A Day In The Life
Account Manager Laura Nash
As an Account Manager my role has two key aspects, to make sure that our clients are happy with our service, and to advise them on products and services that they would find valuable.
“I usually start the day quite early as I’m keen to review any e-mails from our clients or technical teams that have arrived since yesterday, plus it takes me a while to get ready in the morning! I then call the Technical Consultants who look after the clients I am visiting that day, and also the helpdesk team to see if there is anything I need to know before my meeting. I’ll often be going straight to a client meeting from home so I leave myself plenty of time, travelling in the Home Counties can sometimes be a bit of a challenge and I hate being late.
I generally have two type of meetings, our service review meetings and more informal catch up’s. If it’s a service review meeting we’ll work through an agenda that has been agreed in advance, we’ll talk about the clients business, what goals and priorities they have and what changes might be happening that will impact on IT. This helps us to prepare or update a Roadmap for their IT, identify changes in their systems that might be required, or highlight the need for new services. The Helpdesk is a critical element of our service so we review the helpdesk service for the previous period – specifically around communication and speed of issue resolution. We will have already tried to identify if there are any trends that might lead us to a system issue, and if we’ve found one, we’ll discuss with the client what we think is happening and what we think we should do about it. We also take the opportunity to discuss our service delivery more broadly, my job is to find out how the clients feels and address any issues they might have.
I also take responsibility for any renewals that might be coming up such as Anti-virus, broadband connections, licences of any sort. We keep a record of these for our clients so that we can prepare renewal quotes in good time without the client having to remember them. I’ll also often be asked to prepare some hardware of software quotes as a result of the discussion for example new laptops, upgraded memory. From time to time we will be discussing a major infrastructure project with the client and in these instances I’ll work closely with the Technical Consultant to ensure we have an accurate and comprehensive quote and proposal for the equipment and the time to carry it out. Working with the Technical Consultants, Operations Manager, Helpdesk teams is an important and enjoyable part of the role, we have to operate as a team to be successful.
Depending upon my diary I may have other client meetings that day and not get to the office at all. On other days I might go back to the office where there’s plenty to get on with, such as calling the clients I have scheduled to speak to that day, even if it’s just to say “Hi” and check everything is ok. The telephone is a key way for me to stay in touch rather than just emails. I catch up with client e-mails, work on proposals and quotes that are needed and speak to the Helpdesk teams to see if there are any major issues with my clients. I like to leave for the day knowing there’s nothing major happening in my clients and they are all happy, or if there is, that the guys are working on it and the clients are all fully updated with the next steps. Final job of the day is to make sure I’ve got all my preparation and paperwork ready for the next day’s meetings and I feel ready to go, then I hop in the car and make my way home and hope the traffic is kind to me.