How to Rebuild Agency-Client Trust After Setbacks

For Pilot, a New Zealand-based agency specializing in premium fashion and lifestyle ecommerce, every client relationship is built on trust. 

However, when Tom Gibson and his partner, Ashley Procter, faced unexpected client losses two years ago, they used it as a turning point to rethink, rebuild, and recommit to their clients.

That critical moment pushed Tom and Ashley to examine their client relationships and internal processes with fresh eyes and, ultimately, to rebuild Pilot’s foundation on a stronger, more client-centered approach.

Through strategic changes in communication, team structure, and operational systems, Pilot didn’t just recover; the agency emerged stronger, with a renewed focus on client satisfaction and transparency. 

Today, their story is one of resilience and intentional growth, driven by a commitment to learning, adapting, and putting client trust at the heart of every decision.

Turning the Business Around When the Worst Happens

Tom’s career journey began in Wellington, New Zealand, where he grew up loving sports and the outdoors. He first enrolled in physical education at Otago University but later shifted to a commerce degree focusing on marketing, complemented by a minor in accounting and finance. After graduating, he joined his family’s IT consulting business as a marketing manager.

During this time, Tom discovered Facebook Ads—a relatively new tool at the time—and was captivated by its potential. As he learned more, he started taking on side clients and gradually built his own agency, Digital EQ, which later evolved and re-branded into Pilot. These early experiences—working with local ecommerce brands and, much to his delight, a rugby team—helped define Pilot’s focus on premium fashion and lifestyle brands.

Ashley, Tom’s life and business partner, joined him in the agency venture early on. Today, Tom and Ashley run Pilot together, managing the agency while balancing their lives as new parents.

Ready for takeoff: Pilot co-founders Tom Gibson and Ashley Procter. (Credit: Pilot)

However, their professional and personal journey could have turned out much differently.

In 2022, in the short span of a two-month period, Pilot lost a few clients back to back. Such a sudden shift caused Tom and Ashley to sit up and take notice. 

This posed a real challenge for us. When you lose 15-20% of your business, all of the profit is gone, meaning we couldn’t continue to invest in our people and Pilot's growth. 

Tom Gibson, Co-Founder/Director, Pilot

It was clear that something had gone wrong, and if they didn’t put the work in to adjust the course of their journey, the agency would have to wind up. 

Rather than accept defeat, Tom and Ashley assessed the viability of their business as a whole, including their client relationships and internal processes.

The pair took an active approach to understand what had gone wrong. They contacted former clients, seeking honest feedback on why they had chosen to leave and what had influenced their decision to work with other agencies or take their digital strategy and advertising in-house.

These conversations revealed critical insights about client needs and expectations. Former clients expressed that they often felt out of sync with Pilot’s strategies and, at times, unclear about the agency’s direction for their accounts. 

The feedback pointed to a lack of clear communication. Clients revealed they felt disconnected from Pilot’s approach and uncertain about the strategic goals.

We found that we weren’t as good at communicating and aligning with clients strategically, something that we had always prided ourselves on prior to growing quickly in a short period. That two-way communication wasn’t there anymore, and we had to change something. 

Tom Gibson, Co-Founder/Director, Pilot

Armed with a deeper understanding of their gaps, Tom and Ashley committed to ensuring communication with clients became the top priority again. They soon began planning strategic changes to improve transparency, prioritize collaboration, and bring clients into the planning process.

That was definitely a make-or-break moment. When you're both in it, your partner and yourself, it makes for a stressful household. However, we knew we had a business and team that clients loved working with, so we just needed to make some changes quickly to get the business on the right track. 

Tom Gibson, Co-Founder/Director, Pilot

Optimizing Client Communications With AgencyAnalytics

One of the first steps Tom and Ashley took was to open more frequent lines of communication with clients, aiming to make every interaction a chance to align on strategy and expectations. Sharing internal working documents became a more frequent activity, ensuring clients could not only see what we were doing but also feel a part of the process.  

