As most any Venture Solutions employee knows, year-end production in January is our busiest time of the year. We can look at the numbers and understand how important the work output we produce during this period is to our business, but what is this hectic time like for the team members who engage directly with our clients?
We sat down with six representatives of the account management team in Client Services to get their perspective on year-end, both what made January 2023 a success and what they think we should improve to make 2024 even better.
Facing Challenges from a New Vantage Point
2022 was an exciting time for our client services team. We welcomed several new team members to Venture Solutions who had prior experience working for clients. Although that history on the client’s side helped set realistic expectations for peak volumes and tight deadlines, things are always different on the provider side of the process.
For these new team members, year-end was a trial by fire learning experience. They needed to absorb new terminology, identify who to go to for specific knowledge, apply newly learned processes, and coordinate information coming to them from multiple streams, all while keeping up with the fastest pace of production deliverables we see all year for our clients.
Even more tenured account managers experience challenges during year-end. Unexpected implementations for new tax programs meant learning where the gaps in their requirements were in the midst of delivering critical SLAs and exposed where processes needed to be more standardized for better efficiency.
Success Stories to Build on
Certain changes to procedures and preemptive work back in the fall helped smooth the way for an overall successful year-end. Beyond the rare misunderstanding by new clients that was easy enough to clear up, most all our clients were happy with their results, which were either similar to last year or showed major improvements.
Alex Dubra credited the shift of running reservicing in Arden Hills from client services to production project coordinator roles as a major help for the retirement services work he was managing. In the past, client services would need to run carts full of reservices, making it difficult to keep up with reporting back to clients. Now, with production running reservices, he noticed a dramatic decrease in reservicing volume compared to prior years.
According to Jessica Wiertzema, one of our large mortgage clients was, “ecstatic with the results,” reporting that this was the smoothest, easiest year-end ever. Our development teams were able to get their statements prepared well ahead of schedule, and the early delivery and accuracy of the output made for an unparalleled success.
Another major mortgage client went into year-end with major concerns about their SLAs and had even established escalated penalties should Venture fail to deliver. However, this was not an issue at all, thanks to some significant updates to Venture Access. A new quality control flag feature in Flight Check allowed Melinda Dixon and her team to preview files before they were pushed into live production or released to the client. This let them intervene with any issues before they became a problem. We were able to meet all of the client’s requirements and even left them impressed.
Strategies for the Future
Between these new, challenging experiences for recent team additions and great feedback directly from the clients, we can see some opportunities for improvement that will build upon our recent successes. We should focus our efforts in the following areas for a smoother year-end client experience, according to our account management team:
For the success of our clients and our organization, approaching situations like year-end production with a continuous improvement mindset can only solidify our existing partnerships with clients and expand our opportunities for future growth.
