WHAT DOES A CLIENT SUCCESS MANAGER DO?
Reviewed under Editorial Standards by Lam Nguyen
Updated: Dec 01, 2024 - The Client Success Manager manages a portfolio of senior-level executives by understanding their mission-critical priorities and ensuring immediate needs are met. This role involves collaborating with internal partners to deliver significant value, educate clients on utilizing resources, and maintain forward-looking engagement plans. The manager also proactively engages with clients at a strategic level, ensuring seamless support for team initiatives and optimizing campaigns for client success.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Client Success Manager
1. Client Success Manager Roles
- Account Management: Renew and grow a set of client accounts by proactively anticipating needs, recommending additional products and services.
- Client Experience: Provide an excellent client experience as measured by revenue retention and client product usage.
- Client Satisfaction: Increase overall client satisfaction with Diligent measured through Net Promoter Score.
- Client Lifecycle Management: Provide a seamless and ‘best in class’ client experience through all phases of the client lifecycle.
- Team Coordination: Coordinate with the client implementation and project teams, administrative staff, IT Team, and users of the Diligent application/s.
- Client Advocacy: Collaborate internally to be the voice of the client across other departments, including with the sales, expansion, services, marketing, finance, client transactions and operations teams.
- Lead Identification: Be heavily intertwined with the Expansion Sales team in identifying, qualifying and passing on expansion leads.
- Product Knowledge: Have confident, natural discussions with clients about what products can do.
- Platform Demonstration: Be able to jump into a Diligent demo environment and walk a client through the platform with a business-first approach.
- Relationship Building: Build and maintain strong direct client relationships with key stakeholders and retain those relationships.
- Client Advocacy Initiatives: Seek out client advocacy-related initiatives.
- Adoption Services: Provide adoption services of Diligent solutions during the entire product implementation lifecycle for North American clients and other regions.
2. Client Success Manager Tasks
- Client Management: Be the primary contact for clients who have signed a contract with the company, particularly in the DACH region.
- Coordination: Coordinate the communication of all external service providers as well as internal teams to meet client expectations.
- Project Management: Be the project manager of the fund launch for the client: run weekly client meetings, keep minutes, record timelines, expectations, action items, etc.
- Organization: Bring organization to the client and anticipate client needs before they arise.
- Research and Quoting: Produce research, quotes, and commercial terms for various investment structures to help clients decide on service providers and fund details.
- Client Advocacy: Advocate for clients in pushing for improvements and adjustments to services and products.
- Sales Support: Inform the sales team of potential referral and upsell opportunities.
- Flexibility: Take on new responsibilities as may be required from time to time in the name of bettering the client experience.
- Portfolio Ownership: Ownership of a portfolio of new and existing clients.
- Relationship Building: Responsible for building strong client relationships and ensuring clients achieve success with the Sopro service.
- Scheduling: Plan, schedule, and oversee key client communication points.
3. Client Success Manager Overview
- Client Account Management: Key contact and accountability for allocated client accounts.
- Client Relationship Building: Foster strong relationships with clients to exceed client retention targets.
- Account Action Planning: Develop and implement account action plans for all clients.
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Work closely with the sales, partner, product, and client service teams to ensure client satisfaction and maximize the value derived from software solutions.
- Client Invoicing Management: Work closely with the finance and administration team regarding the management and processing of client invoicing, subscription renewals, and contracts.
- Subscription Commercials Management: Management of client subscription commercials and master service agreement: calculating subscription pricing and documenting details in a work order.
- Legal and Procurement Coordination: Working with client procurement and legal counsel and Envizi legal counsel and services management to document and finalize MSA.
- Internal Training Support: Work closely with the Product team to support clients with internal training and stakeholder engagement.
- Client Entitlement Reviews: Conduct regular (at least annual) client entitlement reviews to ensure contracted entitlements are not exceeded.
- Client Meetings: Meet with clients regularly for WIP activity, action plan progress, and troubleshooting issues.
- Upsell Targets: Exceed client upsell targets.
- Support Procedures Adherence: Adhere to defined support procedures and processes
4. Client Success Manager Functions
- Upsell Identification: Identify client upsell opportunities by matching client requirements to technical solutions.
- Client Proposals Accountability: Accountability and final sign-off on all related client proposals and bids.
- Upsell Collaboration: Work with sales and product teams on upsell opportunities, including proposals and bids.
- Client Feedback: Provide regular feedback to clients regarding product enhancement requests.
- Inquiry Escalation: Escalate any unresolved inquiries that need further investigation.
- Platform Updates: Stay current with Envizi platform system information, changes, and updates.
- Project Transition: Work with the implementation project team to transition clients from project to BAU support.
- Channel Partner Collaboration: Working with channel partners to achieve similar outcomes listed above with their clients.
- Task Delegation: Delegate technical and operational follow-up tasks to the Client Service Manager for action.
- Project Artifact Management: Ensure all project artifacts are created in line with company best practices and are stored online in the relevant system.
- Event Organization Support: Assist marketing and administrative teams with organizing client events, including client management, event promotion, and attendance.
- Service Level Monitoring: Monitor client service levels to ensure satisfactory delivery of support services.
5. Client Success Manager Job Summary
- Client Partnership Management: Manage a portfolio of senior-level executives and drive continuous client partnership by understanding clients' mission-critical priorities and prioritizing immediate needs.
- Internal Collaboration: Collaborate with internal partners to ensure we deliver significant value to clients.
- Product Management Expertise: Bring product management expertise and educate clients on how to best utilize Gartner resources throughout their product lifecycle.
- Value Measurement and Delivery: Understand and capture how the client measures value and ensure this is over-delivered throughout the life of the contract.
- Strategic Engagement: Provide proactive engagement with clients at a strategic level.
- Engagement Planning: Own and maintain forward-looking engagement plans.
- Liaison Coordination: Liaise between Gartner and all members of the client’s team to ensure the seamless support of team-level strategic initiatives.
- Client Needs and Objectives: Understand clients' needs and business objectives and ensure Sopro delivers against them.
- Client Onboarding and Training: Onboard new clients (post-sales), deliver best practice client training, and ensure strong levels of client satisfaction.
- Data Analysis and Optimization: Analyse Sopro data to draw conclusions, optimize campaigns, and make clients even more successful.
- Client Account Development: Understand the shape approach to better develop, diversify, and grow client accounts.
Editorial Process
Lamwork content is developed through structured review of publicly available job postings and documented hiring trends.
Editorial operations are managed by Thanh Huyen, Managing Editor, with research direction and final oversight by Lam Nguyen, Founder & Editorial Lead. Content is periodically reviewed to reflect observable labor market changes.