*Disclaimer: When I say creative I mean copy, design, video, animation and everything in between.
The first role I applied for right after my undergrad was for Client Servicing. Despite learning organisational behaviour, when the interviewer asked me what I thought the position meant, I awkwardly described it to her as “umm, uh, a sandwich between the creative team and the client?”
Safe to say I didn’t get the job and rightly so. Little did I know it will become a role that I will hate in the years to come. If there is one thing copywriters and the design team all agree on it is their mutual frustration towards the client servicing team. While we love them when they push back the deadlines, we absolutely hate it when they sashay towards us at 6 p.m. and hit us with that “yeh aaj khatam karna hi padega” (we have to finish this today).
To me their job seemed banal. Receive an email from the client, press the forward button, mark the relevant designer and copywriter, repeat. If you asked in 2019, my job description for a CS person would read :
– Must be persistently annoying
– Must not have a soul
– Must have thick skin for all abuses hurled at them under breath, behind their back and to their face
– Must not have an iota of creativity in their blood
What’s ironic is over the last five years of working at an agency, my closest friends and colleagues have all been client servicing personnel. When I quit my job to pursue my master’s degree (read: avoid getting married), I became a third-party observer to their job. When I picked up freelance work and became both the copy and the service person, ooof.
It was then that I realised they have the most challenging job in the agency. Here are things you know they do but don’t appreciate them enough for:
1. “Aaj ye bhej de. Main kal jaldi aake karunga, pakka!” (Send this in today, I’ll come early and do it tomorrow promise!)
What do you think happens when you say this? That the client just magically understood the situation? You’re joking right. I’ve seen that classic shoulder sag when the creative leaves. I’ve seen them panic, as they scan the room for someone else to do it. I’ve seen their discomfort as they pick up their phone to call the client and give them a line as to how “This a draft let us know if you like it, we’ll work on the final version tomorrow morning.” This is a big gamble to take depending on the client. Their work starts when our work finishes.
2. “I can’t do this; it is such a shitty brief! Please let me talk to the client.”
I see the alarm bells go off in a CS’s mind when they hear this. A frustrated creative means a delayed output. Another popular one is “This is not my job”. If I were in CS, I’d probably say “Complaining is not in your job description either – yet here we are” (yes this explains why I didn’t get that role). As an agency we all know that a deadline is there to be met and no matter how much time you spend complaining it is not going to go away. So, while you’re out sipping coffee, taking a walk and developing your plans in your head – your CS is freaking out. They’re a reservoir of patience, always facing stress and attempting to deflect it. I would compare their stress levels to a bomb diffusing squad – one wrong wire – one wrong move – and everything could collapse around them.
3. Their promotion rides on someone else’s performance.
There’s no one doling out awards for best conflict management, best people management, most patient person, most dependable in a time-crunch situation. I think the way a client servicing person is judged for an end of the year performance is skewed. In my opinion, they’ve done a great job if they’ve:
(a) Managed to keep the hair on their heads
(b) Kept their teams from quitting
(c) Kept their client from terminating the account despite the disputes and goof-ups
Whether you handle projects, retainers or even just websites – it’s your people management skills that count here.
I watch them fall ill and show up to work, face an angry client yet put on a smile, find tactful ways to tell their creative team the idea isn’t practical. Every single individual has energy. As we work through the day, we exchange this energy. Some people are cranky, some excited, some blah. A client servicing person liaises with over 15 individuals just at work, sometimes even more every single day. To be able to keep their calm without losing their mind and show up every single day is impressive. Here’s to appreciating each one of them for internalising our stress and coping with their own. I can’t say we’ll stop arguing, but I will definitely respect you more!
If I had to re-write the job description from earlier it would read something like this:
Client Servicing Personnel Wanted
– Must have the patience of a mother
– Ability to handle pressure like a bomb disposal squad
– The empathy of a best friend
– Ability to maintain sanity amidst insane creative people
– Compassionate like a psychologist (because we got a lot of issues we want you to resolve but don’t want you to take personally)
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