Executive Summary

IRIS, a global creative agency, believes that long-term success is built through Participation—its core positioning that centers on active collaboration, shared ambition, and mutual growth with clients. This belief drives IRIS to deepen relationships and create more value through genuine partnership.

To scale this philosophy within its Global Retention Program, IRIS partnered with LIFT to integrate a relationship intelligence platform that enables real-time visibility into client sentiment and internal team dynamics. By aligning its Participation ethos with LIFT’s data-driven insights, IRIS is proactively managing client health, reducing churn, and driving sustainable, relationship-led growth.

This case study explores how IRIS operationalized Participation through LIFT—embedding intelligence into every client interaction and scaling trust and collaboration across global accounts.

The Challenge

Despite a strong commitment to client satisfaction, IRIS identified several areas to improve its client retention strategy:

• Limited Visibility: Existing tools didn’t offer a unified view of client sentiment or internal team health.

• Reactive Risk Management: Without real-time feedback, issues were often addressed only after they escalated.

• Unlocking Account Potential: Opportunities for growth or risk mitigation weren’t always surfaced early enough to act decisively.

To scale client satisfaction globally, IRIS needed a structured, predictive approach to relationship management, one that supports timely interventions and strategic decision-making.

The Solution

Rooted in its belief that great work happens through Participation—open collaboration, mutual accountability, and shared ambition—IRIS partnered with LIFT to embed client relationship intelligence into its Global Retention Program. Participation demands a deep understanding of not just what clients say, but how they feel and how teams align around their needs. This initiative gave IRIS the tools and insights to scale that understanding across markets and teams, creating a more proactive and unified approach to retention.

Key areas of success have been:

• Early Signal Detection:
  LIFT surfaces subtle shifts in sentiment across both clients and internal teams, enabling IRIS to act on early warning signs before they escalate into risks—preserving trust and momentum in client relationships.

• Data-Driven Strategy:
  Real-time relationship insights fuel tailored engagement strategies, allowing IRIS to prioritize at-risk accounts, reinforce alignment, and strengthen long-term value creation.

• Scalable Rollout:
  Piloted with 11 global clients, the program created a replicable model for insight-led, participation-driven retention that is now being scaled across IRIS’s broader client portfolio.

Key Results & Milestones

Partnering with LIFT has empowered IRIS to hardwire intelligence and Participation into its client relationships—laying the foundation for smarter, scalable growth across its global portfolio.

Highlights include:

• Proactive Risk Prevention
  IRIS now spots and stops churn before it starts—thanks to early-warning insights that drive fast, focused action.

• Sharper Strategic Alignment
  Every engagement is guided by real-time intelligence, ensuring that client strategies map directly to business outcomes and long-term value.

• Seamless Team Synergy
  Cross-functional teams now operate with shared clarity on client health, creating tighter alignment, faster decision-making, and more unified delivery—from the ground floor to the C-suite.