Setup checklist: begin with the immediate job
Your first message should help the customer do the next useful thing, not tour every feature. For a new creative client, that may be confirming the brief and uploading one approved asset. Explain where to go, what completion looks like and who will respond. A portal invitation alone does not communicate the agency’s service rules. Keep the message short enough that someone can follow it while reading on a phone.
Explain what each status means
Tell the client the difference between received, ready for production, in progress and awaiting approval in your own workflow. Do not let the product’s default labels make promises you have not agreed. If requests can wait in a queue, explain that submitting several does not mean they are all active. Give an example using fictional work so the customer can recognize the distinction without learning it through a missed expectation.
Avoid a second hidden communication channel
Decide which messages belong in the portal and which remain in email. If your team accepts scope changes by either route, assign responsibility for recording them against the job. Otherwise a client can reasonably believe a request was approved while the producer never saw it. Do not promise that integrations automatically reconcile every conversation. Publish the working convention and make it easy to locate when someone joins the client’s team later.
Check understanding with one real next action
After onboarding, ask the client to complete the smallest necessary step, not an artificial software exam. If they get stuck, improve the instruction before assuming resistance to change. Keep a concise help route and avoid asking for sensitive credentials in ordinary messages. The useful measure is whether clients can find their current responsibility with less confusion, not how many onboarding documents the agency can say it has created.
Sources used for this page
These records support the facts and comparisons above. Merchant-controlled records are labelled so you can separate product claims from independent evidence.
- ManyRequests client experience — Merchant documentation · help.manyrequests.com · Merchant-controlled · checked 2026-09-19
- ManyRequests getting started — Merchant documentation · help.manyrequests.com · Merchant-controlled · checked 2026-09-19