The Senior Client Success Specialist is an advanced subject matter expert, responsible for building and maintaining the client relationship to drive value for the client and increased lifetime value for the organization.
This role is responsible for multiple medium-to-large or diverse (multi-service) contracts for larger clients. As the primary post-sale point of contact for clients they drive client-facing activity through the Client Success Management Charters of Adoption, Expansion and Renewal.
Acting as the clients trusted advisor they help the client realize value from their relationship with the organization and ensure the client's relationship experience is a positive one.
This role is required to work in partnership with sales and client/service delivery management teams to deliver in-contract growth and a successful on-time renewal as the primary customer contact point.
Core Duties and Responsibilities
Client Nurture / Relationship -
- Develops and maintains the relationship with client representatives to Management level, being recognized as the client's trusted advisor through periodic engagements
- Coordination of new client on-boarding responsibilities, including set-up of the client onto the Client Portals (plus other associated activities).
- Ensures the client can interact successfully with the company and to optimize the engagement (measurable through improving CSAT).
- Preparation and implementation of weekly/monthly/quarterly/bi-annual client service meetings, client audits, client satisfaction surveys as well as tracking of service issues, quality assurance metrics and complaints (including being the first point of contact for complaints and escalations)
- Acts as an escalation point for client issues which are not being resolved though standard process, facilitating a satisfactory client outcome with relevant resolver groups within the company.
- Gathers and tracks client requirements and specifications, including changes throughout the life of the contract and associated approvals/authorisations from the client and the company
- Documents and publishes meeting agendas and associated minutes, and tracks action items, owners, and due dates.
- Control and management of the commercial client contribution, monitoring of the ordering and billing processes as well as chasing outstanding payments/receivables. Development of client interfaces and systems (for example CRM and Change Management Systems)
Adoption Charter -
- Ensures the client is aware of and is successfully adopting offer features and increasing their usage of services (as appropriate).
- Proactively helps the client to realize demonstrable value from the offers and meet their original business (procurement) objectives.
Expansion Charter -
- Drives up-sell of existing offers/services and close the deals to achieve revenue targets.
- Identifies cross-sell opportunities (to extend company's footprint with the client) and facilitates engagement with Sales/GTM functions to engage the client on these opportunities.
Renewal Charter -
- Demonstrates the value delivered by the company throughout the lifetime of the contract and drives a successful and on-time renewal.
- Minimizes churn (client, revenue, service) at renewal and seek opportunities to drive up-sell / cross-sell as part of the renewal process.
- Prepares status reports to keep management, clients, and project team informed of project status, renewal business metrics and related issues
- Recommends appropriate process and procedure revisions in support of continuous improvement.
Client Success Practice -
- Be an active member of the Regional and Global CS Management practice (including adopting standard methodologies, platforms/tools, KPIs, best practice activity, sharing experiences with the community).
- Responsible for Data Quality Management within own client portfolio.
- Must be able to respond to emergency situations at the data center and to carry a cell phone and provide 24 x 7 support as needed.
- Periodic travel to other NTT GDC locations, and client or vendor sites.
- Builds and maintains Client Success Management skills and operating knowledge.
- Builds and maintains an up-to-date knowledge of company offers.
Knowledge, Skills and Attributes:
- Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to develop and maintain solid stakeholder relationships up to Management level.
- Possess excellent problem solving, critical thinking, client service, verbal and written communication skills.
- Advanced account planning and stakeholder mapping and management techniques documented in Account Plans
- Ability to interpret a client's business strategy / plans and understand opportunities for company solutions/services.
- Advanced knowledge of company offers and services, including the core functionality and features, linkage within organization's service portfolio, pricing structures, client benefits.
- Ability to provide an external industry viewpoint (including industry insights, technology trends and competitor landscape) and to highlight company's expertise and differentiated offerings and position partnership offerings with the client.
- Be highly proficient with the use of IT equipment and software systems, including a very good knowledge of MS Office, especially Excel.
- Advanced sales skills (consultative selling and negotiation) with the ability to identify up-sell opportunities and close resulting deals participating as member of the overall sales account team.
- Ability to execute on-time renewals with minimum volume or price churn and maintaining readily available client contract database of post and current contracts together with client specific documentation.
- Strong knowledge and understanding of IT service environment, service operations and ITIL practices.
- Advanced understanding of company's high-level operating model and the ability to develop and maintain relationships across relevant cross-functional teams.
- Advanced understanding of company's billing processes and client invoicing linked to contracted services.
- Advanced understanding of financial statements and metrics, including revenue, expense control, and growth relative to market in order to hold strategic client conversations.
- Advanced understanding of contracts and contract management with the ability to maintain the contract, to discuss with the client and understand how to position as a value exchange.
Additional Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent in information technology or sales or a related field.
- Additional relevant vendor certifications are advantageous.
- At least 6 - 8 years of relevant experience in a client-facing role in one or more of Sales, Service or Consultancy disciplines in a large scale (preferably multi-national) technical services company, such as a data center services provider, telecommunications and/or internet services provider or another similar technical organisation.
- Advanced subject matter and services product expertise within sales and operations.
- Advanced experience in a Managed Services and/or Outsourcing environment.
- Advanced experience as Operations /Delivery Manager, Account Executive, Solutions Consultant/Service architect for medium to large managed services contracts for assigned clients.