Client Service in the AI Era: What Skills Will Matter Most?

Welcome to the Client Service AI revolution – are you ready?

In the race to stay ahead of clients as well as competitors, artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally reshaping how client service and account management teams operate. As AI is used to optimize delivery, the dynamics of client relationships, workflow expectations and skill requirements will all change. In this article, I’ll consider how AI will transform traditional account management, what will remain essential in agency-client relationships and how client service teams can win in an AI-powered game.

What Will and Won't Change

As ability and speed to generate insight and content increases, new norms of workflow delivery – faster, cheaper, more accurate – will set expectations for perfection across all areas. Clients will be far less tolerant of mistakes, lack of insight or failure to use AI for their benefit, and baseline standards will need to rise and match these new expectations.

There will be an erosion of traditional agency points of differentiation, with many agencies using the same data and AI tools in the same way. While this levelling of the playing field may elevate the average performance across agencies, below-average providers and teams (along with unjustified higher prices and over-reliance on AI) will stand out more.

The pleasure and pain of human interactions will gain more importance. AI will never have the memory of the shared moment, the creative epiphany or the ability to amplify the emotion of those experiences, elevating the scarcity value of genuine connection.

What Does it Mean for Client Service?

Client service should balance operational delivery with strategic insight and relationship building. But for many account handlers, strategic thinking and relationship building get sacrificed in the pressure to deliver projects and revenue, meaning longer-term prospects for business and career growth become compromised to meet short-term demands.

The Competing Demands of Client Service

What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats posed by AI for client service teams, and how can AI expand the value-creating strategic and relationship-building elements and avoid an even greater focus on delivery?

SWOT – Agency Client Service and Artificial Intelligence

Strengths Closest to the client, own and build the relationship Direct access and insight into clients’ needs, wants and values Able to spot and convert business opportunities Access to strategy, sales, revenue, delivery, and client relationships – all the aspects needed for success

Opportunities Take an AI-first approach to optimizing delivery to reduce time spent on aspects valued less by clients Find and leverage unique data and insights with AI Use AI to create options, products and propositions on real points of value and differentiation with AI Gain AI expertise that clients don’t have time to get Stand out by adding unique value to AI output Personalize the client experience Up-skill on the human differentiating aspects of client service

Weaknesses Competing priorities mean focusing on short-term urgent matters (delivery and revenue targets, client issues) Under-investing in differentiating skills that add long-term value (strategy, client relationship building, new business, AI) Defaulting to clients as the source of strategy, insight, or best practice for using AI

Threats AI gains get swallowed up by urgent tasks or churning out more ‘stuff’, either to clients or for their clients Harder to differentiate on product features, price or technical/delivery skills Clients have access to many of the same tools and data and do things for themselves Relying on AI to add value Deskilling if dependent on AI vs. developing own skills, knowledge, insights, points of view, relationship-building abilities

Maximizing Opportunities and Minimizing Threats

This will be about adding value by gaining, retaining, and utilizing expertise that clients don’t have and AI can’t provide. Expertise will become the major point of differentiation, and you’ll need to know what yours is, highlight it to your clients and use it. Success has always been when it’s impossible for your client to say they could do the job themselves.

Gain time and use it wisely

At its best, AI should provide significant time savings. Look for completely new ways to get the same or better outcome rather than adapting old ways. Don’t spend time doing things AI could do quicker or better, or on tasks that clients don’t value. Review and approval processes are a perfect example of a time-consuming, costly process in the control of client service, which could be optimized and learnings from the past shared to make efficiencies and savings for both sides. AI can also accelerate actions and implementations that would often die off with competing priorities.

Use the time gained for strategic recommendations, long-term decision making and relationship building – things clients really value. AI tools can uncover whether a client’s problem has been solved somewhere before, or suggest ways of anticipating and managing challenges in the relationship. Avoid getting sucked into more urgent but less important tasks, or overwhelming clients in a race to the bottom of quantity over quality.

Build relationships and expand knowledge

Even in B2B, people will continue to buy people. The ability to connect with clients – understand and resonate with an audience, pitch and tell stories, sell a compelling vision – will be more important than ever. How can you get unique information or have a unique perspective that supports you in doing this?

Touchpoints with clients will become more important

One of the biggest demonstrations of commitment is turning up in person or making time to connect. Live pitches, chemistry and review meetings, negotiating with clients and negotiating for clients (including within their own team) also provide knowledge that AI can’t get. Collaborating and co-creating with clients creates possibilities that are inherently creative in an unpredictable and unrepeatable way.

Having client contact won't be enough

Use time with clients to identify and create value, based on what they tell you about themselves, their preferences and biases, their decision-making processes and their product or industry. Deep listening means attuning attention and interest, being curious and recognizing human signs like enthusiasm, questioning, excitement and doubt. Empathy, intuition, questioning and social skills are competencies that can be developed to give you an advantage based on what clients will tell you, a differentiator that can’t be substituted by AI or competitors. Client uncertainty is one of the biggest opportunities to gain understanding and offer solutions based on what only you know.

Live interactions are not the only source of insight

Look for other ways to find out what matters to your client and why, professionally and personally. Have they done any podcasts, written articles or LinkedIn posts? What is the sentiment, and how do their values show up? Besides big corporate articles and press releases, what goes out in their local media and language?  What are the nuances that might not reach the front page of the international press?

Use AI to create stand-out relationships

Insight surveys before starting new projects, along with regular client feedback, can be aggregated and analyzed by AI to understand what a client values and how they will respond in particular situations. Recognizing preferences allows you to create personas and personalize the client experience by creating tailored proposals and responses in a way others can’t. Gathering data across multiple clients can also allow you to refine working practices at a macro level.

Adapt your growth strategy

Done well, building the relationship should increase the predictive value of what you know about your client and their business. Use AI to create options based on what only you know about your client, but without overwhelming them – less, but better.

Bringing ideas to life is what sells them – how can you use AI tools not only to generate ideas and copy, but to illustrate potential gains? As processes become more automated and features become less important, focus on outcomes. Give examples of before and after, and explain what could go wrong if a particular option isn’t chosen.

As live pitching and chemistry start to matter more, consider turning down pitches and work where clients don’t offer this – could it be an indicator that the client and company value production over strategy and long-term partnership?

Have a clear position on AI

Different clients will have different views on what they want and expect to see from agencies using AI, and client service teams should be proactive in educating with a distinct point of view.

Find out how comfortable your clients are with agencies using AI – what are their corporate agreements and ethical boundaries, and their personal appetite for innovation and risk? Identify what you can do with AI that your client doesn't have time to learn for themselves, and become fluent in the ethics and standards of your industry, something your clients will need but can’t easily get.

Agency = the ability to take action or to choose what action to take*

Clients and agencies alike are overloaded with information and possibilities. AI tools seem able to do many of the tasks clients need, and even if they don't do them well, they can appear to do them well enough.

The ultimate test of value is to imagine what would be lost if something were taken away. AI presents client service teams with the choice of taking a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-establish themselves as true strategic and relational partners, or risk clients choosing to stop paying for a service that might appear to add little incremental value. Avoid becoming an account management chatbot by putting yourself in your client’s shoes, checking everything you do adds value not volume, and respecting your client’s priorities and bandwidth.

If you have any comments, questions or would like to discuss ways of navigating the changes discussed in this article, please get in touch.

*Source – Cambridge Dictionary