Customer Advocate | Revenue

Customer advocates are Project Managers who understand deeply the needs of their client organization or customer class and strive to meet those needs while balancing our operational needs and mission. Customer advocates hold the primary responsibility for building and maintaining great relationships with the customers in their portfolio, and are the face of the company to their customers.

Responsibilities

To borrow from this description:

  1. Be the voice of the client – When internal discussions are occurring regarding the client, the client advocate should be the voice of the client. They are responsible for seeing the discussion through the client’s eyes and aggressively protecting the client if necessary. Collaborate with internal teams to address customers’ needs.

  2. Understand the client’s needs and vision – The client advocate should know how the product affects the client and plays into the client’s overall departmental and organizational goals.

  3. Find the middle ground – The client advocate is responsible for making sure that a balance is struck between the client’s goals and needs and your company’s goals and needs. If the two conflict, it is the client advocates goal to facilitate a win-win situation for both organizations.

  4. Be dedicated to getting answers – The client advocate figures out what questions clients have and gets those questions answered.

And also, as applicable:

  1. Contract management
  2. Serve as single point of contact for the assigned client
  3. Ensure both the company and clients adhere to contract terms
  4. Project management
  5. Creation and management of project plans, schedules, budgets

Skills & Competencies

This role requires Manager of One and Project Managercompetencies.

In addition:

Customer Focus

  • Wants the customer to succeed.
  • Intensely focused on clear, detailed understanding of customer needs and processes
  • Sees beyond the surface of the client’s articulated needs and gets to the underlying goals and motivations

Facilitation and Negotiation

  • Keenly attuned to the emotional dimensions of the client interactions
  • Understands and is able to use facilitation and consensus building tools and techniques to keep forward momentum