They decided to share more about their methods and decisions. This way, they ensured clients felt involved at every stage. It wasn’t just about updating clients more often—it was about fostering a sense of partnership and making sure every client understood the "why" behind Pilot’s strategic choices.

Pilot’s commitment to transparency went beyond emails and check-ins. Tom and Ashley aimed to overcommunicate, sharing strategic insights (even if they seemed small) in order to avoid any assumptions or misalignment. 

I think that’s probably what sets us apart now—having two founders who are hands-on with each client, which leads to our whole team going above and beyond with client communication. We’re particularly focused on tailoring our communications to each client and their needs. 

Whether that’s short sentences and informal communications via text, WhatsApp, etc., or longer-form explanations of what we are doing, clients are far more appreciative. This also means that meetings aren’t as frequent or as long because you have been in consistent communication. 

Tom Gibson, Co-Founder/Director, Pilot

Improving communications doesn’t just happen on a whim. Tom and Ashley knew they needed to overhaul Pilot’s internal systems to create a more seamless client experience.

Pilot’s reporting process was especially time-consuming. It relied on a mix of platforms and manual entry, making it difficult for clients to access and understand their performance metrics.

We were combining spreadsheets, Google Docs, CSV files, etc., and then presenting this info in InDesign files. Because our clients are so visual, it was really important to ensure that the reports' look and design were strong, alongside providing written context/insights that were actionable and insightful.

We used Google Data Studio to start pulling in data as well. But we found it clunky, overwhelming amounts of data, which required a lot of manual customization each month. We ended up having so much data and reporting in all these different places that clients had to go to. That wasn't really working.

Tom Gibson, Co-Founder/Director, Pilot

Ashley led the charge on systemizing Pilot’s workflows. With her background as a lawyer and her talent for operational efficiency, she introduced key platforms—AgencyAnalytics for reporting and monday.com for project management—that allowed Pilot to streamline processes, centralize client data, and provide consistent, visually accessible reports.

AgencyAnalytics became Pilot’s new reporting hub. This change allowed Pilot to efficiently provide clients with an all-in-one view of their metrics, eliminating the frustration of scattered data sources.

Clients could access dashboards in a central location at all times to view their data and see how their campaigns performed.

Meanwhile, monday.com became Pilot’s main project management tool. The software brought much-needed structure to the team’s workflows, enabling them to coordinate tasks, manage client deliverables, and minimize redundancies. 

We were desperate to make internal changes not only to make our team more efficient but also to fundamentally change our client relationships. It was a really busy period, but it’s made our agency better for it. 

Tom Gibson, Co-Founder/Director, Pilot

With Ashley’s strategic systemization, Pilot transformed a once-disconnected operational setup into a streamlined, client-centered experience. The change allowed Pilot’s team to refocus their energy on high-level strategy and growth rather than getting bogged down in administrative tasks.

Soon, clients began to feel more connected to Pilot’s work, appreciating the clarity and detail they were receiving in their reports. Over time, Pilot’s efforts to prioritize transparency strengthened their client relationships and helped prevent future misunderstandings.

With the right tools—Pilot turned a period of loss into a strategic advantage. Tom and Ashley’s dedication to transparency laid the groundwork for Pilot’s reputation as a client-centric agency, where clients feel informed, valued, and aligned with their strategic goals.

Restructuring the Agency With a Specialized Team Approach

To further strengthen their client relationships and improve service quality, Tom and Ashley decided to restructure Pilot’s team. They did this without having to reduce the agency’s workforce, which is often a result of financial stress. Rather, they opted to upskill their team members to streamline agency operations and better meet client needs.

Instead of relying on generalists who managed multiple campaign platforms, they rebuilt as a team of specialists dedicated to specific areas: branding and strategy (including Shopify to Klaviyo ecommerce platform migration), Meta/Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and email marketing. 

Each team member became an expert in their own platform, allowing Pilot to offer a higher level of precision and knowledge in every service area.

We have tried the broader skillset team member approach, where each team member manages three platforms and has a few clients each. We just found that we weren't good enough at each platform to make our clients as successful as possible. We also tried the typical agency model of an Account Manager and then platform experts, but this also resulted in clients feeling disconnected from the work. 

