Meet the Team: Customer Success Manager Ilana Doubell

Alison: What do you do at Annertech? 

Ilana: My official job title is Customer Success Manager. I strive to be a strategic partner to our clients, helping them identify and achieve their digital goals. 

Alison: What makes an account manager a good one? 

Ilana: A good account manager is someone who can truly understand their clients’ businesses, the industries they operate in, the risks and challenges they face and then help them navigate through these to meet their strategic objectives. A good account manager needs to be a little bit like an agony aunt: they need to be able to listen to the clients’ pain points and then come up with suggestions to solve their problems. 

Alison: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Ilana: Outside of work, I’m a mom and a wife. I have one son, one fur child (a French Bulldog named Gwen) and have been married for many years now, having met my husband when I was 18. I love to travel, drink good wine, make new friends and just enjoy life! 

I was born and raised in South Africa, but moved to Ireland in 2018. Since moving to Ireland, I rediscovered my love of sport and now play both Gaelic handball and football for my local club.

Alison: What does a typical work day look like? 

Ilana: I’m not sure there is a thing like a typical day for an Account Manager. A lot of what we do is handle any and all requests clients throw at us or to jump in when there is a fire to fight, such as any issues with a client’s website. To succeed as an Account Manager you need to be adaptable. 

But I try to be as proactive as possible. This means I try to structure client interactions in advance, leaving some time in my day for the curve balls. 

My “typical” day would start by me popping into the daily scrum call with the Managed Services team, to be on hand for any questions or concerns they might have with any of my clients. I then try to have two or three client calls a day, all with a clear agenda to reach my goal of helping my clients reach their strategic objectives. 

I leave time for follow-up actions like writing proposals or researching solutions for my clients. And then lastly, I am ready to react to any unexpected requests or instances. 

I’m also part of the Annertech Senior Management Team, so this means I have strategic objectives to achieve for our own company, and I work on these on a daily basis. 

Alison: How did you get into this line of work? 

Ilana: I’ve always been a people’s person and love working with people. I studied Tourism Management and worked for a multinational hotel chain for a few years. 

After learning some practical operational skills, I moved out of tourism operations into a consulting firm that specialised in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry. Here I learned my love for problem solving and strategic thinking. 

The role required me to work in all areas of the consulting lifecycle, from sales, to project management, delivering consulting work on projects and account management. I learned a lot! 

But it became clear to me after being with the consulting firm for a couple of years that I preferred the account management/customer success side of things the most. I loved being a strategic partner to my clients, building those long-term relationships rather than just chasing the next short-term sale or delivering on a tight project deadline (though I do secretly miss the adrenaline high of meeting a tight deadline sometimes). 

Since then I have made a career out of being a trusted advisor to many clients, across a variety of industries, consulting and helping them grow their businesses in various areas, from HR Consulting to all things digital and a little bit of everything in between. 

Alison: What do you love most about your job? 

Ilana: What I love most about my job is when I help a client solve a problem or meet a strategic objective; being seen as a trusted advisor who they can phone up for advice or a chat. Seeing our clients succeed is what I live for! 

Alison: Lastly, anything quirky you’d like to tell us about yourself? 

Ilana: I looooove thunderstorms and it’s probably the thing I miss most about South Africa. There is nothing like a good highveld thunderstorm! 

A South African thunderstorm isn’t just “rain with thunder.” It’s sudden, dramatic, and full of energy. The air often feels heavy and still before – almost without warning – the sky darkens as the clouds roll in like an army.

Lightning flashes across the horizon, jagged and impossibly bright, sometimes long before the first drops of rain arrive. The thunder cracks, echoes and rolls across the land so powerfully that you feel it in your chest.

The smell is unforgettable: sharp ozone mingling with the earthy scent of freshly wet soil – what people often call the smell of “first rain”. Just as quickly as it arrives, it can vanish, leaving behind clear skies, glistening leaves and a deep, washed-clean quiet. 

As a child I apparently used to tell my younger cousins not to be afraid of the thunderstorms, as it was just God moving His furniture around. 

I also love animals and used to volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation centre near the Pilanesberg in the north of South Africa. 

I mostly did nominal jobs around the centre, like cleaning out enclosures, but I loved being up close to some of the amazing wild animals of Africa. 

My favourites were the lions. Until the age of one they are quite safe to be around and they are very playful, just like big cats. I even went there on my non-volunteering days just to get my cuddle time in.