How agencies keep one record of every client request
Your team can see what clients asked for when every request becomes one shared record. What that record holds, how triage works, and a 60-second test.
· 5 min read · Agency operations
A team can see what clients have asked for when every request, whichever channel it came through, becomes one record in one shared place before anybody starts work on it. That record names who asked and keeps what they asked in their own words. It has an owner and a date, and the client can see it as well as the team.
If your team cannot see requests, the requests are living where they arrived: a mailbox, a chat thread, the last two minutes of a call. Stop running client work from your inbox covers why those places hold work badly, and how to move out of them without retraining clients. This guide is about what the record needs once you have somewhere to put it, and how to keep it the only one.
The 60-second test
Pick any client. Somebody on your team who has never worked on that account should be able to answer these in about a minute, without asking anyone:
- What has this client asked for that is not done yet?
- Who is doing each piece?
- When does each piece land?
- What did they ask for last month, and did it ship?
If any answer involves searching an inbox or messaging a colleague, you do not have a source of truth. You have several partial ones, each held by a different person.
What a request record holds
A lot of "we track requests" turns out to mean a task called "homepage changes". That title points at a conversation somewhere else. A record stands on its own, and carries six things:
- Who asked, by name, and when.
- The ask in the client's own words, pasted or attached, kept apart from the team's reading of it.
- One owner in the studio.
- A landing date the client can see.
- A status that changes as the work moves.
- What has changed since it was raised, and who agreed each change.
Point two is the one teams skip. Rewriting a client's email into a tidy task feels efficient, and it quietly deletes the evidence. When the client says later that they asked for three banner sizes, the original message settles it in seconds. A paraphrase settles nothing.
One way in, however the client asks
Clients will keep asking by email, on calls and in chat, and trying to stop them is a fight you lose. What works is making every channel lead to the same record:
- Email sent to a workspace address becomes a request, with the thread attached.
- A published intake form collects briefs for new work in the same shape every time.
- Anything that arrives by phone or chat gets raised by whoever received it, the same day, with the message pasted in.
The team rule is short: if it has not been raised, it has not been asked for. That rule protects the team as much as the client, because work nobody raised cannot be quietly blamed on anyone later.
Triage before anyone starts
A raw request is rarely ready to work on. Somebody should look at each new one within a working day and deal with it:
- Split it if it is really several requests. "Update the website" becomes the homepage, the pricing table and the careers page, each with its own date.
- Merge it if it duplicates something already raised, and tell the client which one to follow.
- Ask the one question that blocks it, inside the request, so the answer is kept with it.
- Give it an owner and a date.
This takes a few minutes a request. It is also the moment scope becomes visible. A request that does not fit the retainer is easy to price while it is new, and awkward to raise once half of it is built.
Let the client see the same record
A source of truth only the agency can open is still a private list. The client keeps their own version, in their head or in a spreadsheet, and the two drift apart. When the client can open the same request, see its status and date, and add to it, there is only one version to disagree about. Most chasing stops too, because "where is this?" now has an answer they can look up. What that does to the Friday update email is in the status update email is a symptom.
Some things should stay internal: a pricing debate, a note about the client's temperament, a draft the team is not happy with yet. A good record keeps those beside the request, hidden from the client, so nobody is tempted to start a second list for the private parts. A second list is how the source of truth splits back into two.
The handover test
The hardest test of a request record is a holiday. If the account lead is away for a fortnight, could a colleague pick up every open request from the records alone?
Where the answer is no, find what they would have had to ask, and put it in the record. It is usually something that only existed out loud: what was agreed on a call, or which person on the client side actually has the final say.
Questions agencies ask about tracking client requests
Should clients raise requests themselves, or should the agency?
Both, and expect the agency to do most of it at first. Raise requests on the client's behalf and reply with the link. Within a few weeks many clients start raising their own, because raised requests are the ones that visibly land. The 'can you just' tax walks through the steps.
What is the difference between a request and a task?
A request is what the client asked for, and it carries the promise: a date and a status the client can see. Tasks are how the team gets there, and the client rarely needs them. Keeping the two separate lets the team reshuffle its tasks without the client's view changing every afternoon.
Can a shared inbox be the single source of truth?
It can collect requests, but it makes a poor record. An email thread has no owner, no date and no status, so everybody who reads it has to rebuild all three from the replies. Use the inbox as a way into the record and keep the record somewhere else.
Where HoopoeHQ fits
In HoopoeHQ every client has their own workspace, and every request in it is a record with an owner, a landing date and a status the client can see. Email sent to the workspace address becomes a request, an intake form link collects new briefs, and a pasted message can be drafted into a request for you. Internal notes and internal requests sit in the same place, hidden from the client. The full picture is on the features page.
Pick your messiest client, start a 14-day trial, and run the 60-second test again in a month.