Losing a client rarely ends the story. When a long-term account moved its website to another agency, performance collapsed: load times stretched to nine seconds, bounce rates soared past and sales suffered. Because the client remained on the scorecard within AOD, the original agency spotted the decline, stepped in with evidence, and rebuilt the relationship with a $40,000 engagement.
What we wanted to solve?
Pitching for new work is high-cost and high-risk. Agencies often lose out even when they have a trusted client relationship. The challenge was to show how a lost pitch can still generate revenue and strengthen a long-term client relationship.
What we used?
The agency had supported a major high street name for three years. When the client went to market for a new website, they selected another agency and who were contracted for the upgrading of Sitecore. Even though the account was lost, the original agency kept the client visible on the scorecard within the Agency Opportunity Dashboard. The scorecard alerts with a single grade per category. Experience fell to E for two consecutive months, which triggered review.
"AiSC puts powerful insight in the hands of the commercial team. A red light on the dashboard is all it takes to turn a conversation into revenue."
What we found?
Measured results from site analytics and page waterfall confirmed a severe performance problem on the main landing journey.
Measured results:
- Jan to Mar: page (max) load time 6.22 to 9.43 seconds. Bounce rate 48% to 61%.
- Apr: bounce rate reduced to 24%.
- May: bounce rate further reduced to 11%, still too high but a considerable improvement, with ongoing work targeting a goal of 5%.
Contributing factors included code and third-party conflicts, including issues with a cookie self-generation and management tool. The new agency proposed a re-platform quoted at $120,000 to $127,000. By then, the relationship had broken down.
What we did next?
Using the scorecard alert as the prompt and the measured results as evidence, the original agency set out a fix plan. They had already invested 6 days diagnosing the issue. They scheduled 13 days of actual work, elapsed over a month. They reviewed the page waterfall ahead of their performance upgrade pitch and offered a clear guarantee of a 50% service performance improvement within 90 days. The engagement was priced at a fixed $40,000.
The outcome
The problem was resolved within the month. Load times were reduced and bounce rates fell to 24% in April and then 11% in May, with further optimisation still underway. The agency delivered a $40,000 project that rebuilt trust and reopened the relationship.
Overall the value, is an estimated lifetime value of $765,000.
The lesson
Keeping a lost client on the scorecard within AOD provides independent alerting on fundamentals. When Experience turned red, the agency used measured results to quantify impact, propose a fixed remedy, and win the client back. What looked like a loss became a route to revenue and a stronger long-term contract.
