there’s something to be said for, you know, they probably, because they’re over-servicing, are working more hours than they should. They’re not able to get to other clients that they should be working on.

They’re at capacity. So I think that’s an education around that too, to demonstrate, you know, if, if you’re literally spending $15,000 more a month with this client, think about what that might look like if you shifted that time and that budget allocation to this client or this client. Like let’s talk about what that might look like.

So they start to understand from a business perspective what the implications are, the consequences are of them making these decisions.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and I think also helping them to understand that it, you know, over-servicing is not a victimless crime. It is not, it is not merely the, the agency’s bottom line and, and some, you know, mysterious profit margin that’s, that’s being impacted.

It’s the impact on your colleagues. And, you know, you can sit there and say, okay, well, you know, I’m helping improve my own situation because I’m, I’m doing it today so that I don’t get forced to do it tomorrow on a crisis basis or something like that. But think about what that means for your coworkers, because if you’re working with multiple people on a project and they come to expect over servicing from you, they’re gonna expect it from the others on the account.

Or as, as you advance and, and maybe you become a supervisor. And, and you’ve got other people working for you now, now you’ve, you’ve burdened them with having to do this and meet those expectations of over-servicing as well. So, I think it’s really helpful in many cases to help the team members understand that it’s, it’s not just about, you know, what it means for them, it’s the impact that it can have on their coworkers as well, because that may make them more sympathetic to solving the problem because it’s no longer just, you know, that the profit margin isn’t what it should be.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, because the profit margin, I think you’re right, is so vague and I think most people think that the profit margin means that the owner gets all that money and I don’t get anything of it. So what does it matter to me if… Right? They don’t understand that.

Chip Griffin: Right. And, and the employees always think that the, the owner is making a ton of money anyway.

Always. So, I mean, it doesn’t matter what you’re actually making, I can guarantee you they think you’re making more than you are.

Gini Dietrich: They think you’re making millions of dollars for sure. Yeah, so I think it’s, it’s the ongoing education, it’s the coaching, it’s the mentoring, it’s helping them understand, I love the putting them in the shoes of their colleagues because I think that helps give them some empathy that they may not, may not be thinking about.

Helping them understand, you know, all of these things have consequences. And so what does that look like? So it’s constantly coaching, it’s constantly educating, it’s constantly talking about talking them through, and I love the idea of bringing them into the solution. So what would you do?

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and I think at, at the same time, we also need to listen to them and, and accept that we might actually be wrong.

And it, it might be in our minds over-servicing ’cause we were budgeting a certain amount of time, but maybe our time budget was wrong. So yes, maybe they’re over-servicing against the budget, but not against the expectations that we set with the client when they signed on. And so it’s, it’s really important to look at that and say, okay.

Could we actually meet those expectations that we agreed to at the beginning with fewer hours? Or is it just that we thought it could be done in 10 hours a month and it really does actually take 20 to do it? In which case my view is we kind of gotta eat that as the agency.

Gini Dietrich: We gotta eat that. I totally agree with that.

Chip Griffin: If, if we estimated wrong that’s not on the client. Yep. And we can’t tell them that’s over-servicing. It’s that we just estimated wrong. We budgeted wrong. And you know, we learn and hopefully don’t do that again.

Gini Dietrich: And that my friends, is why it’s so important to track your time. Because now you know for the next time that it actually takes 20 hours and so you can budget effectively the next time.

But that’s, that’s a really great reason for tracking time right there, if for no other reason. Yeah, and to be able to budget appropriately.

Chip Griffin: Right, and consistently reviewing that so that you can learn from it, so that you can estimate better. So that you can price better. So that you can scope better. So that you can set expectations better.

And, and I, you know, one of the things that always concerns me is when I see this as an ongoing issue with an agency, right? Because that suggests that, that perhaps lessons are not being learned, or at least they’re not being addressed in the proper way. Correct. Look, I, I accept that, that there will be over-servicing on, on an account.

I just want to make sure that we’re not doing it the exact same way with the exact same kind of client and the exact same kind of project again. We need to address those kinds of things so that we’re, we’re making some kind of meaningful difference until we do get it right. So I think it’s, it is important that we’re taking lessons away from everything we do, but particularly in the area of over-servicing.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and I think that so many of us, and I’ve made this mistake, I’m sure you’ve made this mistake. We go to work with a new client and they say, we have $3,000 a month to spend, but we want to have, we want to do this, this, this, and this. And in order to get the business, we say, okay, when we know it’s probably gonna be double or triple what they ha, what they’ve budgeted.

