Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Client Services Director

🎯 Role Definition

The Client Services Director is a senior leader responsible for owning and growing strategic client relationships, ensuring exceptional service delivery, leading multi-disciplinary account teams, and driving profitable revenue growth. This role blends high-level strategic advisory, operational rigor, and people leadership to maximize client satisfaction, retention, and lifetime value. The ideal candidate is a trusted advisor who translates client objectives into actionable plans, measurably improves outcomes, and collaborates with sales, product, creative, and operations to execute integrated programs.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Account Director / Strategic Account Director
Head of Client Services / Account Management Lead
Senior Client Partner or Group Account Director

Advancement To:

Vice President, Client Services / VP of Client Success
Head of Account Management / Head of Client Partnerships
Chief Customer Officer / Commercial Director

Lateral Moves:

Director of Commercial Partnerships
Director of Professional Services
Director of Operations or Program Management

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Own the overall client relationship for strategic accounts, serving as the primary executive contact, trusted advisor, and escalation point to ensure alignment of services with client business goals and executive priorities.
Lead account strategy development by partnering with clients and internal stakeholders to define KPIs, success metrics, roadmaps, and integrated plans that drive measurable business outcomes and long-term growth.
Manage a portfolio-level P&L: set revenue targets, control costs, oversee pricing and contract terms, forecast quarterly performance, and deliver against profitability goals while balancing client needs and service quality.
Drive new business growth within assigned accounts through strategic upsell and cross-sell initiatives, identifying opportunities for expanded services, solution bundles, and long-term engagements to increase account lifetime value.
Build, mentor, and scale high-performing client services teams (Account Directors, Managers, Project Managers), conducting performance reviews, career planning, hiring, and fostering a culture of client-first delivery and continuous improvement.
Lead senior stakeholder governance with regular executive business reviews, steering committees, and program health reporting to present results, insights, and strategic recommendations that reinforce the agency/firm’s value.
Oversee end-to-end delivery management for complex, multi-channel programs—set priorities, allocate resources, remove impediments, and ensure timely, on-budget delivery of large-scale projects and campaigns.
Negotiate and review client contracts, SOWs, and Master Service Agreements in partnership with Legal and Sales to ensure clear deliverables, SLAs, commercial protections, and mutually beneficial terms.
Ensure consistent measurement and reporting of campaign and program performance using dashboards and analytics—translate data into actionable insights, optimization recommendations, and quarterly business reviews.
Serve as a subject-matter expert for service offerings and product capabilities—articulate value propositions, define service scopes, and align internal teams to deliver against client expectations and market benchmarks.
Drive client retention and churn mitigation strategies by proactively identifying at-risk accounts, developing remediation plans, and coordinating cross-functional resources to stabilize relationships and deliver quick wins.
Coordinate cross-functional collaboration across sales, product, creative, engineering, analytics, and operations to ensure integrated solutions and seamless delivery—from scoping through launch and optimization.
Oversee change management and client adoption plans for new technologies, product releases, or platform migrations—define training, onboarding, and communication strategies that accelerate client value realization.
Implement and maintain robust account governance processes (RACI, escalation paths, version control, risk registers) to reduce delivery risk and maintain transparency between client and internal teams.
Design and implement service excellence frameworks, playbooks, and standard operating procedures to scale consistent, repeatable, and high-quality client delivery across accounts.
Lead strategic planning cycles, including annual account plans and quarterly business reviews, aligning internal resourcing and investments to client roadmaps and commercial objectives.
Advise on creative and media strategy from a client value perspective—partner with subject matter teams to ensure proposals and campaigns are grounded in client KPIs and ROI expectations.
Champion continuous improvement by running post-mortems, capturing lessons learned, and translating feedback into process improvements, tooling upgrades, or capability investments.
Manage risk and compliance for client engagements, ensuring adherence to contractual SLAs, data privacy regulations, security guidelines, and brand safety requirements when applicable.
Drive client satisfaction measurement (NPS, CSAT, qualitative feedback) and lead initiatives to improve scores, resolve client concerns, and institutionalize client feedback loops into product and service development.
Represent the company externally at client events, industry conferences, and networking forums to strengthen client partnerships and enhance the organization’s market reputation.
Collaborate with Sales and Marketing to develop case studies, testimonials, and references from successful accounts; support RFP responses and pitch activity as a senior client-facing leader.
Ensure effective resource planning and capacity management across account teams to maintain service levels, prevent burnout, and scale staffing aligned to business cycles.
Advocate for client needs internally and prioritize product/roadmap requests by synthesizing market insights and client feedback into strategic recommendations for leadership.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Facilitate cross-training and knowledge sharing between client services and analytics teams to improve client reporting quality.
Assist in the creation of pricing models, service packages, and commercial templates to standardize proposals.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Client relationship management and executive stakeholder engagement (enterprise-level experience).
P&L management, revenue forecasting, budgeting, and financial reporting for client portfolios.
Contract negotiation, Statement of Work (SOW) development, and SLA/compliance oversight.
CRM and account management tools: Salesforce, HubSpot, or comparable enterprise CRMs.
Project and delivery management tools and methodologies: Jira, Asana, Wrike, Trello, and Agile/Scrum practices.
Data-driven decision making: familiarity with Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Tableau, Looker, Power BI, or similar analytics platforms.
Digital marketing and campaign management knowledge across channels (paid media, SEO, social, email, content).
Reporting automation and dashboarding: proficiency with SQL basics, Excel (advanced), and BI reporting best practices.
Proposal writing and commercial modeling to support renewals, upsells, and new offerings.
Vendor and partner management, including SOWs, SLAs, and partner performance tracking.
Change management and client onboarding frameworks for technology/platform deployments.
Experience with RFP/RFI responses and senior-level pitch presentations.

Soft Skills

Strategic thinker with the ability to translate business objectives into operational plans and measurable outcomes.
Exceptional communication and presentation skills—comfortable presenting to C-suite and leading executive conversations.
High emotional intelligence and stakeholder management; able to build trust and manage expectations across diverse teams.
Strong leadership and people management: coaching, mentoring, hiring, and developing high-performing teams.
Problem-solving orientation with a bias for action and decisive decision-making under ambiguity.
Negotiation and influence skills to balance client needs with company profitability.
Client-centric mindset and service orientation focused on retention and long-term value creation.
Organizational skills and attention to detail to manage multiple complex accounts simultaneously.
Resilience and adaptability to manage change in fast-paced, client-driven environments.
Collaborative mindset to break down silos and drive cross-functional alignment.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, Advertising, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

MBA or Master's degree in Business, Marketing, or related disciplines preferred for larger enterprise roles.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Business Administration
Marketing & Communications
Advertising / Media Studies
Project Management / Operations
Data Analytics / Information Systems (advantageous)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

8–15+ years of progressive client-facing and account leadership experience, ideally within agencies, consultancies, SaaS, or professional services.

Preferred:

10+ years of client services or account management experience with at least 3–5 years managing leaders/managers and owning P&L for strategic accounts.
Demonstrated track record of driving revenue growth, improving client retention, and leading complex program delivery at scale.
Experience working with enterprise clients and cross-functional teams across creative, product, technology, and analytics disciplines.