Daria Higgins, Founder & Creative Director of True North Agency
A few weeks ago on a business trip, I found myself in a 5* hotel room with wet hair, staring at a standard-issue hairdryer I couldn’t use. The plug didn’t fit the socket. A small thing, but not when you have a full day of client meetings ahead.
I called reception. They said they would “make a plan”. Nothing happened. I called again. Eventually, with damp hair I went downstairs, hairdryer in hand, explaining the situation to multiple people. It escalated. Managers got involved. At one point, I was told I would need to pay for an adapter, to solve the issue which was the hotels to begin with. Eventually, the hairdryer worked its way back up to my room by the end of the day.
Two weeks later, I was in Cape Town, staying in an Airbnb. Same problem. Same two-pin plug that did not fit. This time, I called the owner. Within 30 minutes, someone arrived with an adapter. Problem solved.
In both cases, I got what I needed. A working hairdryer. But the experience was completely different. I have started calling this the two-pin plug problem.
It is not about whether the solution is delivered. It is about how hard it is to get there. And I see this playing out more and more in our industry, and in the wider service industry.
As businesses grow (and how amazing that they do), inevitable processes follow. Layers are added. Decisions move further away from the client. What starts as a service-driven, client focused model slowly becomes a system that needs to be managed.
By the time something is resolved, the client has already felt the friction. The intention is still there. The outcome is still delivered. But the experience has shifted.
In larger and independent agencies, significant time is spent managing internal structures, such as reporting, approvals, and handovers. The work becomes distributed across teams, and the person who sold the idea is often not the one sitting in the room when it needs to come to life.
The focus moves, almost unintentionally, from client management to account management. And there is a difference.
Client management is about understanding what someone truly needs, often before they have fully articulated it. It is about context, relationships, and staying close enough to respond in real time. It requires taking the time to pick up the phone and speak to people to uncover the real ask and underlying challenges. It also means being embedded in the business, adapting as things shift, and recognising where real value lies.
Account management is about process. It ensures delivery. But it does not always ensure a connection.
What I am seeing now is that clients are becoming increasingly aware of this gap, and with that awareness comes a growing sense of frustration. They are not only evaluating the quality of the work. They are paying attention to how it feels to get there, how many steps it takes, how many conversations they need to have, and how much explaining is required along the way. And often, the real value does not come from a formal meeting or a defined project. It comes from an unexpected call that had nothing to do with the account, or a drink at the end of a conference. It is in those informal moments, where people are simply talking and building a genuine connection, that the relationship and the work truly deepen.
Both hotels and Airbnbs can solve the same problem. But only one makes you feel like it was easy. And that is where loyalty is built or lost.
The irony is that the bigger the organisation becomes, the harder it can be to hold onto the very thing that made it successful in the first place – Responsiveness. Proximity. Care.
The fundamentals do not change. But the path to delivering them does. And if that path becomes too complex, clients will start looking for a simpler one.
Sometimes, all it takes is a small moment at 8:30 in the morning with wet hair to reveal a much bigger truth.
