Brandon Jessup

 

What is the key to successful client service?

Positive client experiences are not achieved through customer obsessed employees alone. They are a product of the overall operation. To consistently achieve positive results for clients, I take a holistic approach, looking at people, processes, and technologies to remove barriers to success.

A few key areas I focus on early are:  1) hiring and developing strong leaders, 2) creating a client-focused culture, 3) ensuring operational excellence, and 4) ensuring alignment between delivery and sales.

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How do you successfully instill an organization with a client-focused mindset?

I like to start by creating a charter that defines what “good” looks like: The client-focused mindset should be aspirational, but achievable and framed in a manner team members can easily understand and rally around. Ideally, this spells out not only what, but – at a high level – how. For client success teams, I like to emphasis a few key tenets: 1) be proactive, not reactive, 2) overdeliver, don’t overpromise, and 3) make the client’s job easier and make them look good.

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Additionally, it is important to model behavior and proactively develop key client service skills. I break this out into two areas of focus: 1) hiring and developing strong leaders, who themselves become mentors, and 2) developing and driving engagement in training programs for key client service skills necessary for success.

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How do strong leaders positively impact successful client service?

Strong client service leaders model behavior and are committed to removing barriers to success. They demonstrate to team members exactly what good service looks like by rolling up their sleeves and doing it. Just as importantly, they commit the time and resources necessary to mentor and develop team members to ensure broader client satisfaction and team success. In addition to mentoring and modeling, strong leaders remove barriers to success. They make it easier for their team members to be great client advocates by reducing pain points and distractions. 

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What is your advice to someone starting out as a client relationship manager?

I like to talk to client success managers about the critical importance of building trust. That trust is developed by demonstrating transparency and empathy and by consistently meeting or exceeding client expectations.

Think of your client interactions as involving an exchange of relationship credits. Meeting client expectations for a project earns you perhaps a few relationship credits. Exceeding expectations results in more credits. Falling short of expectations costs you credits. Because of the extreme cost of falling short of expectations, always focus on banking more relationship credits. The more you have, the better positioned you will be if things don’t go as planned on a project or job. 

Pro tip: Humanize participants. Your team members will be more sympathetic to a client (and therefore more engaged in ensuring their satisfaction) if they feel a personal connection. The same is true for clients when thinking of your team members. Emphasize phone calls over emails, video calls over phone calls, and in-person meetings where possible. Keep it professional and look for opportunities to highlight the contributions of team members.

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