And instead of saying, we can do this and this out of your priority list for that amount, we just say, okay, and then we’re stuck in this cycle of over-servicing, not being profitable, all, all the things. Right? So that’s, that’s a, it’s not directly, directly with the employees, but I think that’s part of the reason we over-service is because we tend to want to win the business and just say okay to things we shouldn’t say okay to.

Chip Griffin: That, and I think the other thing, and we’ve talked about this many times previously as well, it’s because we don’t involve our team members Yes. In that scoping and pricing process.

Gini Dietrich: Yes, yes.

Chip Griffin: And so what we end up doing is we, we hand off to them a finished product of scope and price and an estimated time that it should take to get it done.

And if they were not part of that process, then first of all, we might have overlooked things. We might have overestimated how productive someone can be. We might have underestimated the amount of time it takes someone who is not as expert as we are, not as experienced as we are to do it. But more importantly, by involving the employee in that process, it makes it harder for them to claim that you didn’t scope it correctly to begin with because they were engaged in it. And hopefully that means they’ve bought into it. And so they can’t really say, well, I, I don’t know why you would’ve told them that we can do this because it takes way more than two hours to do a press release or whatever.

Gini Dietrich: Right, right.

Chip Griffin: Because if they’re helping with it, they should have pointed it out before, and if not then, then they shoulder some of that responsibility, as well.

Gini Dietrich: And it gives them the opportunity to know the client from the beginning versus being told what to do. They’re part of the strategic process.

They’re part of the creative thinking, they’re part of the entire process, and they’re more brought in from the beginning. I mean, I made that mistake a lot when I was starting, when I started my agency, because new business is not billable, right? And it’s un billable work. And so I, I thought I was protecting them by giving them all the billable hours, all the billable time.

But in fact, what I was doing was they weren’t bought into the process. They didn’t like the ideas, they didn’t like the approach, and there was no creativity from them. And so it was just like they did, just did mediocre work.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean we, look, we’ve gotta be collaborative with our employees and that doesn’t mean it’s gotta be, you know, all one of these kumbaya things. We’re all hugging and, you know, this is all great and, you know, and we can have, you know, ignorance just so we can be happy. We, we need to be collaborating in order to get better results.

We need to be collaborating so that our team does feel empowered. Because the more empowered they are, the more likely they are to produce the results that we want and our clients need. And so it needs to be approached from that standpoint as opposed to the old fashioned command and control. And, and if you are, if you are still of that management mindset that you know, was popular in the past… you need to change. You just, you can’t do that. You need to have that much more collaborative arrangement. Understanding that you still are the boss. I’m not taking that away from you. I’m not taking the final decision making authority away from you, but you still need to engage your team more in the problem solving, in the budgeting, in the estimation, in, in all of the different things that you do.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I’m sure I’ve told this story before too, but you know, during the great recession when I had to let everybody go because we lost all my clients. I’ll never forget this as long as I live, one of the employees came up to me later and said, you know, if you had asked us for help, we probably could have helped you find some solutions.

And I’ll never forget that because I didn’t involve them. I didn’t, I didn’t want to scare them. I didn’t want them to, you know, have several months of, like, worrying that they were gonna lose their jobs. I decided myself that it was better to just rip off the bandaid and that was not the right decision.

And I take that comment from her into all of these things where I involve everybody as much as I can. There’s, you know, there’s some things that you, you can’t talk to your employees about. Right? But as much as I can, I’m as transparent as I can be. I give as much information as I can, and I ask for their counsel and their support in making decisions for all these reasons. Because they’re, they’re more bought in. Because they don’t over service. Because they have more loyalty. Like all, all of the reasons.

Chip Griffin: So bottom line is, you know, hope is not lost. If you have team members who continue to over-service even after it’s been pointed out, you just need to make sure that you’re doing more communication, more listening, more education, and hopefully those things will, will add up over time to get you to where you want to be.

It’s not gonna be an overnight solution. You’re not gonna be able to just go in and say, Hey, stop and expect that it’s gonna happen. But you know, if you work at it, you can have success with this.

Gini Dietrich: For sure. Yes, you can.

Chip Griffin: So I think with that we will, we will draw this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast to a close. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.