WHAT DOES A CLIENT SUCCESS MANAGER DO?
Published: July 23, 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.