- Information
- AI Chat
Final Project - Persuasive Essay
English Composition II (ENG123)
Southern New Hampshire University
Recommended for you
Preview text
Persuasive Essay Rachel Bemis
ENG123-T1885 English Composition II
Stanley Weiss October 16, 2022
What does the day-to-day job look like for an account manager? To have a better understanding of how many customers an account manager will be able to handle while dealing with client neediness, high quality service level, and the number of meetings per week it’s best to know what exactly an account manager does. Account managers provide their customers with white glove customer service, support, and improvement opportunities on the product they are using. SaaS, software as a service. An account manager will train the customer on the product, upsell additional features or services the product offers, answer questions and/or concerns that come up about the product, and always provide high quality customer service. Account managers should maintain a book of business of fifteen customer accounts or less. Client neediness, service level, and meeting frequency impact the reasoning on why account managers should have no more than fifteen accounts to manage at any given time. The more accounts an account manager takes on the less likely they are to meet their deadlines and avoid burn out.
Account managers must learn the ins and outs of all their customers. “An account manager is generally the business representative with whom the client has the most one-on-one interaction. This staff member oversees the daily, routine tasks involved with addressing the customer’s needs and concerns and maintaining their account activities” (Kagan, 2022). In the SaaS industry, most software companies have different plan levels with additional features that a customer can purchase, and an account manager will oversee providing that service and knowing what each customer will be receiving once the sale has closed and the contract is signed. These tasks, even though they may be simple, can become quite cumbersome with the more customers an account manager takes on. As an account manager is working through these daily and/or weekly tasks to make sure a customer is onboarded, and the software is working as expected for a customer they also must be mindful of the level of service they are providing. Account
there for them and they need to know that when they reach out, they will receive a response instead of waiting for someone buried in additional tasks and emails to respond to them.
Going hand in hand with both level of service and client neediness is meeting frequency. Depending on the stage of using the product or software a customer may need to have more meetings and if they are a needier client, you may be meeting with them more often. If a customer is onboarding you may be meeting with them once or twice a week. “10 one-hour meetings a week (plus prep and follow ups) mean they have just 20 hours left to do the rest of their work.” (Sakas, 2021). 20 hours left a week to work on fifteen accounts only leaves them with an hours and twenty minutes to make sure agreed upon tasks are completed. Raise that fifteen accounts to even twenty accounts and an account manager is going to run out of time, work additional hours to catch up, become overwhelmed, and burnt out trying to meet expectations.
Account managers need to be proactive. Being proactive means an account manager is “always looking for new ways to provide their clients with value, and they don’t wait for a problem to arise and react to it. Instead, they anticipate their client’s next problem and have a solution locked and loaded.” (Raymond, n.). If an account manager is spending their time in meetings and trying to complete tasks for their customers, they are not going to have the bandwidth to be proactive, which leaves them being reactive to any issues that do arise. Customers prefer to have an account manager that is proactive and letting them know of issues they may encounter, but with fifty accounts and the potential for issues in the software industry there may be no time for an account manager to consistently stay proactive because they are addressing their level of service, needy clients, and meeting frequency.
“Talk to any CEO, and they’ll tell you how important their customers are. Customers bring revenue, which is the lifeblood of a business!” (Statler, 2021). CEO’s will have their sales team continue to find new customers and continue to add these customers to their current account managers book of business, even if they don’t have the bandwidth. Customer success managers, also known as CSMs, do a lot of the same tasks that an account manager does. Dave Blake, the CEO of clientsuccess says, “I prefer to keep the number of accounts in the 25- range, but many CSMs can manage up to 50 accounts and still build meaningful relationships, pick up the phone, respond to emails, and eliminate customer challenges in a reasonable amount of time.” (Blake, 2021). With this logic, Blake assumes that all customers and all products in the software industry are equal and that they all will require the same level of service, meeting frequency, and their neediness won’t affect productivity. We know that not all two people are the same, so why would we assume two companies and their customer needs would be the same as well.
In conclusion, account managers are burnt out from taking on too many accounts. Client neediness, service level, and meeting frequency impact the reasoning on why account managers should have no more than 15 accounts to manage at any given time. When an account manager has more than 15 accounts, they run the risk of being more reactive than proactive which will affect the trust their customers have in them and the product. At the same time, the amount of time an account manager has per week to work on customer tasks and meet with their customers is minimal meaning the more customers they have the less time they can make sure they are set up for success.
Final Project - Persuasive Essay
Course: English Composition II (ENG123)
University: Southern New Hampshire University
This is a preview
Access to all documents
Get Unlimited Downloads
Improve your grades
