Manager Management

Matthew Smithson

Willing to Relocate for the Right Opportunity.

***********@*****.***

OBJECTIVE

A Management/Leadership Role that utilizes my expertise in Developing Effective Business Relationships,

Operations Management and Customer Client Management in order to:

Establish effective business relationships globally with my strong multi cultural business acumen,

Formulate creative strategies to streamline, reduce waste and improve productivity,

Troubleshoot identified roadblocks to operations and enable others to find solutions, and

Coach and facilitate staff development programs to improve performance metrics.

QUALIFICATIONS

International Relations Transformation Management Call Center Operations

Management

Business Analysis Negotiations

Project Development

Multi-Cultural Workforce Mgmt Subject Matter Expert

Loss Control Management

Business Planning Change Management

Technical Support Management

Strategic/Tactical Management Process Improvement/

Benchmarking Global Market Research

EXPERIENCE

BellSouth/AT&T,

Atlanta, GA March 1999 to December 2009

End2End Project

Manager Sales Support

Managed 2 large

projects; Access Control Desk; centralized employee system access requests from a regional setup;

consolidated two contracts from different regions for one “feet-on-the-street” vendor

Field/Staff Support

Manager

Managed support

functions for 12 vendor mangers located in US, Central America, Asia and Philippines;

Served as SME for

Director of Broadband Helpdesk Operations; support Bellsouth transition to AT&T.

Center Implementation

Manager

Developed and

implanted strategy supporting establishment of new helpdesks for El Salvador, India and Costa Rica;

provided consultation for both vendor management team and local team on best practices.

Training Manager

Oversaw development

and delivery of project strategy for new IBM training delivery platform and content; created and

delivered training content to support successful process and product launches.

Offshore Operations

Project Manager

Oversaw project plan

development and implementation supporting launch of dial and DSL helpdesks offshore in India;

served as advisor to vendor management team; oversaw special projects.

Partner Performance

Manager

Managed wide range of

helpdesk functions; assured seamless integration of new products and procedures; consistently met or

exceeded customer service satisfaction objectives.

Executive Appeals

Manger

Oversaw wide scope of

customer escalations at executive level; coordinated resolution of customer concerns with company’s

executive management team.

CCU Billing

Lead/Specialist

Resolved questions and

billing issues; coached billing specialists on effective troubleshooting and resolution of customer

escalations; provided training on policies, procedures and new promotions.

EDUCATION and PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Bachelor of Arts Degree in International Studies from University of Memphis in Memphis, TN

Cum Laude • Dean’s List • Recipient of full Scholarship

Numerous Management Training classes through BellSouth University

Conversational Spanish

Affiliations include Piedmont Park Conservancy

Awards and Recognitions include: Customer Rules Presidential Honors Award in 2002, 2006, and 2008

Selected for BellSouth’s prestigious Gateway Program-Fast Track Management Training Program

ACHIEVEMENTS

Developing Effective Business Relationships

Represent helpdesk leadership in meetings with proxy to make decisions; act as broadband helpdesk subject matter

expert (SME); facilitate customer handoffs between organizations to prevent escalations. Support vendor managers

with any issue impacting their center, such as application issues, process questions, and change management

opportunities. Represent helpdesk organization on regional network staff and field operations conference calls

discussing dispatch strategy. Results: Expertise ensured quick resolution to any issue that impacts business and

customer interactions, improved customer satisfaction, and cost avoidance through minimizing unnecessary

dispatches.

Coordinated broadband helpdesk’s response to Activation Sponsorship team’s analysis. Activation rate for new DSL

customers had dropped for five consecutive months; information provided showed 1/3 of total cancellations were

charged to helpdesk; researched these customer cancellations and analyzed causes; redirected focus from helpdesk

organization to sales team and identified common sales entry errors and better assessment of customer needs.

Results: Redirection of focus with order error findings enabled sales team to more effectively target potential

customers, input increased accuracy of orders and led to retention of more customers that put AT&T back on track

to meet 2007 subscriber goals by midyear.

