"Being anchored in kindness and empathy has been the very thing that has driven our success from the earliest days of our company." KUOG's Paul L. Gunn Jr.
Customers are the lifeblood of your company, but trying to keep them happy at all times can drain resources, threaten profit margins, and sap employee morale. And sometimes, managing one client relationship comes at the expense of another. When that happens, you may want to rethink which customers are core to your business, and which you might have to walk away from.
To help navigate the thorny topic of managing customer relationships, we brought together three founders whose companies made the Inc. 5000 in 2024: Paul L. Gunn Jr., founder of KUOG, a logistics company that works with the defense industry; Madeleine Niebauer, founder of vChief, a staffing firm for placing interim executives; and Ryan Sprance, co-founder of Awestruck, a marketing agency focused on the travel industry. We started by asking: Who are your customers, and how do you maintain a high level of service?
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1363631886/1741170363/articles/QMhKijWFg1741260057756/9971717497.jpg]
"If we walk away from a client, it's usually due to a core values fit. If we're not culturally aligned, or if you don't treat your people with respect, we can't be there." vChief's Madeleine Niebauer
GUNN We work with federal clients including the Department of Defense, but our customers are really the end users. Work takes on a personal meaning to me because my brother served in the military. I think of the customer as someone with a brother or a spouse or parents who want them to get home safely. What can we do to help make that happen? It's a call to service to support someone we may never see.
SPRANCE We're an advertising and marketing agency focused on the destination space, so our clients are resorts, water parks, safari parks, and anything that gets people into vacation mode. We've grown to about 180 clients. From the very beginning, our mantra has been about having adequate client engagement. Our clients have told us that it's really important to them. It's one way that we function differently from the majority of advertising agencies out there. The challenge is trying to scale and hire people in different locations across the country who can continue to support the client at that same level.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1363631886/1741170363/articles/QMhKijWFg1741260057756/nqn0sHZEK1741261079179.jpg]
"If you're taking 100 percent of the client's guidance and not offering strategy based on your expertise, you're really just executing, which anyone can do." Awestruck's Ryan Sprance
NIEBAUER As a fractional executive business, we offer virtual chiefs of staff as well as COOs, CFOs, and HR executives. Our goal is to help leaders focus on what's most important to them and the areas where they can have the most impact by taking things off their plate and creating more efficient processes. We do a formal needs assessment when we start with a client, and throughout the relationship our client success manager is checking in to make sure that we're meeting those needs. We have a built-in touchpoint at the two-week mark, another at 90 days, and then on a recurring quarterly basis. We do quantitative surveys, but it's hard because we don't want to be burdensome. So we're really mindful about trying to collect data in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1363631886/1741170363/articles/QMhKijWFg1741260057756/1491771991.jpg]
MADELEINE NIEBAUER FOUNDER AND CO-CEO vCHIEF FOUNDING YEAR: 2016
Madison, Wisconsin-based vChief provides fractional executive staffing to the private sector, but it also has nonprofit and education clients. The company began by offering chiefs of staff and expanded into other positions. "Sometimes, your offerings are an evolution based on your customers' needs," says Niebauer.
SPRANCE That can definitely be challenging. For us, every client has a weekly one-hour call, usually with everyone at our company who works on that account. Sometimes clients push back on that and say they need it only once a month. But we've always said that we'd much rather hear there are problems early on than have you call one day to tell us you're going in a different direction because of issues we didn't know about because we haven't had lines of communication open.
GUNN Continual contact is so important. After we have an order, we keep our customers updated on our target delivery date. Updating them at each milestone allows for customer engagement. If you're telling them only at the shipping point, that doesn't really bode well for your customer relationship.
SPRANCE Something that's hard for us is knowing when to say no. Occasionally, clients will ask us for new kinds of reporting that will require extra work on our end. It's always important for us to find out the real reason they want those things. Is it just something to show their superiors, or can they actually effect change with it? There have been times when we've made investments in technology because several different clients had asked for them, but if it's a one-off request, we go back to, “What are you trying to accomplish? Maybe we can do that in other ways.”
NIEBAUER I love that. We all learn from those mistakes when you're trying to be everything to everyone. Eventually you're like, “No, let's just be good at what we're good at for the people we're aligned with.” Part of being able to make clients happy is having the right clients. You can't be afraid to walk away. If you're not the right fit for a client for one reason or another, it's best to be willing to shepherd them to other resources: "We don't do that, but here are the three partners who do." We're always thinking about how we can make your life easier and solve the problems that you have, even if we're not the ones directly solving it.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1363631886/1741170363/articles/QMhKijWFg1741260057756/4747177911.jpg]
RYAN SPRANCE
CO-FOUNDER AND CO-CEO AWESTRUCK FOUNDING YEAR: 2019
When Sprance and his co-founder launched Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based ad agency Awestruck, the pair handled every customer interaction themselves and would say yes to everything. "You're trying to chase every dollar in those early days, but soon enough you realize that's not what's best for the business in the long run," Sprance says.
SPRANCE We've had that a few times, when we've felt it wasn't the right fit. That decision comes down to the stress level that the client creates within the organization. In one case, we tried to raise a price on a particular client that had added so many things we'd never said no to. Part of it was our fault, but by the time we looked up, we were doing way more than what we were being paid to do. So we tried to level that, a...
