Customer Solutions Specialist

SUMMARY:

The Customer Solutions Specialist is the primary point of contact for customers, with responsibility for building and maintaining sustainable customer relations. The position serves a critically important role as the VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER within Spectrum Plastics. Job duties include managing every aspect of the sales order process, staying appraised of other Spectrum commitments such as RMA's, customer complaints, ECO's, and ensuring the Spectrum team is meeting their commitments. Monitor and ensure total customer satisfaction in all areas of the business relationship, with a focus on on-time delivery (OTD) and service, and having an "ear to the ground" on any other areas of satisfaction (What should we do more of?) or dissatisfaction (What needs to be improved or fixed?). Engage and escalate to sales and site management key customer issues so they can be resolved.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES:

1. Actively promote and drive a culture of safety within Spectrum Plastics.
2. Manage orders in IQMS from receipt and contract review, through fulfillment.
3. Be the voice of the customer. Work with the Plant Production & Quality Teams to clearly communicate customer needs, resolve issues, meet OTD goals, and exceed customer expectations.
4. Collaborate and share customer information with the Inside Sales, Field Sales, and Global/Key Accounts team to ensure maximum care and coverage for each customer.
5. Make it easy and enjoyable for customers to do business with Spectrum Plastics, and work diligently to ensure we are the supplier of choice for injection molded and related components.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

1. Key advocate role for the customer. Represent the VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER.
2. Liaison between the customer and the balance of the Spectrum organization to ensure broad customer satisfaction, while continuously providing feedback to Sales, Supply Chain, Quality, Engineering, and the Production teams.
3. Know your customers, their products, what components that Spectrum produces, what these are used in, and what the end item is used for?
4. Manage the entire sales order process, including receipt of order, contract review, order entry, promise dating in conjunction with Supply Chain, order acknowledgement (quick confirmation), internal monitoring of order status within Spectrum, and communicating any order promise date changes to customer in a timely manner.
5. Manage customer Kanbans. Be fluent in navigating, understanding, and interpreting customer portals and/or other customer demand information. Work closely with customers to understand future demand requirements to support the Specialty Molding Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) process.
6. Maintain IQMS modules to ensure that customer, item, pricing, order details, leadtimes, payment terms, and related information is correct and up to date.
7. Participate in daily production meetings to provide feedback on customer requirements and recommendations on any schedule adjustments. Work across all department/functional lines to ensure customer's needs are understood and met, and to help solve problems for the benefit of our customers.
8. Responsible for monitoring daily shipments to assure orders ship as promised. Responsible for reporting out key customer related metrics, such as OTD, customer complaints, and researching & assigning reason codes for missed shipments.
9. Receive, evaluate, file, and report-out on all external scorecards. Investigate any information that is unclear or that needs re-evaluation. Work with Sales Manager to facilitate regular business reviews of scorecards as necessary.
10. Manage forecasting and attend weekly and monthly S&OP meetings.
11. Regularly monitor customers sales performance and identify potential issues. Inquire and understand trends up/down in sales by customer and by SKU or product family.
12. Grow sales. Probe customer for new business opportunities. Gather and communicate market intelligence from customer interactions regarding market trends, competition, and opportunities.
13. Facilitate the resolution of customer satisfaction issues by initiating interdepartmental communications and scheduling meetings with key stakeholders. Once assigned, understand and monitor commitments and communicate as required to customer.

• Facilitate return material authorization (RMA) process with the customer and internal teams.
• Support the ECO process ensuring that changes are phased in as expected by the customer, and that any cost implications are passed along as price changes to the customer.
• Enter all customer complaints and track resolution and timely root cause investigation & response.

1. Manage re-quoting of expired pricing to support the overall profitability of the business.
2. Work closely with Supply Chain to monitor changes in pricing of raw materials and/or outside vendor processes and pass along these price increases to customers in a timely manner.
3. Manage the product activities of each assigned customer, ensuring that objectives are achieved effectively in accordance with contractual commitments and customer operational requirements.
4. Maintain a clean and safe work environment by identifying safety hazards and recommending and/or implementing corrective actions when necessary.
5. Performs all other duties and responsibilities, as assigned.

EXPERIENCE, SKILLS, EDUCATION AND TRAINING:

Associates degree (A.A.) or equivalent from two-year college or technical school with 2-4 years of related experience within a manufacturing environment; or equivalent combination of education and experience.

• Ability to maintain a high degree of accuracy in a fast-paced environment.
• Self-motivated, strong interpersonal and leadership skills. Excellent influencing skills.
• Analytical aptitude with sound critical thinking skills to solve problems and provide solutions.
• Must possess great listening skills.
• Clear and concise communication skills via telephone, e-mail, and written correspondence.
• Computer literacy is a key required skill in this position, with significant competence and experience in the use of the Microsoft Office Suite including Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; and the use of the IQMS Enterprise Resource Planning system (or similar experience).