Taking on large financial institutions as clients can be a long drawn-out process, and one that requires a lot of work. But the job to display value only really begins after a client has signed on for work.
XY has delivered strong outcomes for a long time. It’s how we’ve been able to grow the business. Our full time sales team commenced almost 12 months ago now and has increased our workload substantially. With a strong sales team allocating more work to the delivery team – and an expanding delivery team producing great work, we are now up to the stage to complete the cycle by introducing the in between role of Client Success Manager (CSM).
Our CSM supports our customers as they transition from sales prospects to active clients.
The CSM will be strong at:
– Building and maintaining client relationships
– Ensuring both clients and delivery are well communicated with
– Creating and maintaining timelines
– Proactively over delivering
– Improving the client experience and reporting
– Attention to detail
– Leadership skills
The CSM will fix issues before they happen, rather than react to when they occur. The CSM bridges the gap between sales and delivery, enhances product value, reduces client churn, and keeps a “high-level view” of the delivery process.
When we take on a new client, there are two key milestones in the customer lifecycle:
1 – When a client signs up
2 – When they achieve their first success
Each of our customers define success differently. Sometimes it’s analytical impressions, leads, and CTAs. Other times it’s a time saver – we take work off their table. Either way, the time between becoming a client and achieving these milestones is when a client chooses to work with us long term. After the initial excitement of onboarding a new client, we need the right team member in place to guide the next steps, and to make sure everything is fully implemented.
This critical juncture turns the CSM into the new customer’s mentor. It’s the CSM’s main goal to get the client started, to receive their first ‘success moment’ as soon as possible, and to provide an ongoing stream of ‘success moments’ over a yearly engagement.
The CSM has 3 key responsibilities:
a) Making sure work is delivered at a high quality on time
We produce a lot of content, with the amount set to ramp up from here. A large team of Content Specialists are used to produce the final product, and the CSM role is to ensure our external clients, and our internal stakeholders are all working towards the same goal. The tracking of all this work is done via project management apps.
b) Over-delivering leads to more opportunities
The CSM will own the relationship marketing process. The CSM will generate excitement for new or developing products by keeping our clients updated on the progress of the products coming to market. As the new products come available, the CSM will facilitate a meeting with the sales team to discuss.
c) Proactive problem resolution
Our CSM will look out for their customer’s business and work with them to find solutions to pain points. It’s the CSMs job to put out any flame before it’s a wildfire. The CSM will monitor their customers’ happiness closely so they’re able to offer solutions before issues occur. If the CSM sees any red flags, they can act immediately to ensure problems are avoided from the outset. As the CSM learns more about our clients, they will have a unique view of future product upgrades and changes. As such, they can advocate for our clients’ by keeping the product teams up to date with the most valuable problems we can solve.
What a regular week would look like:
– Ensuring all products are on track to being delivered on time
– Checking in with clients on a monthly basis to keep them up to date
– Requesting items from the client to complete work
– Working with our Content Specialists to ensure high quality work is delivered on time
– Reporting to management on a weekly basis
– Ensuring all data is uploaded into the project management app
– Communicating with clients and making sure there are no issue
If you’d like to work in a fast paced environment, and love to see your clients happy, please apply through this platform or alternatively directly to clayton@xyadviser.com.
