In the first in an occasional series of blog posts, ClickThrough's Director of Client Services, Chris Roberts, reflects on his first three months in the job, reveals the thinking behind the new Client Services team, his tips for those considering a similar role, and his future hopes for the agency.
What's your new job? What were you doing before?
OK so this is a bit of a cheat…I officially joined ClickThrough in March as Director of Client Services but have been working with the business since October 2019 on a freelance basis.
Prior to this I was working for iProspect in their Stafford office, in the 6 years I was there the focus of my role varied a lot, from establishing the PPC function to launching the Google Marketing Platform partnership.
How does this job differ from what you were doing before?
iProspect is obviously a much larger organisation, and with that brings a number of interesting changes.
The most important element for me so far has been the autonomy I have been afforded to let me make changes to achieve our shared goals, for example launching our client leadership team to help us achieve true digital integration
I’ve also been really impressed with the culture here where we are actively encouraged to challenge each other, it doesn’t matter what role you are in you are empowered to query everything, regardless of if it comes from your line manager or owner and founder.
What are the key responsibilities of your new job?
I am responsible for overseeing the whole of our delivery team, which broadly speaking is split into our product teams (DPM, SEO/Content and CRO) and our client leadership team.
Our product teams are responsible for developing and delivering our clients' digital marketing strategies and ensuring our product offering is both cutting edge and meeting our clients' objectives.
The client leadership team's primary function is to be our clients' voice within the agency, working collaboratively with the product teams to ensure our clients' objectives are met and driving an integrated digital strategy across all channels
How is your performance measured?
The two key measures for my success are client retention and gross profitability (GP).
Obviously key to client retention is ensuring our teams are delivering a good service to our clients and that our product offering is best in market, whilst we are helping them hit their KPIs and achieve their business objectives
In order to help hit our GP target I spend time working with the teams on achieving utilisation targets and ensuring our teams are working as efficiently and effectively as possible.
What do you hope to achieve in your new role?
I’d like to see us achieve significant growth. I’ve been really impressed with the capabilities within the agency, the teams genuinely produce amazing work that is as good as, if not better, than at other agencies I’ve worked at previously so I don’t see any reason why we can’t achieve growth with the agency.
I’d also like our work to be more widely recognised within the industry and to see our reputation grow, we need to be shouting about the great work we are doing even more!
Finally, I’d to see our product proposition to continually evolve to ensure we always offering a market leading service, using best in class technology coupled with our human touch to drive the best results for our clients
What will your new role allow the agency to do that it couldn't before?
With the introduction of the client leadership team I am confident we will now be able to offer a truly integrated service for our clients, with joined up strategies and a holistic approach to digital
Have you got any tips for anyone who might be starting off in a similar role?
Keep an open mind and take to time to talk to everyone and listen!
I was fortunate that I was able to spend a lot of time with the department directors and heads of department to understand what the current challenges were, where the strengths lay and where there were opportunities.
This was invaluable in helping me to shape our strategy, with the introduction of the client leadership team being the first key change to improve our client experience, with many more to come in the future!
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