Playbook, marketing agency
Who has access to what, when the accounts belong to the client
In most trades this is a customer locked out of a supplier's portal. Here it is the reverse: the agency holds a seat on accounts the client owns, and the questions are about who at the agency can see what, how a leaver is removed, and what happens when somebody tidying up a user list takes the agency out of an account mid campaign.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for account access problems holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The accounts belong to the client, so the agency's access is granted rather than owned, and it can be withdrawn at any moment without warning or explanation.
- Access is usually removed by accident rather than by decision, when an administrator on the client side reviews a user list, and the first anybody knows is that a scheduled change cannot be made.
- Freelancers and subcontractors in the delivery chain need access too, which makes who holds a seat a data protection question and not only an operational one.
- Asking for access is the moment a prospect is most suspicious of an agency, so the published request has to name which level is needed and why each one, rather than asking for administrative rights everywhere and hoping.
How it arrives
- how do we remove your team from our accounts
- what level of access do you actually need
- someone at our end removed you by mistake
- who at your agency can see our data
- does your freelancer have access to our accounts
- we are changing agency how do we get you off the accounts
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The access levels you request, with a reason for each | Which seat on which kind of account, at what level, and what it is needed for. A request that asks for the highest level everywhere is the one clients refuse, and the reason attached is what gets it granted. |
|---|---|
| How a client removes the agency, in their own hands | The plain statement that it is theirs to withdraw, and roughly how. Publishing it is a trust move: an agency that explains how to remove itself reads as one that does not rely on being hard to leave. |
| Internal access control, described honestly | Who inside the agency has access, whether anybody outside it does, how a leaver is removed and how quickly. Larger clients ask this, and it belongs next to the data position rather than buried in it. |
| What is lost when access ends | History, saved audiences, reporting configurations, anything built inside an account. Clients changing agency assume it all transfers, and finding out afterwards is the worst version of this conversation. |
The reply
Those accounts are yours, so access to them is yours to grant and to withdraw whenever you want, and our published position explains which levels we ask for and what each one is needed for [1]. If access came off and something is scheduled to run, that needs the account team today rather than a page, because I cannot see any account or request a seat. On who inside the agency can see what, and anybody outside it involved in delivery, our data position covers it [2].
The opening sentence gives the client the answer they were braced to argue for, which is the fastest way to make the rest credible. It flags the live consequence of removed access without pretending to know whether there is one. And it points at the internal position rather than reassuring, because reassurance is exactly what a suspicious question does not want.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks for access to be granted or removed, says something has stopped working, or offers a login.
Access is changed by people with the account open, never in a chat, and no login should be typed here. Leave your name and an email with what needs changing and the account team will pick it up.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never ask for or accept a username, a password, an invite code or a one time code.
- Never confirm that a named person at the agency does or does not have access to an account.
- Never say access has been granted, removed or restored, because nothing here touches an account.
- Never suggest a client grant a higher level of access than the published request describes.
Questions
- Should we publish how a client removes us?
- Yes, and it is one of the few pages that earns goodwill simply by existing. Clients who feel locked in behave like clients who are looking. An agency documenting its own removal is making a claim about the work rather than about the lock.
- Can it grant or revoke anything?
- No. It reads what you publish and writes nowhere, so every access change ends with a person. What it removes is the round of emails asking which level is needed and why.
- Somebody typed a password into the chat. What now?
- Treat it as exposed and have it changed. The assistant should refuse credentials in its wording and the fallback should repeat that, but the real fix is never asking for them anywhere in your material, because people copy the pattern they are shown.
Keep reading
- Everything for a marketing agencyService definitions and engagement terms convert. A price quoted for work nobody has scoped is the trap on an agency site.
- Handling account access problems in generalLocked out, wrong email, a colleague who left, no admin remaining. Identity cannot be checked in a widget, so explain, collect, hand over.
- Something is broken and spend is still going outThis is a handover rather than an answer. A broken site or a missing tag during a live campaign costs money by the minute.
- A client is chasing a deliverable that has not landedThe article, the creative, the report. Usually the answer is that it is sitting with the client, which is the hardest thing to say.
- The insurance question that arrives with a contract behind itCorporate procurement wants a limit and a certificate. What the assistant may confirm, and why it must never state a number.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.