What do marketing agency clients contact you about?
Agency clients mostly ask for status: of a deliverable, a report, an approval, a retainer balance or an invoice. Agent can answer those from your tools. Anything that changes scope, spend, a contract or the client's view of results belongs with the account lead.
| Conversation type | Can Agent resolve it? | Hand off when | Data Agent needs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deliverable status: “where are we on the landing page?” | Yes: stage, due date and blockers from your project tool | The due date has passed, or a launch in the next 2 business days depends on it | Projects, tasks, due dates, owner role, blockers |
| Approvals and feedback rounds | Yes: logs the sign-off, re-sends the proof link, counts rounds used | New feedback would go past the rounds in the statement of work (SOW), or reverses an approved brief | Proofing tool status, SOW revision allowance |
| Report and dashboard questions | Partly: explains metric definitions, date ranges and attribution windows, and re-sends the latest report | The client asks why results moved or wants the strategy changed | Reporting tool, metric glossary, last report sent |
| Retainer hours and balance | Yes, from time tracking | Less than 10% of the month's hours remain, or the client disputes logged time | Time entries, retainer terms, rollover rules |
| New requests and “quick tweaks” | Partly: captures the brief and checks it against the SOW | Anything out of scope or needing an estimate | SOW, rate card, intake form |
| Invoices, payment status and media spend lines | Yes: re-sends invoices, explains fee and media lines, shares the payment link | Disputes, credit notes, late-fee waivers, spend that doesn't match the platform | Accounting system, Stripe if clients pay by card, platform spend export |
| Access and onboarding: ad accounts, analytics, CMS, brand assets | Yes: sends the access checklist and the steps to invite your team | A request to remove access, transfer ownership or share a password | Onboarding checklist, access log |
| Live campaign changes: pause, budget, bids, targeting | No; logs the request and pages the media buyer | Always, at once | Account and campaign IDs, on-call rota |
| Urgent problems: site down, tracking broken, ads disapproved, a post drawing backlash | Partly: asks triage questions and pages on-call | Always, after collecting the URL, screenshots and when it started | Monitoring alerts, on-call contacts |
| Renewals, notice, cancellation and who owns accounts on exit | No | Always, to the account director | Contract dates, notice period, asset ownership terms |
Example set-up. Your client services director sets every threshold.
What does an AI procedure for a deliverable status request look like?
“Where are we on…?” is the question account managers answer most. Write the procedure as you would brief a new account executive; Agent turns each line into steps that call your tools through permissions you can revoke.
Example procedure: “Where are we on…?”
- Identify the client from the sender's email domain or portal login, and confirm the person is a named contact on that account. On white-label accounts, identify both the partner agency and its end client.
- Search for the deliverable within that client's projects only. If more than one task matches, list up to three by name and ask which one.
- Reply with the stage, the due date in the project plan and the role that owns it. Never estimate a date the plan doesn't show.
- If the task is waiting on the client (feedback, copy, assets or access), say exactly what is missing and send the upload or proof link.
- If the due date has passed, or the client mentions a launch, send or press date within 2 business days, hand to the account manager now and say when they will reply, using that client's response-time commitment.
- If the message adds work (“can you also…”), log it as a new request against the SOW, say the account manager will confirm scope and timing, and tag the conversation by client and service line.
Guardrails: Agent reads project, proofing and time data and changes nothing there except adding a comment. It commits to no date, price or extra revision round. Messages containing “notice”, “terminate”, “refund”, “breach” or “lawyer” go to a person, as does a second negative message in one conversation and any complaint from a key-account contact. The tags feed Insights, so you can see which clients chase most and which service line slips.
Example conversation (illustrative, not a real client)
Client, portal chat, Tuesday 9:12 am: Morning. Any news on the spring landing page? Our email goes out Thursday and links to it.
Agent: Let me check. The spring landing page passed design approval on Friday and is now in build, due Wednesday at 5 pm. One item is waiting on your side: the final hero image, which you can upload here. Because Thursday's email depends on this page, I've passed it to Dana, your account manager, who will confirm timing in this chat by 11 am.
Client: Great. Could we get a German version too?
Agent: I've logged a German version as a new request. It isn't in your current statement of work, so Dana will confirm cost and timing before anyone starts on it.
What must an AI agent for a marketing agency never do?
An AI agent working for an agency must never change a live campaign, agree to scope or tell one client anything about another. It gives no legal or financial advice: questions about ad claims, disclosure rules, privacy duties or tax on invoices go to people, with the thread and the records Agent looked up attached.
Agent never
- Edits campaigns, budgets, bids, audiences or ad account permissions.
- Promises deadlines, extra rounds, discounts or credits, or agrees that a request is in scope.
- Reads or mentions another client's projects, results or rates. Every lookup is filtered by the client identified at the start.
- Asks for or accepts passwords. Clients grant access through each platform's own user or partner invitations.
- Names your agency on white-label accounts, because your agency's name is on the banned phrases list for those conversations.
- Judges whether an ad, claim or influencer post is lawful. The FTC's Endorsement Guides FAQ says that if enforcement becomes necessary, its focus will usually be on advertisers or their ad agencies and PR firms, so those questions go to your legal adviser.
Agent always hands off
Notice, renewal and fee conversations; complaints about results, deadlines or quality; live incidents such as a campaign that must stop or a crisis on a client's social account; and privacy requests or unsubscribe complaints from a client's own customers.
Rules that shape your procedures
If you send email on clients' behalf, the FTC's CAN-SPAM compliance guide says the company promoted and the company that sends the message may both be held responsible, and opt-outs must be honored within 10 business days. Route forwarded unsubscribe complaints to whoever runs that client's email platform the same day.
