The one-degree difference: A lesson in client service

Imagine a plane leaves New York and is just one degree off its course. It won’t land in Los Angeles; it will miss the city by miles.

This is a lot like client-agency relationships.

Even the smallest misalignments, if left unchecked, can widen into a gap that damages trust and limits opportunity.

I learned this from a legendary ad man and former VP of marketing when I was his team’s account director. He used this metaphor to explain how critical agency alignment with his brand’s vision was. If our interpretation was off by just one degree, the misunderstanding would widen, brand reputation would suffer and resonance with customers would deteriorate.

This lesson has stayed with me ever since. It has shaped my view of client service, which I see less as a set of deliverables and more as a discipline of alignment.

But alignment isn’t just something agencies need to master; it’s also a leadership responsibility. When clients step into the role of “coach” and create the conditions for alignment, the results are transformative. We unpack that perspective further here.

I believe brand reputation is built on memorable customer experiences, and when those experiences are aligned, loyalty follows. Customer loyalty is the highest-value currency in any business.

The fact is, we can’t maintain healthy client relationships where a degree of separation exists. Alignment is the oxygen that fuels our ability to provoke progress, and it starts with what I call the 3 Cs.

The strongest client relationships don’t happen by chance; they’re built on these three essential ingredients. When these three work together, alignment isn’t just possible, it’s inevitable.

Client service starts with care. It’s not just about delivering great work; it’s about making people feel seen, heard and valued at both the organizational and personal levels. Care means understanding preferences, motivators and expectations. These small, meaningful touches—like remembering details, anticipating needs and simplifying processes to eliminate friction—can unlock trust and loyalty disproportionate to the effort.

Curiosity is the fuel that keeps alignment alive. We can’t just know the deliverables; we must know the why behind them. This goes beyond the brief to understand our clients as individuals, their business, their industry, and the influences that shape their brands and decisions. Curiosity shows clients that we’re invested in their business for the long haul, not just the next campaign.

If care is the foundation and curiosity is the fuel, communication is what keeps everything in motion. Alignment doesn’t survive without honest, proactive and courageous conversations. We often confuse customer service with responsiveness, but speed without depth changes nothing. A quick reply doesn’t solve a misalignment if the real issue is left unspoken. Communication is powered by listening with attention, presence and genuine inquiry.

How do you know if your relationships are as aligned as they should be and how do you ensure that a degree of separation isn’t growing?

Another lesson I learned from a respected leader and marketer: You have to “inspect what you expect.”

We do this at DS+CO through a combination of annual client satisfaction surveys and in-depth interviews conducted by a third party. The point isn’t to be perfect. The point is to be intentional, to cultivate the service delivery behaviors we expect and to actively look for degrees of separation to prevent them from becoming a catastrophic gap.

If you feel like your agency partner is distracted and you’re feeling the degree of separation widening, don’t wait for it to become unfixable. Let’s talk. Because in client service, as in navigation, one degree makes all the difference.