The widget wears the client's brand, not yours
A chat launcher on a client's site is part of THEIR identity: their colors, their greeting, their voice. The agency's fingerprints belong in the results deck, not the corner of the page. Per-site widget configuration — launcher color, label text, greeting, pre-chat fields — is the mechanism; a five-minute theming pass against each client's palette is the habit. (Contrast rules still apply: brand color, legible label.)
Decide who answers — before launch, in writing
The single biggest co-branded-chat failure is the unanswered widget nobody agreed to staff. Three workable models, each honest if stated plainly:
- Client answers. The agency installs, themes, and configures; the client's staff take the conversations. Give them their own agent logins and a one-page runbook (hours, offline promise, escalation).
- Agency answers — chat-as-a-service. Bill it explicitly, staff it honestly (your response-time promises are now a deliverable), and write the answers-boundary: what your team may say about the client's business and what routes to them.
- AI first, client second. Train the assistant on the client's site and FAQ; humans (theirs) take the handoffs. Often the only sustainable model for small-retainer clients — and the AI's wrong answers point at their documentation gaps, which is billable work.
Report with transcripts, not just counts
"47 chats this month" is a number; three verbatim conversations where the widget rescued a lead is a renewal argument. Monthly, pull each client's transcript highlights: questions their site fails to answer (your next content recommendation), objections prospects raise (their positioning gap), and the saves. The page-to-question map per client is an upsell engine disguised as a report.
Structure accounts for clean handover
Retainers end; the widget should survive the breakup gracefully. Two rules from day one: the chat account for a client's site should be transferable to them (their billing-ready account, or documented so ownership can move), and every human gets their OWN login — shared credentials make offboarding an ex-employee or an ex-agency equally messy. Offboarding checklist: revoke agency agent logins, hand over admin, leave the runbook.
The economics that make it work
Per-site licensing punishes the agency model; unlimited-sites-per-account pricing means each new client site is a snippet paste, not a procurement event. Flat plans keep the chat line in a retainer predictable — see the agency playbook for the fuller pitch, including qualifying project leads with pre-chat questions on your OWN site.