PHILOSOPHY OF
CLIENT SERVICE
Hello, I’m Matt Ireland.
I've spent 20 years leading and growing multi-million-pound accounts in creative healthcare agencies and developing the systems, skills and behaviours that underpinned their success.
As a psychotherapist and coach, I'm fascinated by the ways better relational understanding can contribute to business and personal achievement, and founded Rethink Client Service as a consultancy dedicated to enabling agency teams, leaders and clients to get the most out of their business relationships.
I enjoy speaking to potential clients, finding out more about their challenges and brainstorming possible solutions, and I always welcome the chance to talk without obligation.
TM
"We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness"
Daniel Kahneman
As a Head of Client Service and Client Leader in the WPP network, I focused on helping multi-disciplinary teams working across creative, PR/comms, experience and medical affairs to build effective, profitable relationships with their clients, and supporting clients in getting the most out of their agency teams. Much of this work was in pharmaceuticals and consumer health, where rigour, compliance and attention to detail are non-negotiable.
The trend for fewer in-person interactions made it harder for teams to learn Client Service capabilities by osmosis – people don't know what they don't know. Client Service often became synonymous with saying 'yes' to clients, or technical abilities that are easy for agencies to teach but also easy for clients to substitute, particularly with AI.
When crafting a Philosophy of Client Service that could be taught to others, I knew that going beyond project management and interpersonal skills – to consider how value is identified, created, and delivered in business partnerships – would be the key to truly elevating individual and team performance.
Seeing the transformational impact applying this philosophy had on account growth, retention and client satisfaction, and wanting to take this to another level, I trained as an existential psychotherapist and coach. This has enabled me to work in depth with what we believe, how we think and how we behave, as well as what we know.
Combining these skills with my academic background in neuroscience and agency experience in medical education has shaped my evidence-based approach to capability-building – ensuring the programmes I create are grounded in how people learn, change and grow to enable both quick wins and long-term success.
"The best way to predict the future is to create it"
Peter Drucker
"Collaboration is multiplication"
John C. Maxwell
While improving agency client service skills always delivered strong results, I also saw how client teams could, often unknowingly, influence the performance of their agencies. Clients often received little training or support on working with agencies, unless a crisis emerged. Even when agency teams were working effectively, there often remained a big potential gain from enhanced client working practices that went unrealized.
Recognizing this untapped potential is why I choose to work with clients, as well as with agencies: equipping them with the tools and mindset needed to drive the best possible outcome for their brands and themselves when working with their agency partners.
Supporting both clients and agencies gives me a unique perspective and ability to translate what is needed by both sides to achieve the best outcomes.
'Rethink Client Service' is an invitation to consider the choices we have in how we work with each other – either as agency teams or clients – and how these positively or negatively impact everyone’s success.
The AI revolution is changing everything we do, including client expectations for delivery and the possibilities for agency-client partnerships. Human-to-human relationships and experiences are becoming more crucial as business skills and competitive differentiators. I take satisfaction in finding ways to make the most of these possibilities with ambitious agency and client leaders who already have great products and are looking for unique ways to stand out and navigate the new reality.
Separate from my support for business, I lead a private psychotherapy and coaching practice – Rethink Your Self – and also provide employee psychotherapy services to corporate clients.
