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Wow, inspiring story.
Standing ovation for your progress so far. That's awesome.
Sales is an absolutely tremendous skill to have, no matter what direction you choose to pursue as an entrepreneur. Congratulations on the new role!
I'd be really curious to hear if there are any principles you'd share with other people in a Customer Service Representative role who want to move up. What did you implement? What kinds of things worked for you to earn the bonuses and get noticed?
Thank you so much Beckit! Being an introvert and not one to boast, I’ve not had very many opportunities to share my journey. I sincerely thank you for the appreciation and the opportunity to self-reflect on my accomplishments thus far.
I would love for any current or future Customer Service Reps to feel inspired by my journey so I will share as concisely as I can and could expound where interested.
To start, I will say that my customer service career began in the manufacturing industry where my role was fairly typical: process customer orders and respond to customer inquiries via phone and email. I was making around 30k/year and could just barely make ends meet being the sole financial provider for my child. That’s when I turned to entrepreneurial self-help books to set out to escape the corporate world and make a better life for myself and my child. However, it was within these books that I discovered that I needed to start where I was at: in my Customer Service Representative role.
I began to build trust with the customers - During complaint calls rather than zone out and surf the internet like I used to do, I began to actively listen, paraphrase the caller’s complaint and would never disagree with the caller’s perspective or point of view or events which transpired leading up to the complaint. I utilized empathy in acknowledging the customer’s feelings. For complaint emails received, I would acknowledge receipt of the email within 5 minutes, thanking the customer for taking the time to submit their complaint in writing.
I worked to build trust with colleagues - Even on days where I had to fight to get my son out of bed and off to school, I arrived into work grateful to be there. I greeted every colleague I came across with a warm greeting giving space to those I knew weren’t morning people so as not to be overbearing. I was professional and courteous in every interaction knowing the more easier I was to work with, the quicker I could resolve customer issues by contributing to a harmonious work environment.
I found ways to be proactive - Unfortunately, no matter how polite one can be with a customer, several repeated offenses of late shipments, is enough to drive any customer away. So on Saturday mornings I would bring my son (and his portable TV and Xbox) with me to work to create an intense customer record filing system. My intent was to position myself to be able to foresee customers’ orders who were in jeopardy of being late, priced incorrectly, etc. This is when the magic began to happen.
I was courageous - Being an introvert, I was generally too timid to speak up during weekly production & planning meetings. However, after discovering many concerns during my Saturday customer records organizing sessions, I knew I had to arrive at the meetings as an advocate for the customer. I would bring a list of questions to present to the production team about potential customer order issues. I would create action items from the meetings and follow up afterwards. It was at these meetings that I began to catch the attention of executive leadership members who were in attendance. There were often times the CEO would sit in and listen as well.
Achieving my first $100,000+ - After a few months of maintaining this level of being proactive and vocally voicing concerns, customers began emailing and calling to say what a huge difference I had made in diminishing their delivery issues. I also received a forwarded email from an executive team member who received an email from a Tier A customer advising that earlier, he had decided to pull his million dollars worth of business after several consecutive instances of late or missed shipments. The customer named me in the email giving me full credit for the reason he had decided not to pull his business. It was then that the executive leadership team presented me with a bonus pushing my income that year to just over $110,000. From there, the executive leadership team asked me to sit in on various other organizational meetings for my insight on things. A few other bonuses later and now here I am in my new role on the Sales team.