Customers are the lifeblood of your company, but trying to keep them happy at all times can drain resources, threaten profit margins, and sap employee morale. And sometimes, managing one client relationship comes at the expense of another. When that happens, you may want to rethink which customers are core to your business, and which you might have to walk away from.
To help navigate the thorny topic of managing customer relationships, we brought together three founders whose companies made the Inc. 5000 in 2024: Paul L. Gunn Jr., founder of KUOG, a logistics company that works with the defense industry; Madeleine Niebauer, founder of vChief, a staffing firm for placing interim executives; and Ryan Sprance, co-founder of Awestruck, a marketing agency focused on the travel industry. We started by asking: Who are your customers, and how do you maintain a high level of service?
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1363631886/1741170363/articles/QMhKijWFg1741260057756/9971717497.jpg]
"If we walk away from a client, it's usually due to a core values fit. If we're not culturally aligned, or if you don't treat your people with respect, we can't be there." vChief's Madeleine Niebauer
GUNN We work with federal clients including the Department of Defense, but our customers are really the end users. Work takes on a personal meaning to me because my brother served in the military. I think of the customer as someone with a brother or a spouse or parents who want them to get home safely. What can we do to help make that happen? It's a call to service to support someone we may never see.
SPRANCE We're an advertising and marketing agency focused on the destination space, so our clients are resorts, water parks, safari parks, and anything that gets people into vacation mode. We've grown to about 180 clients. From the very beginning, our mantra has been about having adequate client engagement. Our clients have told us that it's really important to them. It's one way that we function differently from the majority of advertising agencies out there. The challenge is trying to scale and hire people in different locations across the country who can continue to support the client at that same level.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1363631886/1741170363/articles/QMhKijWFg1741260057756/nqn0sHZEK1741261079179.jpg]
"If you're taking 100 percent of the client's guidance and not offering strategy based on your expertise, you're really just executing, which anyone can do." Awestruck's Ryan Sprance
NIEBAUER As a fractional executive business, we offer virtual chiefs of staff as well as COOs, CFOs, and HR executives. Our goal is to help leaders focus on what's most important to them and the areas where they can have the most impact by taking things off their plate and creating more efficient processes. We do a formal needs assessment when we start with a client, and throughout the relationship our client success manager is checking in to make sure that we're meeting those needs. We have a built-in touchpoint at the two-week mark, another at 90 days, and then on a recurring quarterly basis. We do quantitative surveys, but it's hard because we don't want to be burdensome. So we're really mindful about trying to collect data in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1363631886/1741170363/articles/QMhKijWFg1741260057756/1491771991.jpg]
MADELEINE NIEBAUER FOUNDER AND CO-CEO vCHIEF FOUNDING YEAR: 2016
Madison, Wisconsin-based vChief provides fractional executive staffing to the private sector, but it also has nonprofit and education clients. The company began by offering chiefs of staff and expanded into other positions. "Sometimes, your offerings are an evolution based on your customers' needs," says Niebauer.
SPRANCE That can definitely be challenging. For us, every client has a weekly one-hour call, usually with everyone at our company who works on that account. Sometimes clients push back on that and say they need it only once a month. But we've always said that we'd much rather hear there are problems early on than have you call one day to tell us you're going in a different direction because of issues we didn't know about because we haven't had lines of communication open.
GUNN Continual contact is so important. After we have an order, we keep our customers updated on our target delivery date. Updating them at each milestone allows for customer engagement. If you're telling them only at the shipping point, that doesn't really bode well for your customer relationship.
SPRANCE Something that's hard for us is knowing when to say no. Occasionally, clients will ask us for new kinds of reporting that will require extra work on our end. It's always important for us to find out the real reason they want those things. Is it just something to show their superiors, or can they actually effect change with it? There have been times when we've made investments in technology because several different clients had asked for them, but if it's a one-off request, we go back to, “What are you trying to accomplish? Maybe we can do that in other ways.”
NIEBAUER I love that. We all learn from those mistakes when you're trying to be everything to everyone. Eventually you're like, “No, let's just be good at what we're good at for the people we're aligned with.” Part of being able to make clients happy is having the right clients. You can't be afraid to walk away. If you're not the right fit for a client for one reason or another, it's best to be willing to shepherd them to other resources: "We don't do that, but here are the three partners who do." We're always thinking about how we can make your life easier and solve the problems that you have, even if we're not the ones directly solving it.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1363631886/1741170363/articles/QMhKijWFg1741260057756/4747177911.jpg]
RYAN SPRANCE
CO-FOUNDER AND CO-CEO AWESTRUCK FOUNDING YEAR: 2019
When Sprance and his co-founder launched Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based ad agency Awestruck, the pair handled every customer interaction themselves and would say yes to everything. "You're trying to chase every dollar in those early days, but soon enough you realize that's not what's best for the business in the long run," Sprance says.
SPRANCE We've had that a few times, when we've felt it wasn't the right fit. That decision comes down to the stress level that the client creates within the organization. In one case, we tried to raise a price on a particular client that had added so many things we'd never said no to. Part of it was our fault, but by the time we looked up, we were doing way more than what we were being paid to do. So we tried to level that, a...
You're reading a preview of
Inc. (Digital) - 1 Issue, Spring 2025