Most agencies talk to clients in email because that is where the client already is. It works until the account has three workstreams, two people on each side and a question that needs an answer today. Then the thread forks, the attachment is on the wrong fork, and the client cannot tell what the team is doing between the weekly call. A chat channel per client fixes that part. It does not replace email, and the agencies that get the most out of it are clear about which conversation lives where. This post is the set-up: one channel per client account, the client’s lead invited as a guest, the project board and files beside it, and what to do on day one and on the last day.
What agencies say about chatting with clients
A thread in r/agency titled Using Slack for client communication (October 2024) is a fair sample of how agency owners think about this. The original poster’s reason for looking beyond email was simple:
I know email is the way to go, but there’s really no way for clients to see tasks or project progress in email.
— r/agency, Using Slack for client communication
The replies are more measured than a vendor would write them, which is why they are worth reading. Agencies that use chat with clients say they like it for quick questions, sharing progress and being reachable without a phone call. The same people say that any important decision gets copied into an email, and that contractual matters stay in email for the paper trail. One account manager notes the learning curve for clients who have never used team chat, and asks whether anyone offers a simple how-to at onboarding. Another warns that easy access cuts both ways: messages at 10 pm on a weekday, escalating something that could have waited. And one owner observes that clients who already use chat take to it, while some of the others use it to send long emails. None of that is an argument against the idea. It is the list of things to decide before you send the invite.
One channel per client account
The unit is the account, not the project. A client with a retainer and two one-off projects gets one channel, named after the client, with everyone on the account from the agency side in it. Projects live on the board; the channel is where the people on the account talk. Three things go in it on the first day: a pinned message that says what the channel is for and who to mention for what, the link to the current status document or board view you share with the client, and the agreed response window.
The client’s lead joins as a guest: an account that sees this channel and nothing else. That is the part that makes the pattern safe. The client never sees another client’s channel, the internal channels, or the team’s own chatter about their account. How guests work depends on the tool, and the details matter for cost and for admin effort.
In Slack, guest roles are available on the paid plans. A Single-Channel Guest is free and can access exactly one channel, up to five such guests for every paid active member; a Multi-Channel Guest can be added to as many channels as you like and is billed as a regular member. Workspace owners and admins manage which channels a guest can see. For the one-channel-per-client pattern, a single-channel guest is the natural fit, and the five-per-member ratio is generous for most agencies.
In Huddl, Orbiz’s team chat, an organisation admin invites a guest by email to a huddl and the channels chosen in the invitation. The guest cannot create channels, cannot invite anyone and cannot open any other Orbiz tool, and the admin can remove them at any time. Guests are not charged for: every member and guest is inside the organisation’s flat price, so there is no seat to count when a client brings a second person along. An organisation can have several huddls, and one huddl per client is a common way to run it: the client’s channels sit in their own huddl, and the agency’s own channels in another.
What stays in email and what moves to chat
The agencies in that thread had already worked this out, and their split is the right one. Email is the record; chat is the conversation. A decision reached in chat is confirmed in a short email the same day, so that the version everyone can find later is the written one.
| Stays in email | Moves to chat |
|---|---|
| Scope, scope changes and sign-off on estimates | Questions about a brief or a draft |
| Invoices, payment terms and contract paperwork | Quick approvals: “that headline works, go with it” |
| Formal escalations and anything legal | Status updates between the weekly call |
| Confirmation of any decision first taken in chat | Files for review, screenshots, links to the board |
| Onboarding paperwork and access requests | Scheduling and the small logistics of a project |
Threads keep the channel readable: a draft goes up as one message and the back-and-forth about it stays under it. Pin the decisions and the current brief so a new person on either side can read the channel top to bottom in five minutes. Search handles the rest; in Huddl it covers every conversation you belong to and filters by channel, person, date and whether a message carries a file.
The board and the files beside the channel
The reason the original poster gave for leaving email, that a client cannot see progress there, is only half solved by a channel. The other half is a board the team actually keeps current. In Orbiz, Cadence holds the client’s projects as boards and sprints and Filespace holds the deliverables, under the same login as Huddl, so the people on the account move between the conversation, the work and the files without a second sign-in.
