A Morning in the Life of a CSM

My first blog! It has often occurred to me that not many people understand what I do as a Client Services Manager (CSM) at Fragomen.   It is one of those roles that is hard to describe even to people in Fragomen who know us!  I tell my 7-year old son that I’m an immigration lawyer and that’s as far as I can manage to get with the explanation.  Perhaps, it’s easiest to explain using the age-old manner of “A Day in the Life of…” or in this case “A Morning in the Life of…”

So, what has been part of my Monday morning so far?

• Communications – Part of my role in servicing my clients is to keep the lines of communication flowing between our teams around the world and myself. Today, I have scheduled a call with our Kenyan practice leader to discuss one of my clients and how we can work together to further improve our client relationship and strategy in Africa.

• Training – Internal or external.  Today, I have arranged a demonstration of our technology for one of the new team members working for my client. I will be delivering that demonstration myself.

• Improving Process – I have heard this morning from our back-office support teams that a project I have requested to improve our record keeping will be completed later this week. I will follow up to make sure it is finished. I have also sent an email on another project to start phase 3 of implementing a process to improve our data privacy protection practices. 

• Analysis – I regularly collaborate with my colleagues on how a case could be handled more efficiently in the future, what problems or delays could have been avoided and how can we prevent them from happening again. I will be discussing case history with Fragomen consultants and our client stakeholders, driving a root cause analysis, and scheduling a call to review so that we and our client can correct and improve.  This morning, the country is Turkey, but it can be any country in the world or even multiple!

• Reporting -  My clients ask for all manner of reports based on our case data.  We send a number of regular, routine reports, but I also get involved in helping to design new reports working with our reporting teams. So far this morning, I haven’t had any new requests, but it is so frequent, it was worth a mention!

Although every role has its mundane parts, I think what I love most about mine is the vast number of countries I have come to know and the people involved. I know so many people around the world and I have had the chance to develop an understanding of how different countries manage immigration depending on politics and country priorities. It is completely fascinating to me.  At the end of the day, it’s about helping people to be able to work and live where they need to, despite the challenges they might face. As I continue blogging, I hope I can delve into a little more detail around some of what I do and share some of my love for the topic of global immigration.

Learn more about Janis Bailey.