Key Accounts Manager

Job Summary

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Strategic Partner to join our team, focusing on our National Accounts. This critical role is designed for a strategic thinker who will take full ownership for the management and success of our most important accounts; encompassing all CX responsibilities and the coordination of holistic project teams. The central focus of the role is to serve as a champion for these crucial customers, ensuring an exceptional experience throughout their relationship with Acuity. The Strategic Partner will be the central point of communication, seamlessly coordinating between both external stakeholders and internal teams—such as Sales, Customer Operations, Order Support, and Post-Sales. The ideal candidate will have a knack for building and maintaining strong relationships, resolving complex issues, and identifying new opportunities for growth. They will also be expected to contribute to continuous process improvements and ensure the highest levels of customer satisfaction, both internally and externally. As the Strategic Partner, you will work directly with the sales team in strategic planning meetings, including in-person presentations that may focus on plans and issue resolution promoting continued growth and support. Your role will also involve addressing and resolving issues swiftly and effectively as well as leveraging your strategic problem-solving skills. You will play a key role in developing opportunities within accounts while ensuring that all processes are optimized for efficiency and effectiveness. This position requires a proactive "inspect what you expect" mentality to ensure all aspects of the account management process are meeting and exceeding expectations.

Key Tasks & Responsibilities (Essential Functions)

• Support Sales Team: Work closely with the sales team, participating in planning meetings, in-person presentations, and opportunity development.  These meetings should include a focus on account management and customer satisfaction, as well as educating the customer and setting program expectations. It'll be important to proactively identify potential issues and implement solutions to prevent and resolve problems quickly.
• Account Ownership: Take full responsibility for the management and success of assigned national accounts, ensuring customer satisfaction and business growth. This includes being the primary point of contact while serving as the main communication link between internal teams (Sales, Project Management Support, Customer Operations, Post-Sales, Order Support) and external customers. You will need to be able to develop and maintain strong, long-lasting relationships with key stakeholders, both internally and externally. Additionally, it will be critical that you hold all involved teams accountable for their contributions to account success, ensuring seamless collaboration and execution.
• Account Planning: Assist in strategic account planning and execution, ensuring that all internal resources are aligned for program success, while striving to exceed customer expectations.
• Takes initiative to lead and support the team in the manager's absence, ensuring continuity and progress. With your extensive experience, you will also serve as a mentor, helping the team to grow and enhance their skills. 
• Serve as a subject matter expert and liaison between the KAC, PM teams, and cross-channel partners. In this role, you will address communication and process knowledge gaps between our CX Org, project management team, and factory teams. You will work closely with these teams to identify gaps, create tactical solutions, and facilitate cross-channel collaboration. While ultimate responsibility for deliverables remains with the designated teams, you will be a critical resource in ensuring successful outcomes. 
• Proactively identifies areas for improvement and takes the lead in driving initiatives that enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the KAC Team. Actively contributes to the development of processes and standard work that propel the team forward and align with industry best practices.

Skills and Minimum Experience Required

• Bachelor’s Degree or Equivalent

• Naturally empathetic. The ability to step into someone else’s shoes and walk a few miles can make all the difference between someone who is successful in this position and someone who struggles. By truly being able to understand the customer’s pain, you can also produce the best solutions. 

• Customer advocacy. Customer Support leaders must be strong, natural advocates. Your entire job is to fight to improve the customer experience, which can sometimes be more difficult than it sounds.

• Process driven. We must serve our customers beyond their expectation, and we must have sustainable, repeatable, efficient, and continuously improving processes. The details matter. 

• Curious. There is always an improvement to be made. Be curious, learn, engage, and drive impact. 

• KPI driven. Everything in this function is measurable. You will find ways to measure how well we’re serving customers with metrics like the Customer Effort Score, Customer Satisfaction Score, and transactional Net Promoter Score for customer service interactions. 

• Hungry. A deep desire to learn our business and the processes associated. You will seek to not only be an expert, but the authority, on anything that could impact the customer experience at any point and how we can resolve it. 

• Business acumen. Elevated level of business acumen, organizational skills, and interpersonal abilities. 

• Analytical. Data driven decision maker.

• Pace. An ability to multi-task and work effectively in a dynamic, fast paced environment

• Leadership. An ability to lead and drive (directly and indirectly) to achieve results collaboratively. You know that influence is greater than authority.

Preferred Skills and Experience

•Strong organizational and multitasking abilities

•Background in sales operations and post-sales support.

•Proven experience in account management, sales, or a related field.

•Strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills.

•Excellent strategic problem-solving abilities.

•Outstanding communication and presentation skills.

•Focus on continuous improvement and process optimization

•Ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams.

Travel Requirements