An agency does good project work. Websites, campaigns and builds, each sold individually, each ending.
Every January the revenue starts at zero. The pipeline is rebuilt each quarter, capacity is either idle or overwhelmed, and the senior people spend a large share of their time selling rather than doing the work they are good at.
They have tried retainers twice. Both were sold as blocks of hours, both were disputed within months, and both were cancelled during a budget review.
Who currently carries the revenue risk
The agency, entirely, month to month, with no base and a pipeline that must be refilled continuously.
What a retainer should actually be
A defined monthly output rather than a pool of hours, since hours invite scrutiny and an output invites renewal.
Why hours based retainers fail
The client counts them, the agency under records them, and the conversation becomes about whether the time was used rather than what it produced.
Why maintenance services work
The work genuinely recurs, the client cannot easily do it, and there is something to show every month, which is what survives a budget review.
What to sell alongside a project
The thing that keeps it working afterwards. A site built and then left is a project, and a site maintained is a relationship.
What the assistant maintenance service contains
Answer updates, monitoring, reading conversations, reporting and acting on the gaps. None of it is technical, all of it recurs, and no client will do any of it themselves once the initial enthusiasm passes.
Why this suits an agency specifically
Because it is content work rather than technical work, which is what agencies are already better at than their clients.
How to price it
Per client, monthly, against the output, which is the commercial question in pricing assistant builds for clients.
How to scope the initial build
Separately from the ongoing service, so neither subsidises the other, which is the discipline in scoping a client assistant project properly.
What has to happen every month
A report, unprompted, with one number the client cares about. Without this the fee becomes invisible and invisible fees get cancelled.
What changes about capacity planning
A base of recurring revenue means the agency can hire against something known rather than against a hoped for pipeline.
What changes about the sales effort
Retained clients buy projects. The recurring relationship is frequently the best source of project work the agency has.
What to do about the existing client base
Every past project client is a candidate, and reaching back to thirty of them with a specific monthly service is considerably easier than finding thirty new ones. Agencies consistently underuse the relationships they already have.
What the first three retained clients prove
A base, however small, changes how an agency plans and how it sells. Three recurring clients is not meaningful revenue and it is enough to establish that the model works and that the reporting habit holds.
Sell the maintenance, not just the build
An agency that attaches a monthly service to every assistant it builds converts a series of small projects into a base of recurring revenue doing work it is already better placed to do than anybody else. Set it up through install the widget and train your bot, the local market case sits in agencies selling chatbots as a service to local clients, and the sector view in how marketing agencies use chatbots for their clients. The industry page sits under agencies.