Customer Relationship Management: An interview with Emma Blades, Metservice

“Everyone needs weather” says Emma Blades, and she should know. A trained meteorologist, Emma is a Customer Relationship Manager with Metservice New Zealand.

Her clients are New Zealand businesses and services who depend on MetService forecasts to schedule work and to know when to take appropriate precautions in order to mitigate risks.

New Zealand's weather can be a challenge to many businesses and can often impact on supply chains.  For instance, for horticulturalists a late frost could mean damage to fruit destined for the overseas market.  With strong winds electricity lines can be brought down causing power outages.  An extended dry period and regional water supplies are impacted.

160 years ago a series of meteorological instruments were distributed throughout New Zealand in order to record weather. From that first step the forecasting service developed. Over time it gradually evolved into the government run NZ Meteorological Service, before transitioning into the state-owned enterprise we know as Metservice New Zealand.

Thirty years on it remains a business with a head office in Wellington and a team of over 300 staff based in offices across New Zealand as well as in Australia, Asia and Europe. The Metservice brand encompasses public weather information provided through numerous platforms and commercial services for a range of business clients. In New Zealand this includes transport companies and airlines, regional councils, energy and lines companies and media outlets.

Metservice’s international brand, Metraweather, provides, among a number of services, weather visualisation and data services to all major Australasian news broadcasters as well as to Sky UK and Al Jazeera.

In this interview, I asked Emma about her role and some of the commercial aspects of the business. Emma discusses the importance of building trust and credibility with clients and the way Covid has changed client interactions.

If you manage relationships with clients, you may find some of these resources available through Wellington City Libraries helpful.

From LinkedIn learning these courses may be helpful (Accessible with WCL library membership):

Client Management and Relationships

Client relationships are the foundation of your consulting business. Whether you work for a big firm or are going solo as an independent consultant, the principles of client management are the same. It's all about building rapport, communicating effectively, and establishing trust. In this course, Lisa Earle McLeod and Elizabeth McLeod teach you how to position yourself for success, keep communication lines open during implementation of your project, and create connections that are the foundation for lasting relationships that lead to repeat business. Plus, get tips for leveraging client relationships to sell to the entire organization.

Relationships with product managers  

At a basic level, product marketing is about determining who your users are, what they need, and how to align your products with those needs. In this course, professor, speaker, and product marketing guru Jon Chang shares advanced techniques designed to help product marketers accomplish this central goal—ensuring that a product resonates with its intended audience—with finesse. Learn how to leverage different research methodologies to define your audience and match products to their needs, as well as how to create a go-to-market strategy. Plus, get tips for collaborating effectively with different stakeholders, including product managers, marketers, and other researchers.

From our book collection there are the following resources:

• Think like your customer : a winning strategy to maximize sales by understanding how and why your customers buy by Stinnett, Bill
• The customer rules : the 39 essential rules for delivering sensational service by Cockerell, Lee

Finally, if you want to learn more about New Zealand’s weather and how it impacts on us all you can place a reserve for this new publication 'New Zealand’s Wild Weather'. Copies will shortly be available through library branches.