Introducing Sam Spencer – our Client Engagement Manager

In all honesty, the deciding factor that made me chose Datum was the people I met during the interview process. Coming from an entirely different industry, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to step into the world of IT, especially as I knew nothing about data centres at the time. But I spoke with Melissa Hagan during my initial telephone interview, and she was extremely personable and friendly. I later met other members of the team during the next stage of interviews and everyone I met made me feel comfortable – nobody gave the impression that they were being anything but honest about what it would be like at Datum.

One of the (many) attractive things about Datum was that it was made clear to me during the interview process that the company would support my self-development, so I wanted to capitalise on this. I liked the idea of the client engagement role as it allowed me to continue in a client-facing function whilst offering an opportunity to learn new skills and get to know a different area of the business.

One of the real differences about Datum is that we are client-centric, which is far from standard in the world of data centres. I’m hoping to bring that focus with me to our Manchester client base and show that we actively work together with our clients to come to develop solutions that work for everyone. I come from a customer care background so I’m hoping I can approach interactions with our clients from a slightly different perspective to help them achieve their goals and support their continued growth.

I’m not sure there is a ‘normal’ day as every day is different. The one thing I can depend on is receiving a large volume of emails! The majority of my time is currently spent working alongside our operations team to ensure that we are communicating with our clients in a timely manner about delivering new orders, service reviews, planned maintenance, client queries and requests, etc.

I think my favourite part of the role is onboarding new clients. This can sometimes be a really challenging part of the role as every client has different requirements; some may have tight deadlines, some may have unusual requests, whilst others may be new to colocation so may need a little extra support. My role is like managing a project start to finish; ensuring everyone across each department is collaborating effectively towards the end goal, and problem-solving should there be any glitches. This is usually a good opportunity to build a relationship with our clients (and first impressions count), so being organised is a must!

As I joined Datum in October 2022, the acquisition had already been announced, so I don’t have the ‘before’ to compare the ‘now’ to. What I have experienced during this time, however, is a real sense of not wanting to make changes for change’s sake, a desire to make people feel valued and to share best practices to improve the company as a whole (not just enforcing the ‘Datum way’ onto the Manchester team).

I’d say that there have been two stand-out highlights so far…

Our first whole-team event (Manchester and Farnborough); a strategy day in Warwick followed by team-building cocktail making and dinner. This was our first real chance to get to know everyone in the Manchester team and, whilst it could have felt awkward, everyone really put the effort in and used it as an opportunity to talk to someone they wouldn’t normally have much interaction with. The senior management team really encourage us to be sociable so having the time and space to get to know each other really does help to strengthen working relationships.

The second highlight was our charity walk along the Jurassic Coast. I’ve experienced charity initiatives in previous jobs that felt more like a PR stunt for social media. But Datum actively encourages us to take part in some form of fundraising for the company’s chosen charity (or one chosen by us) and actively supports us whilst we do it. There has a been a real sense of camaraderie in our support of the Samaritans this year; in addition to our Jurassic Coast walk we are taking part in the ‘Samarathon’ (walking or jogging 26.2 miles during July) and most of the team are getting involved. My mum and sister are both volunteers for the Samaritans so I’m really pleased it’s a charity we are supporting – we are already planning our next big charity challenge for 2024.