Manager, Client Services

The Manager, Client Services leads a team of individual contributors and/or leads to deliver exceptional service and ensures the company fulfills its contractual obligations. The Manager oversees the delivery of services to key clients, focusing on implementation, customer management, performance management, and governance. They take charge of customer issues, identify areas for improvement, and ensure resolutions. The Manager anticipates impact to customer satisfaction and proactively addresses risks. Using extensive product knowledge, they enhance customer experience, boost loyalty, and support growth. The Manager contributes to the effective planning, implementation, and monitoring of activities that contribute to the overall achievement of the departmental objectives.

This position will lead and facilitate assigned team activities such as team meetings, client meetings, and contract deliverables. People leadership is a large portion of this role and contribution is primarily through others.

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for establishing and developing working customer relationships through regular communication, both face to face and remotely, to set customer expectations and provide a positive, consistent experience.
• Establish trust and confidence in ability to deliver for the customer.
• Demonstrate knowledge of the Clients' needs, providing advocacy and endorsement to assure client satisfaction and engagement.
• Respond to any customer inquiries related to the delivery of services, advising customers on the use and benefits of products and services and proactively inform customers of situations where customer satisfaction may be impacted.
• Utilize deep understanding of the services' benefits and how they align with the customers' specific needs and goals, ensuring that customers not only use the services but fully comprehend and realize the value they provide.
• Evaluate service quality through data analysis, identifying improvement areas, and collaborating with teams to produce comprehensive reports that contribute to enhancing customers' understanding of service value and the effectiveness of the services provided.
• Work with responsible departments to compile reports and conduct business reviews with clients, both face to face and remotely.
• Gather feedback and share it with respective teams.
• Responsible for identification and reporting of any process gaps/issues that impact customer satisfaction.
• Quantify risk to business and customer satisfaction and raise awareness internally to drive preventive action and improvement.
• Develop creative solutions to client issues.
• Identify and evaluate activities within accounts that may impact profitability.
• Identify ways to improve automation, reduce costs, and streamline any processes without negatively affecting the client or their experience.
• Proactively educate and inform the Director of Client Services about any contract concerns and critical customer escalations, to ensure they are addressed timely, help mitigate risk, and ensure efforts are aligned with the broader organizational goals.
• Responsible for overseeing critical customer escalations, including engaging management and executive level management in any escalation paths, providing regular updates to customers and following up to ensure the customer is happy with the outcome.
• Work with responsible departments for the creation of Post Incident Reviews and deliver to customers.
• Develop, coordinate, communicate, and finalize Service Improvement Plans.
• Capture learnings to support continuous service improvement.
• Accountable for customer satisfaction results, utilize client feedback to identify areas for improvement and address specific concerns.
• Responsible for identifying sales opportunities, developing the opportunities, and partnering with Sales to deliver against those opportunities.
• Coordinate service operations personnel and act as a single point of control for sales account managers for any problematic issues with accounts.
• Lead and facilitate assigned team activities such as team meetings, client meetings, and contract deliverables alongside or for Client Services Director.
• Responsible for tracking run rate of any VIP Accounts, Addendums, Risk to Revenue, and any information which affects the account performance.
• Monthly reports are generated to facilitate early identification of potential issues, aiding proactive intervention to safeguard the revenue generated from the client.
• Tasked with gaining a comprehensive understanding of the strategic plans and objectives of their clients and how those plans will impact our relationship.
• Understand departmental goals, policies, and procedures, to ensure effective alignment, collaboration, and provide a unified and consistent experience to customers.
• Support Client and Contract level onboarding activities on accounts with multiple services of high operational complexity.
• Understanding the service agreements and working with departments to align contractual requirements with company processes.
• Ensure operational staff are aware of customer specific requirements and partner with operational leaders to create solutions.
• Ensure well defined and updated procedures for any operational or processing tasks by the team.
• Analyze client requests versus company policies, procedures, and best practice and challenge existing processes and procedures to continually improve our offering.
• Contribute to team initiatives around audit and risk management.
• Assist in the development of training materials, process documentation, and execution of formal training sessions.
• Coach and assist staff with complex client concerns and questions.
• Assist Client Services Director with complex client relationships/requests/projects.
• This customer-facing role is office-based but involves dedicating a portion of time offsite, including visiting customers, attending team meetings, and participating in offsite training sessions.
• Directly responsible for the functional, technical, and process leadership of direct reports.
• Provide ongoing performance and general feedback to direct reports.
• Provide daily coaching and guidance.
• Weekly or Bi-Weekly 1-on-1 meetings with each direct report.
• Address employee time off requests and approve timecards (if applicable) weekly.
• All other management duties as assigned.

Qualifications:

• 7+ years' experience in Client Services, Quality Improvement, Program Management, or Operations.
• Self-motivated and able to take responsibility for work and desired outcomes.
• Experience in Customer Relationship Management or Business Development.
• Able to demonstrate a high degree of flexibility.
• Ability to read, understand, and write standard business documentation (e.g. contract language).
• Solid written and oral communication skills.
• Proven leadership and management skills.
• Proven ability to demonstrate initiative and a proactive approach and be able to manage and prioritize multiple projects simultaneously.
• Must be able to prioritize own workload and use own initiative in the absence of supervision.
• Advanced MS Office Skills.
• Technical knowledge in Data Storage or Servers.
• ITIL v3 or above.

Bonus Points:

• Program Management Certification, a plus.
• Second language at Professional level (for posts in EMEA and APAC).
• Knowledge of data collection, analysis, and interpretation is preferred.

Education:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience required.

Travel:

• As required for customer visits, training, industry conferences, nationally and globally. Expected minimum 30%.