Tom Gibson, Co-Founder/Director, Pilot

With the restructuring, Tom and Ashley also took on a more hands-on role in client management, personally overseeing strategy and project coordination. This provided clients with consistency, avoided the common industry pitfall of rotating account managers, and created a reliable point of contact for all accounts.

Pilot’s dedicated approach to client management was also informed by feedback from clients who had left in the past. By managing client interactions themselves, Tom and Ashley ensured that every client felt connected to Pilot’s process and consistently informed about their account’s progress.

It ensures that our clients have an ongoing relationship with someone. Ashley and I are not going to leave the business. And that's often a bugbear: clients getting passed around to all these different account managers.

Tom Gibson, Co-Founder/Director, Pilot

This new personalized, specialized structure was not without challenges—it required additional effort from Tom and Ashley and a more measured approach to the agency's growth. 

But with a more deliberate strategy came the true payoff: stronger client relationships, higher retention rates, and a superior reputation. 

Creating a Future Vision for Considered Growth

Tom and Ashley want to remain intentional about how they tackle their agency’s future. 

Rather than pursuing rapid expansion or taking on any client that comes their way, they embrace what Tom describes as “considered growth.” 

For Pilot, this means selectively taking on clients who align with their niche expertise in premium fashion and lifestyle brands and resonate with the agency’s values of transparency and collaboration.

The future of Pilot’s growth strategy reflects this same deliberate approach. 

Tom and Ashley plan to expand carefully into new markets that align with their agency expertise and client needs.

Pilot currently serves clients in New Zealand and Australia “about 50-50,” but it’s setting its sights on the U.S. and Canada—regions with significant potential for clients looking to scale internationally.

Beyond geographical expansion, Pilot is also exploring a larger role in strategic consulting. Tom and Ashley envision their agency becoming a true partner in their clients’ executive teams, advising on big-picture decisions and helping brands achieve their long-term goals. 

This shift means positioning Pilot as a strategic advisor that offers insights into areas like media mix modeling, revenue growth, and brand development.

That’s 100% a success measure for us. Being a part of our clients’ C-suite or at least being a part of some of those board meetings and presenting some of the work that we are doing.

Tom Gibson, Co-Founder/Director, Pilot

Tom is particularly interested in using media mix modeling to better illustrate the long-term impacts of marketing strategies—a service that could provide clients with a more comprehensive understanding of their return on investment (ROI).

We’re focused on identifying the channels that are actually pushing growth and helping clients with top-line revenue and profit, rather than many other agencies that hide behind in-platform results. 

For example, businesses saying, “OK, this platform's getting 20 times ROI.” That's great, but it's actually not really affecting [a client’s] top-line revenue growth or profitability because they’re just targeting people that were probably going to purchase anyway.

Tom Gibson, Co-Founder/Director, Pilot

In taking this deliberate path, Pilot’s future growth will continue to be grounded in strategy and integrity. By focusing on clients and markets that align with their expertise, Tom and Ashley are building an agency that scales sustainably while staying true to the values that have driven its success.

Building Success One Partnership at a Time

Pilot’s journey is about resilience, integrity, and intentional growth. Facing challenges head-on, Tom and Ashley have built an agency where every client relationship is grounded in trust, collaboration, and clear communication. Their commitment to transparency and their emphasis on specialized, client-centered service have created a foundation for lasting success.

Ash and I are really passionate about the overall goals and ambitions of our clients. While we leverage our expertise in digital and ecommerce, ultimately, it’s about ensuring strong commercial success that allows their brand vision to thrive.

Tom Gibson, Co-Founder/Director, Pilot

Looking ahead, Tom and Ashley remain focused on expanding Pilot thoughtfully and with purpose. As they explore new markets and deepen their role as strategic advisors, they’re helping clients not just meet targets but truly grow with intention. For them, sustainable growth means building a legacy of partnership and success, one client relationship at a time.