Be honest with yourself and with the client about what the guest sees. A Huddl guest sees their channels and nothing else, and that includes the other tools: there is no client portal, and a guest does not get a Cadence login. What the client sees of the board is what the account team puts in the channel: a status message on Monday, a screenshot of the sprint, a file dragged in with its preview. That is deliberate. It keeps the client’s view curated and the team’s working board private, and it is the same discipline the agencies in the thread describe, done in one place instead of three. If what a client really needs is to open the board themselves, that is a different product and a different conversation.
Onboarding a client who has never used team chat
Ask about communication style in the first meeting, before the invite. A client who runs their own company on chat needs no help; a client whose world is email and phone calls needs a quarter of an hour and a pinned message. The sequence that works:
- Send the invite from a person, not a system. The guest invitation arrives by email; a two-line note from the account lead explaining why, sent the same hour, is what gets it accepted.
- Pin the house rules. What the channel is for, who to mention for what, and the response window: for example, replies within the working day, nothing expected after 6 pm or at weekends. Agreeing this on day one is the answer to the 10 pm message.
- Walk through it once. A fifteen-minute call: how to reply in a thread, how to mention someone, how to drop a file in. Show them the pinned messages. That is the whole curriculum.
- Mirror email for the first fortnight. Confirm anything decided in chat by email, as you will keep doing for decisions, and copy anything important that arrived by email into the channel. The client learns where things live by seeing them there.
- Keep direct messages to the account lead. One owner in the thread had seen clients message individual staff privately to ask for more. A guest limited to the account channel, with the account lead as their named contact, keeps requests where the whole team can see them.
When the engagement ends
The channel outlives the engagement; the guest does not. On the last day, send the closing email with the final deliverables and any outstanding invoice, then remove the guest. In Huddl, revoking a guest deactivates their account, so they can no longer sign in to Orbiz at all; the channel and its history stay with the agency, which is what you want when the client comes back in a year and asks what was agreed about the logo. In Slack, an admin deactivates the guest account in the same way. If the client returns, invite them again; the old channel is still there.
The same end-of-engagement list applies to the files and the board. Mark the Cadence project done and leave the Filespace folder where it is. Nothing needs exporting, because nothing ever lived only in the client’s inbox.
Where this does not fit
- A client that will not leave email. Some will not, and that is their call. Run the channel internally for the account and keep the client on email; you still get the single place for the team.
- A client whose own company runs on its own chat workspace. Huddl does not connect two organisations’ workspaces to each other; the client’s lead joins as a guest in yours. If the client insists on their workspace, you are the guest in theirs, and the rules above still apply.
- Engagements that need a call in the same tool. Huddl is text, threads and files in this release, with no voice or video calls, so the weekly call happens on whatever you use for calls today.
- Regulated work where every exchange must be retained in a specific way. Email with a retention policy may be the only acceptable record. Check before moving anything.
For the rest of the agency, the channel is one piece of a larger set-up: the marketing agency page covers how the retainer, the board, the files and the chat fit together on one login, and the professional services page does the same for consultancies that run engagements rather than campaigns. If the question behind this one is whether the account is still profitable, retainer burn before the invoice is the companion piece.
A one-page checklist
- One channel per client account, named after the client, with everyone on the account in it.
- The client’s lead invited as a guest who sees that channel and nothing else.
- A pinned message with the purpose, who to mention and the response window.
- Decisions confirmed by email the same day; invoices and scope only ever in email.
- The board and the files beside the channel, kept current by the account team.
- A fifteen-minute walkthrough for any client new to chat, and email mirrored for a fortnight.
- Guest removed on the last day; channel and history kept.
Sources, read 9 October 2026: the r/agency thread linked above (posted October 2024) and Slack’s help article Understand guest roles in Slack for how single-channel and multi-channel guests work. Huddl’s guest behaviour is as shipped on the Huddl page; pricing is on the pricing page.
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