Laura Guel Melendez
Houston,TX
Summary
Client success manager and technical advisor with over 15 years of experience in supporting enterprise customers in cloud and infrastructure portfolios. Expertise in driving adoption, renewals, retention, and expansion by aligning technology with business outcomes. Known for leading cross-functional teams, resolving complex issues, and delivering high-quality client experiences consistently.
Overview
18
18
years of professional experience
Work History
Client Success Manager
IBM COMPANY
Houston, TX
01.2014 - Current
- Client Success Manager and technical advisor with a proven ability to drive adoption, expansion, and measurable business value from IBM’s technology portfolio.
- Experienced in identifying growth opportunities, partnering cross-functionally during renewals, and delivering seamless client experiences.
- Adept at activating entitlements, leading use case workshops, developing outcome driven success plans, and serving as a trusted advisor guiding clients through modernization and technology adoption initiatives.
- Facilitated revenue growth through consultative client engagement, identifying upsell and expansion opportunities by aligning client business needs with cloud platform capabilities and value propositions.
- Built strong client rapport and trust by leveraging usage insights, compelling business events, and deep product and technical knowledge.
- Acted as a customer advocate and trusted advisor, maintaining awareness of emerging technologies and optimizing client experiences across cloud platforms.
- Partnered cross-functionally with sales, account management, sales operations, engineering, support, and finance to support renewals, pricing adjustments, order approvals, and contract lifecycle management.
- Led entitlement activation by identifying executive sponsors, facilitating use-case workshops, and developing outcome-based success plans with clear deployment roadmaps, milestones, and measurable business results.
- Resolved complex client issues as primary point of contact across licensing, overage fees, pricing, hardware, networking, outages, SLA concerns, legal and compliance matters, billing, renewals, cancellations, and customer portal functionality.
- Ensured operational excellence by prioritizing and managing support tickets based on service level expectations, providing detailed and proactive updates, and following escalation best practices to reduce resolution time and repeat inquiries.
- Advocated for continuous improvement by identifying gaps in product availability, usability, documentation, and features, and relaying customer feedback to internal stakeholders.
- Represented the organization as a trusted brand steward, recognized for credibility, professionalism, politeness, and subject matter expertise.
Digital Client Onboarding
IBM COMPANY
Houston, TX
09.2017 - 06.2018
- Spearheaded the customer onboarding process within 90 days by providing continuous support to ensure customers’ success with IBM Cloud solution.
- Acted as the first point of contact for new customers, worked extensively with clients to discuss their IBM Cloud solution, discovered and resolved challenges, and facilitated customer enablement activities.
- Coordinated client education initiatives to enhance understanding of product specifications, benefits, challenges, and troubleshooting techniques.
- Identified and pursued opportunities to increase adoption and usage of IBM Cloud platform.
- Developed strategies for upselling and cross-selling additional products and services.
- Delivered practical solutions for problems that impacted the client experience and provided technical product advice during post-sales discussions.
Client Technical Architect
IBM COMPANY
Houston, TX
01.2014 - 09.2017
- Forged and sustained business relationships with global companies, facilitating product and service setup on cloud infrastructure and guiding customers in tool integration for custom solutions.
- Designed client solutions per specifications in collaboration with Sales team and solution engineers, ensuring alignment with customer needs.
- Identified target accounts and closed new business, resulting in established customer logos.
- Delivered excellent customer service to retain and grow customer accounts, approved new sales orders, and onboarded new customers through inbound and outbound sales activities.
- Utilized diverse means of prospecting including email, phone, online systems, social media platforms, cold calling target accounts, live chats, and onsite customer visits.
- Processed sales orders, generated sales quotes, and negotiated offers.
- Conducted industry networking and research to secure company contacts.
- Utilized sales tickets, live chats, phone calls, and direct mail to maintain availability to service inbound sales inquiries.
Customer Support Technician
SOFTLAYER, AN IBM COMPANY
Houston, TX
12.2007 - 01.2014
- Provided technical support through phone, chat, and ticket interaction; managed time sensitive clients globally and handled 50+ interactions daily.
- Provided technical support for server issues, including load investigation, installation and configuration of services, and log investigation.
- Developed and modified records and resolvers, demonstrating proficiency with tools and providing effective troubleshooting.
- Executed networking responsibilities including traceroutes, ports (nmap, telnet), packet loss identification, IP binding, and troubleshooting network issues.
- Utilized email-based technologies to support mail transfer agents (Exim, MailEnable, Qmail, Sendmail, Posfix), manage PTR records, SPF records, and troubleshoot sending/receiving issues.
- Supported clients that utilized SoftLayer Technologies’ services for diverse web operations.
- Applied extensive knowledge of Cpanel, Plesk, and Ensim web server control panels.
- Identified SoftLayer as the largest private web hosting provider globally.
Education
Associate of Applied Science - Computer Network System
ITT Technical Institute
Webster, TXSkills
- Leadership and management expertise
- Key account development
- Client retention and renewals
- Customer advocacy and liaison
- Customer experience optimization
- Client onboarding and training
- Stakeholder relationship management
- Customer needs assessment
- Sales and business development
- Revenue growth strategies
- Lead generation and prospecting
- Sales management and support
- Negotiation and deal strategy
- Portfolio management
- Strategy and operations
- Strategic planning and execution
- Business operations management
- Growth strategy development
- Risk mitigation
- Agreement compliance
- Performance metrics tracking
- ROI analysis
- Technical and cloud expertise
- Cloud solutions implementation
- Cloud migration strategy
Timeline
Digital Client Onboarding
IBM COMPANY
09.2017 - 06.2018
Client Success Manager
IBM COMPANY
01.2014 - Current
Client Technical Architect
IBM COMPANY
01.2014 - 09.2017
Customer Support Technician
SOFTLAYER, AN IBM COMPANY
12.2007 - 01.2014
Associate of Applied Science - Computer Network System
ITT Technical Institute