It Takes A Team to Raise a Client
May 2nd, 2006
As the Yield Manager market place grows, we find that how we support our clients has to evolve. And we’re hearing great feedback about the changes we’ve recently made.
Our original strategy was to assign an account manager to each account. The account manager was responsible for training and technical support for their clients. It didn’t take long to realize that model was not scalable, nor did it allow us to truly understand our clients’ needs.
We recently changed support models by breaking out our support functions into teams. Often, new clients may be assigned a team of their own, one person from each of the following groups, with members tapering off as they’re no longer needed.
Client Strategy Management: Each new account is now assigned a Client Strategy Manager. As the title implies, CSMs work with client decision makers to understand their corporate issues, goals, and needs, and provide best practices and consultative support for meeting those goals within the YM Maketplace. Often this requires discussions on how Yield Manager is different from typical ad servers, how doing business the “old” way may not meet their goals in the open marketplace environment. Every client introduces new best practices for the marketplace. All clients are not the same. We take the time to listen and understand each client’s business so we can guide them toward success. We also listen to learn how their needs can help drive the development of our products. Understanding each client’s business also allows us to recommend good partners to each other as well as share those best practices learned through another client’s success.
Solutions/Product Management: Our clients’ business needs drive the growth and development of our product. We tend toward fast and frequent development cycles, so communication between Solutions and the other functions, as well as Solutions and clients direct, is constant and critical. We’re constantly developing new products, improving upon existing ones, and contending with new issues brought to our attention by the marketplace (our clients). Don’t be surprised if you’re contacted by our Solutions or Product Management team members to participate in beta testing or client feedback on project or program ideas.
Technical Support: We now have a technical support group who is solely responsible for evaluating technical issues, bugs, and feature enhancement requests. This allows our former account managers to focus on forming a strategic alliance with clients while giving better technical support to clients through resources who are dedicated to this function. Support team members funnel issues directly to our solutions and technical teams. Clients submit technical support tickets directly to our support team.
Training: We have a new Director of Training, several trainers, and a documentation team working to build out new online training modules which can be customized for individual clients’ needs. You’ll find these online modules in the Knowledge Base (accessible via your usual YM login). Trainers are also available for specific topics not yet covered in the Knowledge Base or by individual modules. Please search for topics of interest in the Knowledge Base when you need training information. If the Knowledge Base doesn’t cover it, please contact your Client Strategy Manager who can point you in the right direction or schedule training with a trainer to suit your needs.
So far, we’ve received great feedback on this model. Our best resources are our people. The people making up each of our support functions can now focus on what they’re good at and our clients are getting better service. Client Strategy Managers focus on creating a partnership with clients. Support and Product Managers focus on creating technical solutions to clients’ business problems. Tech Support focus on providing faster answers and getting technical issues into the development cycle quicker. Trainers focus on making self-help modules available 24/7 and providing more advanced training sessions as needed.
Together, these functions create a more efficient support system by pushing information to and from clients in more timely manner. Stay tuned for expanded programs from all of these functions.
