The client update that was due Tuesday. The follow-up from last Thursday that still hasn't gone out. The new brief sitting in the inbox, waiting on a first response before the prospect moves on. None of these require expertise. All of them require attention — and in most agencies, that attention belongs to whoever is nearest their inbox. Adding a hire doesn't fix this. A new account manager brings more clients to update, more handoffs to document, more reports to compile. Hermes handles the communication and research layer — drafting updates, queuing follow-ups, assembling reports — across Slack and Gmail from a single deployment. The team reviews and approves. Nothing sends without a sign-off.
Agency communication overhead grows with every hire
McKinsey Global Institute found knowledge workers spend 28% of their week managing email and 19% gathering information — nearly half the workweek on tasks that don't require the expertise the agency bills for.[¹]
Hiring adds delivery capacity. Hiring does not reduce communication overhead — every new account manager brings more clients to update, more internal handoffs to document, and more reports to compile. The ratio of communication work to team size stays flat. The bottleneck in an agency isn't headcount. It's the communication layer wrapped around every project.
How Hermes handles client communication across Slack and Gmail
Hermes watches the agency's communication channels and handles three categories of work: drafting outgoing client updates, triaging incoming messages, and following up on outstanding requests.
For a retainer client expecting a weekly update, Hermes pulls activity from the connected project tool — Linear, Asana, or Notion — drafts the update in the agency's format, and surfaces it for approval before sending. For an incoming client question, Hermes drafts the response and routes it to the relevant team member for review. For a deliverable without a follow-up in 72 hours, Hermes drafts the chase and queues it for sign-off.
Hermes runs a single instance across Slack and Gmail simultaneously. Skills built from a client interaction in Slack carry to Gmail — there is no separate Skill library per channel. The same learning applies across every platform the agency uses.
Every draft surfaces for human review before anything sends. The account manager approves, edits, or dismisses. Hermes handles the assembly.
How Hermes handles research and reporting workflows
Reporting requires pulling information from project trackers, analytics tools, and CRM records — compiling it into a structured format and delivering it on schedule. Most agencies do this in manual steps, usually by the account manager or the founder.
Hermes handles the assembly. For a weekly client report, Hermes connects to the relevant tools, pulls the week's metrics and milestones, and drafts the report in the agreed format — ready for a final review before sending. The account manager reviews. Hermes assembles.
For ad hoc research — a competitor's recent campaign, a new platform's capabilities, background for a new client brief — Hermes searches, summarises, and structures the findings as a draft document. The output is ready to edit, not a list of links to read.
How Hermes improves on agency-specific workflows over time
Each completed task adds a Skill object to Hermes's library — a structured record of the task category, the approach used, and input-output examples. On the next similar task, Hermes applies the Skill and adds the new example to it.
The bottleneck isn't capacity. It's the communication layer around every project.
For an agency, Hermes in month three handles the variant client formats, mid-project scope emails, and late-deliverable chasers that month one could not. Skills encode the agency's specific clients — their preferred update format, their communication style, the level of detail they expect. A Skill built from 30 status updates to a specific fintech client understands that client's preferences in a way a freshly deployed Hermes does not.
The time an account manager spends editing Hermes's drafts decreases over the first three months. The goal is not for Hermes to operate without review — it's for the review to take 90 seconds instead of 20 minutes.
What an agency Hermes deployment covers on day one
A Hermes deployment for an agency starts with three decisions: which channels to connect, which workflows to configure first, and how to define context — the information that shapes Skill quality from the beginning.
On day one, Hermes handles configured workflows at a baseline level. A status update workflow produces a structurally correct draft that needs editing for client-specific tone and detail. A follow-up workflow produces a draft that needs a human check before sending. The output is usable. It is not polished.
By month three, Skills built from real completed tasks have improved accuracy on the agency's specific clients, formats, and communication patterns. The same status update that took 15 minutes to compose in week one takes 90 seconds to review in month three. Hermes does not replace the account manager's judgment on strategy, scope, or relationships. Hermes handles the communication and research layer that consumes the time those judgments should be made in.
For a full overview of Hermes and how it works, see what is Hermes. For how Skills build from completed tasks, see how Hermes learns. For when off-the-shelf tools don't fit the agency's specific workflows, see what is a custom agent.
Frequently asked questions
How does Hermes help an agency manage client communication? Hermes watches the agency's Slack and Gmail channels, drafts outgoing client updates, triages incoming messages, and follows up on outstanding deliverables — each draft surfaced for approval before anything sends. Skills build from each completed task, so output improves on the agency's specific clients and formats over time.
Can Hermes run across both Slack and Gmail for the same agency? Yes. Hermes runs a single instance across all connected platforms simultaneously. Skills built from a client interaction in Slack carry over to Gmail — there is no separate Skill library per channel.
Does Hermes send messages without approval? No. Every draft Hermes produces surfaces for human review before sending. The account manager approves, edits, or dismisses each draft. Nothing sends without a sign-off.
How long does it take for Hermes to improve on an agency's specific workflows? Common task variants are typically handled accurately within the first two to four weeks. Edge case handling — variant client formats, scope-change emails, partial-information requests — improves through months two and three as Skills accumulate from real completed tasks.
Notes
- McKinsey Global Institute, The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, 2012. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-social-economy