Podcast Transcript

Welcome to the first episode of Customer Success Matters, where I'll be chatting about what is client servicing, how it's relevant to grow your business, and how that function looks, particularly in an agency, and what to look for when hiring someone for that role. So let's take this back to basics and start with what is client servicing? So client servicing refers to the activities, strategies, and processes used by a business to maintain and enhance the relationship with their clients.

This is particularly important in services sectors like advertising, marketing, consulting, legal and financial services. And the primary goal of client servicing is to ensure client satisfaction, fostering long -term relationships and encourage repeat business and more importantly, referrals, which will help grow your business. That's a really high level for those in a client facing role who are responsible for ensuring client satisfaction.

there are some key points that they need to ensure they're delivering on. Understanding your client needs. This requires you to be actively listening to clients, ensuring you are understanding their requirements and their challenges, setting and meeting expectations, and then tailoring your services or products to meet these needs. Effective and regular communication is vital. This includes keeping your clients informed about project progress, changes,

outcomes and being responsive to their questions and feedback. You need to ensure that the services or products you're providing are of high quality and delivered within the agreed timeline. This is crucial for maintaining trust and satisfaction. Being transparent is key to maintaining the trust that you've built with your client, which means addressing any issues or challenges that arise promptly and efficiently and providing solutions that meet or exceed your client's expectations.

is absolutely key for client servicing to develop a good relationship with your client, which requires you to understand their business, their industry, and their challenges that might arise, but also, more importantly, understanding your client from a personal and a business perspective and show genuine interest in their lives and success. Regularly seek feedback from clients and use this information to improve your services, handle issues,

enable product development and enhance your client experiences. Continuously looking for ways to add value to the client beyond the basic agreement, such as offering insights, industry updates or additional services that might benefit your client will show you and your business as an invaluable additional resource, securing your business for the long term. Get all of this right and this can lead to increased client satisfaction, loyalty and potentially more business through referrals and repeat engagement.

It's a critical component of a successful business strategy in any service orientated industry.

various people in the agency world that they get confused between the term client services and account managers and what they should have in their agency so I'm just going to clarify this. Client Services is an umbrella term for anyone that sits in a client facing role and is responsible for the overall success of the agency's clients. They act as the main point of contact between the agency and the client managing all aspects of the relation. This includes keeping the client updated on the progress of projects

addressing their concerns, ensuring that the agency's work meets the client's expectations and building a strong relationship with the client. They're essentially responsible for making sure the client is happy. In an agency that could be an account manager, an account director or a client services director, or even a strata or creative person playing a hybrid role. Hopefully that helps.

So why is it important to build strong relationships with clients? Ultimately, client retention is cheaper than customer acquisition. It can take on average two times longer to onboard a new client than to service an existing one, which in turn takes up time and resource which could be focused on building strong relationships and growing those clients. Building a strong, long lasting relationship with a client is invaluable, not just for the immediate,

but for if and when they move into another company, they will likely take you with them if it's allowed, which would mean growth occurs naturally. Having advocates within the business make growing the account much easier. In fact, in my report, I conducted on what clients really want from their agencies, 100 % of participants who commissioned marketing agencies said they would refer an agency if they had built a good relationship with them and they had done a good job. Not only is their tangible business benefits

There's also the fact that it just makes work life much more enjoyable when you have a good working relationship with your client.

What are the responsibilities of someone in a client services role? Now generally, and this may be different for some agencies depending on their products, their services, their set up, size of the company, but most client services people will be responsible for the following. Understanding the client's personal professional needs, understanding the client's business and industry, setting and meeting client expectations, identifying growth opportunities within the account, become an embedded trusted strategic partner.

being impartial representative for the client internally, manage campaigns from brief to completion, creation of proposals and budgets, writing briefs and briefing relevant internal stakeholders, running weekly status calls, creating client case studies, and account commercials. Not every role in client services will be responsible for everything that I have just listed. For example, an account manager wouldn't be responsible for the growth of the account.

This would usually lie with a more senior client services person. But be very mindful of how much time you are giving your team to manage clients and projects, as well as building relationships, identifying, creating growth strategies, and then executing on them. In most businesses, not enough time is carved out for this. And this is a big failing, as teams just don't have the capacity to grow your existing clients, which is where your easiest revenue stream is available. And if they do have time, most client services individuals

will need training on how to become a strategic advisor and how to create account plans and execute on them, as this is a skill set of sales which most individuals will not have.

Finally, a really important part of building a successful team that will be servicing your clients for any service -based business is ensuring that when you hire, you are looking for the right attributes, not just looking at where they have been or what their previous job title was. I've hired some of the best client services team members based on their skills over their experience. Let's also think back to the variety of hats that someone in that role has to wear, each of which have their own skill sets required to achieve them.

So this is where hiring and training is vital to get the best from your team. In my experience, the key skills that someone in a client services role should have are to be curious, to be inquisitive, empathetic, authentic, and to be a people person. As well as the usual strong communicator, having excellent organisational skills, good at problem solving, great attention to detail, and particularly working well under pressure.