Customer Service Manager

Garlock Flexibles•Gardner, MA

9d•$110,000 - $125,000•Onsite

About The Position

The Customer Service Manager is responsible for establishing and maintaining a service-oriented relationship with external and internal customers. The successful leader will ensure the customer service owns and manages customer orders, from receipt to fulfillment, with a high level of personal ownership. The successful leader will ensure the customer service team establishes and maintains a professional rapport internally and externally with the customer. The leader will lead by example, advocating for the customer internally, and work effectively across all functions within Garlock/CP Flexible Packaging. The customer service function touches every area of the business and must be effective in working across the organization as well as up and down in the organization. To this end, the leader will develop a strong team with strong, timely and effective communication skills, ensuring internal, cross-functional alignment with internal stakeholders as well as to the customer. The leader will be responsible for developing and deploying strategies to increase customer satisfaction, enhance the use of technology, and drive efficiency through business process improvement. The successful candidate will lead the implementation of these process improvements and implement alternative methods to increase efficiency and improve customer satisfaction. Working closely with the Plant Manger, this is a highly autonomous leadership role on the site director’s staff. The leader understands the customer service team is Garlock/CP Flexible Packaging’s first and lasting customer impression. The position will have end-to-end customer responsibility from customer inquiry to customer onboarding to order entry and order management to order fulfillment to post-sale support.

Requirements

Minimum of 3-5 years in a customer service management role within a manufacturing environment and, ideally within the flexible printing or consumer packaging industry.
Strong leadership skills.
Must be able to become an effective motivator and influencer of others, without the need for formal position authority.
Strong verbal and written communication skills.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
Must exhibit managerial courage.
Understands how to manage conflict in healthy ways.
Proficient computer skills including Microsoft Office.
Must be proficient in Excel and familiar with ERP systems (Radius preferred).
Detail-oriented, adaptable, and proactive, with the ability to handle multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree is desirable but not required.

Responsibilities

Lead by example. Build and maintain strong relationships with customers and ensure their team does so as well.
Build customer loyalty by understanding each key customer’s unique needs and then work with the team, and cross-functionally, to ensure a personalized service model is developed; one that will ensure all customer expectations are met or exceeded. Create competitive advantage through an exceptional customer experience.
Ensure the customer service team is partnered and paired with the commercial team. Ensure there is a team-approach to account management. In some situations, and by mutual agreement with Garlock’s Vice President of Sales, some accounts may be assigned to the customer service teammates and managed as “house accounts.”
Ensure the Customer Account Specialist team (the “CAS Team”) is proficient in new item creation and related workflows and routings.
Responsible for the administration of price changes in the system. Ensure the CAS Team manages price changes promptly and with a high degree of accuracy (quarterly price changes, matrix pricing, and ad-hoc price change management).
Collaborate with scheduling, production, and supply chain to oversee overall order status and customer priorities.
Work with the organization to establish and manage/keep up to date the communication of standard lead-times.
Ensure the CAS team proactively keeps customers apprised of order status and progress.
Ensure there is timely delivery of products and helps verify and ensure the team meets customer specifications in terms of quality and order accuracy.
Ensure customer inventory agreements are managed within terms (min/max. levels, disposition of obsolete and slow-moving materials).
Work directly with the Quality function to proactively identify and resolve any potential issues that could arise during the production process.
Ensure the CAS Team does a thorough job with the initial intake of customer complaints and then proactively drive the organization through the investigation, contributing to efforts to develop and deliver solutions, and implementing corrective actions.
Ensure the team is timely in the communication of complaint status through to completion/resolution/closure.
The Customer Service Manager must thoroughly understand our business before they can be fully effective as the team leader. After investing an appropriate amount of time in understanding our business, the Customer Service Manager must effectively motivate, lead, mentor, and develop the CAS Team.
The leader will maintain direct customer service responsibility for a few accounts on an ongoing basis to ensure they develop and maintain a working knowledge of our systems, customer-facing processes, and workflows.
The leader will set and measure, assess and continuously improve high standards of performance.
The leader will conduct regular training sessions to improve knowledge of products (printed flexible food packaging), production processes, ERP system (Radius), and customer-facing business processes.
The leader is responsible for the empirical evaluation of departmental productivity and use empirical evidence for any justification of additional departmental resources.
Support the business strategy through the creation of all customer-facing business processes, standards, and metrics. Publishes KPI’s and uses to drive team and organizational performance. Use these key insights to recommend strategies for increasing efficiency and improving the customer experience.
Responsible for the analysis of customer feedback and service performance data to identify trends, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement.
Develop and implement process improvements that will enhance service quality and improve customer satisfaction.
Work to continuously improve all customer-facing business processes, standards, and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Partnering with Human Resources with the recruitment and hiring processes, training, management, and development of customer account specialists, who will operate in an office environment.