ASB Enhances Customer Service Function
American’s New Customer Service Leadership Team is pictured below.
L-R, Lisa Knoll, Jodi Meade, Sharon Batcher and Marilyn Craig.
ASB began a new journey with a major reinvention of its Customer Service Function. Jodi Meade began on May 19, 2009 as American’s new Customer Service Director. She brings a wealth of customer service knowledge and experience, and most importantly, a passion for customer service. ASB leadership also came to the conclusion that it was necessary to strengthen the next level of management so that ASB could quickly move to a much higher level of customer service.
The decision was made to completely revamp the customer service leadership and move to a form of organization that would better provide better alignment with Sales Associates. While Meade was closing down a very successful customer service center near the Home Office, American leadership took the opportunity to look at the other members of that supervisory team. As part of the reorganization, ASB also announced the hiring of three Customer Service Managers. Each of them brings many years of successful customer service leadership as well as an excellent track record of dealing with a wide variety of changes while providing world class customer service. The environment that they came from is very close to ours, dealing with Sales Representatives and Agents who have customers needing service and orders to process and invoice, while the ultimate customer relationship is still owned by the Sales Representative.
While this is a new direction for American, there is a significant need to move forward with a smooth and swift transition. “We have excellent, very dedicated people,” said Alan Grundei, President of operations. “We’ve made a significant investment in technology – now we have a very strong leadership team!”
The major reorganization serves to align with the Sales Associates across the country and re-engineer the work flow. American will be moving to an organization in which teams of four to six CSRs will work in clusters that serve a defined group of Sales Associates. (Several criteria have been used in the composition of the teams. Balance was an important consideration when forming each group.) The team members will be physically located together and will have all paperwork and files in their work area. Each group will have a lead person and the team will possess the necessary skills to process orders from beginning to end. Sales Associates will have one place to go, and all of the paper will be there. Accountability will be one of the great strengths with this new method.
“This is truly a new day at American Solutions for Business,” said Grundei, “and I am truly excited about the moves we are making and confident that this will be a giant step in the company’s history. We have quality Sales Associates, an excellent Home Office Team and we have the technology. We’ve set the bar high and we will exceed it!”
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