What do client executives do? Think customer service, but upgraded. Like customer success managers, client executives act as liaisons between external partners and their own internal departments, ensuring customers or clients get questions answered and remain satisfied with their products or services. Because client executives closely manage client account portfolios, they also oversee project management procedures, prioritizing and escalating customer issues, monitoring the progress of client requests and needs, and checking that business milestones are achieved.
People in this role are highly communicative and organized, and because they’re the “face” of their company with paying customers, they’re often extremely patient and good at building and maintaining relationships.
Want to learn more about the professional background and daily tasks of a client executive? Read on to learn about the job firsthand from a woman who does it.
Evgeniia (Jenya) Davis
Client Executive at Gradient AI with three years of experience
What does a client executive do?
A client executive acts as a liaison between external customers and internal departments. My role at Gradient AI is to coordinate the process for new client implementations and serve as a main point of contact after they “go live.” The focus is to proactively identify potential challenges within the client’s implementation process and to exceed client’s utilization expectations with our systems and models in production.
What’s your professional background and why did you pursue your current career?
My professional background includes many years of experience as an economics and finance professor and as a financial analyst at an actuarial consulting firm. I pursued this type of role because of my prior background and that I’m naturally good at project planning, coordinating, researching, and educating colleagues/customers.
How do you help the company?
As a client executive, I am the face of the company, and I’m responsible for serving the needs of existing customers and onboarding new clients. I gather client’s questions and ideas and bring them to the appropriate team for internal discussions, which helps improve products and meet clients’ expectations. My goal is to make our clients as happy as possible within the implementation process and after production. A happy client will be a good reference for many new clients and impact the company’s growth.
What does a typical workday look like?
A typical workday involves many external and internal meetings and project management tasks. External meetings with clients and prospects include training, learning, listening, and educating. Internal meetings can be with engineering and data science teams around the product status or team-wide check-ins. The project management work includes implementation, monitoring post going live, status updates, and client reporting.
What are the three most important parts of your job?
To be a successful client executive at a tech startup you need to be:
1) a creative problem-solver
2) proactive
3) and an active listener who focuses on customer success.
What’s the hardest part of your job?
Juggling multiple clients at once and being able to get all my assignments done in a timely and effective manner.
What’s the best part of your job?
The happy clients. Hearing positive feedback regarding the products and services we provided makes me grateful to work here.
What’s one piece of advice you could give to someone interested in being a client executive?
The best piece of advice I could give would be to learn your company’s product inside and out, always maintain a positive attitude, respond quickly, and stay focused on customers’ needs and expectations.
