Job Summary

A new opportunity has arisen for a Head of Client Services to lead some of our key Corporate Accounts plus to develop and grow the Client Services function comprising a team of 18+ personnel. This role requires an inspirational, natural collaborator, with excellent leadership skills to build strong relationships with leading clients and to lead, develop, and motivate the account management team, leading them to achieve or even surpass goals/targets.

In this role you work collaboratively and confidently with internal teams across the agency to achieve our client experience and revenue goals. You will be passionate about client experience and engagement, and you will have a proven and successful track record in establishing strong and long-term client relationships, being able to retain and develop the highest-value relationships.

You will help to ensure the agency continues to provide an empowering and productive working environment and culture. Working cross-functionally, you’ll be there to ensure client goals are met through an innovative, creative and considered application of people, skills and resource.

You will be commercially minded, and detail orientated, comfortable with all aspects of agency financial reporting, you will play a key role in agency forecasting and will be responsible for reporting critical revenue performance aligned to budget.

The Head of Client Services will ensure the team structure and procedures allow the team to work efficiently and provide the client with an optimal experience. You will work closely with other department leaders to drive the company’s strategy and client success.

German language skills at professional business level are essential.

The Company

Tjarks and Tjarks is an international packaging design agency. We are a team of creatives, strategists, researchers, and project managers. We have studios in London and Chicago.

We have over 30 years experience of designing and producing food and drink brands that win at the retail shelf. We have long lasting client relationships that span over decades. We deliver our 360-degree design to artwork philosophy efficiently, faithfully, and accurately, across the globe. We love a challenge, and we love what we do.

What we are looking for

• You will have significant experience and a passion of working within client services at a senior level
• You will have a proven track record of leading and developing key client business relationships within the creative sector, and growing accounts
• You will have experience of managing teams of at least 10+ personnel
• You will have natural leadership ability and style, and clear experience of building, developing, mentoring, coaching and leading teams
• You will have demonstrable experience of defining, driving and implementing client service strategy and best in class client service practices
• You will have German language skills in speaking and writing at professional business level, and excellent written and verbal communication skills
• You will have knowledge of branding, packaging design and packaging artwork
• You will have a thorough understanding of internal design agency procedures and standards, client expectations, and the demands for executing a high turnover of design and artworks for major retailers (thousands of SKUs per year)
• You will have significant design to production experience
• You will have experience managing global retail clients or similar and building long standing client relationship with demonstrated excellence in working with high-level clients
• You will be revenue focused and commercially minded, aiming to deliver profitable performance against budget with the mindset to drive and grow client partnerships
• You have an eagle eye to ensure a consistent, high level of precision and accuracy
• You thrive in a deadline-driven and fast paced project environment
• You like to work collaboratively across teams and are a team-player
• You have superior time management and organisational skills
• You are self-motivated, autonomous, creative and able to work to deadlines
• You are naturally inquisitive, adventurous and a desire to change the status quo
• You champion our high standards
• You are confident, with a positive attitude
• You’re able to work flexibly to meet the needs of the business

What you will be responsible for

Operational efficiency/best practices

• You will be responsible for defining client service interactions and operations
• You will define operational best in class practices, processes and system use to drive efficiency
• You will manage the day-to-day client services operations of selected key accounts and projects
• You will agree best practice for account administration, project briefing, management information and reporting, system use, client onboarding and service reviews with continuous improvement and innovation

Customer experience/communication

• You will provide strategy and support to the client services team and clients directly on driving satisfaction, experience and engagement. Developing an intimate understanding of the full agency service portfolio, ways of working, problem triage, resolution and escalation
• You will oversee and manage service levels to ensure they exceed client expectations
• You will develop industry leading relationships with external key account contacts in order to ensure that the business receives constant leads on potential key clients

Team management/leadership

• You will lead, support, recruit and develop the client services team
• You will set and manage the expectations of the client services team in terms of deliverables
• You will lead agency processes and ensure the client services team’s compliance
• You will manage the team to work within agreed frameworks and financial targets
• You will motivate and engage the team to foster a positive working environment
• You will actively build and develop team capabilities through training and mentoring
• You will be a role model to the business demonstrating the core values

Management / Commercials / Strategy

• You will manage budgets within the department; ensuring KPIs are met and consistently drive growth
• You will provide strategic direction to the team and business to ensure profitability is maintained
• You will analyse and recommend process enhancements to the senior leadership team
• You will set and maintain internal standards, ensuring work is on strategy and within brief
• You will identify and flag problems with job profitability and re-estimate where appropriate
• You will suggest process improvements that may help with overall profitability of projects
• You will up-sell solutions to clients and monitor job profitability against agency targets
• You will actively identify opportunities for organic growth and new business within existing client portfolio

What you will get

• Competitive salary
• To work on a wide variety of exciting international projects
• 25 days holiday a year, plus 1 extra special me day
• Pension plan
• Private healthcare option
• Company get-togethers