Agencies handling a client's customer data often act as its processor. The UK regulator's guidance on controller and processor contracts says a processor may act only on the controller's documented instructions and needs authorization before bringing in a sub-processor, so check your client contracts before putting any AI tool on conversations that contain that data. Aftersales doesn't make an agency compliant; your contracts and legal adviser set the rules Agent follows.
Give Agent only the fields each procedure needs. Aftersales security covers the GDPR DPA and US hosting; Scale adds SSO.
Which channels do agency clients use?
Email for the paper trail, shared Slack channels for daily back and forth, the phone when something is on fire.
- Email. SOWs, sign-offs, invoices and report distribution. Approvals need a record finance or procurement can find months later.
- Slack Connect. Many agencies run a shared channel per client. Inbox pulls those messages into the email queue, so a request posted at 6 pm doesn't depend on one account manager spotting it.
- Client portal or web chat. Clients already check projects and reports there, so status answers fit naturally.
- Phone. Live incidents and senior stakeholders. Growth and above includes warm and cold transfers, recording consent and per-brand numbers, so a white-label partner can have its own line.
- WhatsApp and SMS. Local agencies serving restaurant owners, trades and clinics often hear from clients who rarely sit at a desk.
Agent works in 31 languages, useful when a multinational client's regional teams write in their own. Every channel lands in one shared inbox with a single history per client.
Which agency systems should an AI agent connect to?
Agent needs read access to wherever work, time, results and money are recorded. Of those systems, only Stripe and Salesforce have ready-made Aftersales connectors; project management, proofing, time tracking, reporting and accounting tools connect through the Aftersales API or webhooks, so confirm specific connectors on a call.
| System | What Agent reads | What Agent may do |
|---|---|---|
| Project management tool | Projects, tasks, stages, due dates, blockers | Add a comment; open a request card on your intake board |
| Proofing or approval tool | Proof links, versions, rounds used, approval status | Re-send a proof link; record a sign-off the client gives in the conversation |
| Time tracking or agency management software | Retainer hours used and left, rollover rules | Read only |
| Reporting dashboards | Latest report, metric definitions, reporting schedule | Re-send the report |
| Ad platforms, via your reporting tool or a Google Ads manager account | Spend to date, account IDs, campaign status | Read only; changes stay with the media team |
| Accounting system, plus Stripe if clients pay by card | Invoices, due dates, payment status | Re-send invoices and payment links; if you allow it, refund an exact duplicate card charge under a spend limit you set (for example $500) |
| Salesforce, if it holds your client accounts | Tier, retainer value, renewal date, account owner | Read only |
| Slack and Jira | Not needed | Post handoffs to the internal account channel; a workflow opens a Jira issue when a client reports a bug on a site you maintain |
Agencies already on Zendesk, Freshdesk or Salesforce Service Cloud can run Agent inside those tools with no seats and no migration, at $0.99 per resolution with a minimum monthly commitment.
How much does AI customer service cost for a marketing agency?
Budget for full seats for the people who reply to clients, plus $0.99 for each conversation Agent resolves. Growth fits most retainer agencies because it adds unlimited team inboxes, workflows and phone.
Example assumptions: a 40-person agency with 30 retainer clients; 8 account managers on Growth seats; 12 strategists, designers and finance staff on free Lite seats; 1,200 client conversations in a typical month and 1,700 in a fourth-quarter month, when holiday campaigns and next year's planning overlap; Agent resolving 40% (below the 71% median Aftersales sees after 90 days, because scope, results and contract talks stay with people); Copilot for each account manager; annual billing at list prices.
| Line item | Typical month (1,200 conversations) | Q4 month (1,700 conversations) |
|---|---|---|
| Growth seats | 8 × $69 = $552 | $552 |
| Agent resolutions at 40% | 480 × $0.99 = $475.20 | 680 × $0.99 = $673.20 |
| Copilot add-on | 8 × $29 = $232 | $232 |
| 12 Lite seats and conversations handed to people | $0 | $0 |
| Total | $1,259.20 | $1,457.20 |
That is about $1.05 per conversation in a typical month and $0.86 in Q4, since seats stay flat while Agent absorbs the extra volume. Supporting clients under partner brands needs Scale for the multi-brand messenger and help center, which puts the same 8 seats at $872 a month. A freelancer can start on the Free plan (one seat, first 50 resolutions free). See Aftersales pricing.
How do you roll out an AI agent at a marketing agency in 30 days?
Start with a few friendly clients and low-stakes questions in office hours, then widen once handoffs reliably reach the right account manager.
- Days 1 to 7: connect and map. Connect the project tool, time tracking and billing, and import clients with tier, retainer, account manager and any white-label partner as company data. Write procedures for deliverable status, report re-sends and invoice copies, and agree escalation keywords.
- Days 8 to 14: pilot clients. Turn Agent on in portal chat and email for three to five clients who know it's there and how to reach a person. Account managers read every handoff and fix procedures the same day.
- Days 15 to 21: approvals and hours. Add sign-off logging, round counting and retainer balances, then bring client Slack Connect channels into the queue.
- Days 22 to 30: wider cover. Extend to all clients and to after-hours questions from other time zones, with live incidents paging on-call. Review resolution rate, CSAT and every scope handoff.
Track progress with the resolution rate guide. Related setups: B2B companies, where support is also account-based, and staffing agencies, which also serve clients on retained terms. Or browse every AI customer service guide by industry.