Tell us about your company, role and what you're responsible for?
Managing Director at Verkeer, an integrated digital marketing agency. I'm responsible for making sure everything runs to plan across the business; including client services and new biz.
What advice would you like to share for aspiring leaders looking to deliver a world-class client experience?
It sounds obvious but treat clients how you'd want to be treated. We were all told it growing up and this is the prime example of where it applies in real life. Prioritise them, be kind, be considerate and most of all be honest.
Are there common pitfalls that CS leaders need to be aware of as they scale?
A lot of CS teams try to run without too many processes as they put the human connection first, whilst this has benefits, the processes are what helps consistency across the client set which helps when someone leaves/joins, and act as a great safeguard against any client issues. It needs to be a balance where people get to be people but they're protected by checks and process to take out the guesswork.
How are you leveraging AI in your organisation? What are the opportunities and risks you see?
There's a couple of different ways - firstly for our client services to take call notes and measure client satisfaction consistently across the client set (which leads into our goals and KPIs for managers), but also to speed up operational tasks like writing job descriptions and to do research on niche topics.
What does the future of client service look like? What changes do you expect?
That's a difficult one as 12 months ago we probably wouldn't have imagined AI playing such a role already, I think for us the key is going to be that clients feel the same care and attention whilst we find ways to scale that up without increasing head count.