Job Details

Job Summary

Customer Service Associate is responsible for maintaining, expanding and managing specific Accounts within the Branch territory, act as liaison between Sales and appropriate support personnel involved in the management and maintenance of respective Accounts. This position is required to facilitate and support high level performance of the assigned account(s) and increased margin and revenue of the assigned account(s). Coordinate and provide support to customer service staff on proper procedures for handling and coordinating customer demands between sales and operations.

Duties & Functions

Essential Duties:

• Support Branch in creating and implementing policies and procedures to ensure that the customer service operations staff maintains high service standards.
• Provide staff with support and direction on focusing on good customer service skills.
• Support operations staff in dealing with inquiries and customer complaints.
• Directly supervise all aspects of the assigned Account relationship.
• Assist with communications/correspondence to customers and overseas partners via Tel. Calls, Emails, etc.
• Provide Assigned Accounts with shipping information, inbound/outbound transaction, tracking and inventory status information.
• Create, update and maintain customer SOPs.
• Manage, maintain and expand assigned Accounts.
• Provide overview and reporting as required of existing business and projected forecast information.
• Coordinate data and required reporting criteria as set forth by the individual customer's requirements on a weekly and monthly basis.
• Maintain and expand business with existing customers between Branch and the NNR Worldwide Organization of offices, partners and agents.
• Ensure that customers who have not shipped regularly and/or recently are contacted to determine shipping status or new opportunities.
• Meet/communicate with customer stakeholders to discuss business and potential future business opportunities.
• Conduct telephone sales to existing or prospective customers.
• Record all Sales Leads and Routing Orders in PowerNet sales and meet the company standards for these targets on a monthly basis.
• Participate in Scheduled T-cons.
• Generate all sales reports in PowerNet Sales/CRM
• Monitor production of assigned Accounts and evaluate trends within your market.
• Identify mandatory milestones including tracking milestones and update lead times.
• Assign parameters for transit time reports, run transit time reports daily to extract missing milestones.
• Communicate with local ops staff and overseas agent on missing event updates, perform root cause analysis and investigate solutions to communicate to customers.
• Contact customers following sales activities to ensure ongoing customer satisfaction and resolve any complaints.
• Correspond to customers and overseas partners in a timely manner including RFQ process.
• Incorporate customer requests to NNR USA offices, HO and NNR Group Partners/Agents via regular updates and/or SOPs.
• Alert and inform customer stakeholders of changes that could have direct impact on their freight movements.
• Run aging reports on Assigned Accounts, understand billing methods, liaison with freight payment companies to resolve billing issues.
• Maintain timely communication with operations staff, convey information concisely, multitask and meet deadlines by prioritizing tasks.
• Attend meetings/training as required by management.
• Perform other duties as requested by management.

• 2 or more years of college, military or industry equivalent.
• Thorough understanding of both international and domestic freight forwarding processes is essential, specifically including air and ocean export/import breakbulk as well as 3PL inventory management.
• Strong knowledge of sales and customer service techniques.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). Ability to use basic math skills to calculate freight, storage, duty and other charges.

• Flexible and long hours are sometimes required.
• Travel including overnight travel may be required.
• Light/Medium work - Exerting up to 25 pounds of force occasionally, frequently and/or constantly to lift, carry, push, pull, or otherwise move objects.