Trained and coached vendor account manager for Teleperformance San Salvador to become proficient in position, which

greatly facilitated business processes. Vendor’s responsibility was to manage BellSouth/AT&T account, but had

difficulties with invoicing and contract; coached vendor Account Manager each week on contracts and invoicing;

established mutual goal that he would understand how to effectively manage account, especially contracts,

BellSouth/AT&T invoices, and maximize margins by utilizing performance incentives. Results: Vendor was able to

use correct invoices, stronger partnership, and better customer experience. (TPSS was Customer Satisfaction leader

almost every month for first 18 months of business with BellSouth/AT&T.)

Negotiated advantageous contracts with hotels and transportation companies for BellSouth/AT&T team while on

offshore assignments. Contacted sales manager for hotel and requested long stay rate; made proposal to

management of hotel and transportation; negotiated better rates based on amount of business; delegated

responsibility of making room reservations. Results: Negotiating strategy minimized room rate (better than existing

corporate rate) and maximized amenities that included laundry, food allowance, airport pickups/drops, and

unlimited Internet access.

Operations Management

Lead initiatives to prevent agents from avoiding customer satisfaction survey by championing compliance reports

around proper helpdesk ticket coding. Compliance reports identify areas where surveys are not processed;

recommend survey sample logic changes to ensure appropriate capture of customer experience with helpdesk.

Results: Initiatives develop true sampling of helpdesk calls that provided accurate representation of helpdesk

experience and allow comparisons of all centers; agents have same opportunity to be surveyed.

Represent Helpdesk in meetings where new processes, products, and initiatives are discussed. Responsible for ensuring

no/limited impacts to helpdesk during respective launches/changes; examples include BIS/AIS, Siebel RTM

Armadillo, Bobcat, Coyote A, Coyote B, Summer 2007 Release and their respective Alpha releases, introduction of

new process flows, JustAsk rollout, email platform migration, PPPoa to PPPoe migration project, TAG

disengagement, HN rollout, Business Support Transition, Service and Shepherding migration. Results: Participation

guarantees quick agent acclimation and minimizes escalations and impacts to customer experience.

Led development efforts for new helpdesk metric reporting and initial analysis (Mean Time To Repair). Objective of

initiative was to ensure that accurate push reports were developed, that all centers were inspecting and managing

open tickets to meet MTTR targets; helped set and validated initial target; requested/ distributed ticket level data

behind MTTR metric. Conducted gap analysis to identify opportunities in customer experience management;

identified and applied best practices to all centers to ensure quick issue resolution and appropriate ticket

management. Results: Introduction of MTTR metric allowed centers to find agent/process opportunities to improve

work efficiency.

Customer Client Management

Drive escalation accountability to vendors. Provide feedback to vendor managers regarding internal escalations from

other organizations for agent/center coaching; work with Presidential Escalations team, research escalations from

officer and executive teams; receive monthly list of escalations charged to helpdesk for vendor response; coordinate

vendor responses for monthly invoice penalty assessment. Results: Process has identified opportunities to improve

customer experience and generates additional revenue stream which incents vendors to drive improvements in

customer relations.

Opened six new centers on time and under budget. Ensured T-1’s, as well as other critical equipment was ordered and

tested, and ramp team confirmed initial PC imaging; tested telephony network; verified that Switch reports and

RTD set up properly for first day’s reporting; provided direction to vendor leadership about managing business;

encouraged and tested agents to ensure they were ready for first day. Results: All centers launched day one without

incident.

Drove results by coaching to established ramp/steady state metrics. Coached vendor management team on how to

develop agents into strong customer relationship managers; identified talented agents for peer coach roles to further

drive ownership of operations by providing feedback via side by side monitoring, agent support and escalation

management; conducted daily monitoring sessions to listen to calls with center leadership to discuss coaching

strategies to resolve issues while maintaining positive customer experience. Results: Coaching enabled new centers to

compete in performance metrics with other centers within four months after launch. Process also expedited transition

to steady state centers.

Corrected critical operations issues with Service Level and agent morale at under-performing center. Center had been

unable to meet service level expectations for two months during their nine hour shift. Tasked by leadership to solve

center performance issue. Trained leadership team to manage the floor and leveraged business relationship with

Atlanta support teams, adjusted call volume to ensure proper floor management, increased agent morale through

high visibility/interaction and recognition programs; intervened in vendor related issues such as transportation

problems; provided organizational model for expanding hours that enabled center to more effectively manage floor

operations. Results: Issues with service level were corrected in three weeks and agent morale improved significantly

causing attrition to drop.

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