To deliver the service to the clients which a company’s sales team laid out has a real thing to deal with. If not met, it’s just up for a downfall while creating a poor experience for the clients. On the other hand, there are potential customers all around us, and if they are just left to themselves then who’ll introduce your brand to them to witness the benefits of your product? The role and responsibilities of these two separate operations-“Client Service Manager” and “Client Engagement Manager”-differ.
Who is a client service manager?
A client service manager is the one who delivers impeccable service justified by the best experience offered to the clients, endorsing the sales goals of the business. They are indeed directly interacting with the clients and have a responsibility to look after every move of client service representatives.
It is all possible with the planned client success strategies having the sole intention to yield a good client experience and to increase the number of sales.
How to become a client service manager?
This role expects a candidate with a bachelor’s degree in accounting or business management to get selected. The skills that are looked into are analytical skills and communication skills, so it is helpful to come up with strategic thoughts to meet the goals of the business and to build meaningful relationships with clients.
Of course, to directly get this position is not possible with just experience in customer-facing roles. To start with, a customer success representative role is initially given and later on with 5 years of experience, one gets eligible for the client service manager role.
Over the experience, one must have gained strong problem-solving, creative thinking, and time management skills with a leadership role. The added advantage is in learning a new language to be able to communicate with clients from different residences and the know-how of customer service software is beneficial.
Additional Read: Responsibilities of a Client Success Manager
Responsibilities of the client service manager
- To be able to comprehend the client’s needs and to build a relationship with the clients.
- Looking after the client service representatives to ensure the delegated tasks are run smoothly.
- To establish the best client experience by utilizing the creative quotient of the mind.
- Developing and managing the protocols of client service processes.
- Professionally handling the client disputes if any.
- Training the team to meet the goals set.
- Keeping track of the client interactions to document them for future reference in training.
- Monitoring the KPIs and reporting them every month to see if there can be any improvisation.
Salary of a client service manager
- India, the salary is INR 11,00,000 / year.
- In the US the salary is $68,000 / year.
- UK offers the salary of Euro 38000/ year.
- In Australia, the salary is A$81,000/ year.
Who is a client engagement manager?
Once the contract is signed, it is the client engagement manager who builds a positive relationship and indulges in solving the issues a client is facing. Meeting up to their expectations timely, assigning the resource for their utilization, billing, and sending an invoice are the primary tasks they work upon. They ensure to document each project with its progress. Going on they can either be head of sales or relations.
How to become one?
The first requirement is to have a bachelor’s degree in marketing or business. An experience in customer service is the start of the ladder of client engagement manager and about 4 years of experience in it can bring you to this position.
The important skill is to communicate fluently with the clients and to analyze the solution to solve their issues. Following this, good organizational and negotiation skills are important as well. It’s a heads up if you have experience in handling multiple projects at once. Hands-on knowledge in Microsoft suite is helpful!
Responsibilities of client engagement manager:
- Assigning resources to the client.
- Identifying opportunities for upsells.
- Solving the issues the client is experiencing.
- To ensure the correct carrying out of the contract.
- Sharing the bill and sending the invoice.
- Look out for new clients by collaborating with the sales team.
- Ensuring to create an experience that is positive to the client.
- Creating reports to record the contract progress.
Suggested Read: Engage non-responding customers in B2B SaaS
Salary:
- India, the salary is INR 10L / year.
- In the US, the salary is $77,300 / year.
- UK offers a salary of Euros 47,059 / year.
- In Australia, the salary is A$1,10,722/ year.
In the end!
The client service manager is the one who brings customer satisfaction to the client base by optimizing the process of service.
Whereas the client engagement manager in the firm establishes a client-centric setup where the clients rely on them for trusted advice.
While the common thing among both is establishing the best customer experience for the clients with a difference in the way of servicing and engaging. But mostly a client engagement manager shows much more proficiency than a client service manager as it is that long-lasting rapport that is driving sales, profits, and retention.
