Manager Management
Resume:
Akhila Santoshi
Sharada Nagar, Ramanthapur, HYD- 13 Phone: +91-984*******
Phone: +91-040-********
Email: *********@*****.***
Career Summary
Proactive, performance driven professional with over 9 years of experience in Leadership and Program Management.
Strong Cross-functional communication and experienced in interacting with Senior Management, Product and
Technology teams, Clients, Partners and Outsourcers. Innovative and loyal, able to “Think Big” while staying on top of
details. Recognized for consistent success in developing the process and streamlining operations and enhancing Seller
and Employee experience.
Areas of Expertise
PROJECT MANAGEMENT OPERATIONS
• Quality Control • Quality Assurance • Client Relations
• Strategic Planning • Change Management •Outsourcers/Staff Training
• Project Management
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Amazon Development Center India (October 2005 till date)
Manager (II) Non Technical -Amazon.in (Sep 2013 till date)
Sales Funnel:
Offline Lead Qualification: Program designed to generate Leads and expand the Amazon India Seller base by
targeting offline store sellers.
Initiated the pilot project in collaboration with the Sales; determined Technical requirements and completed the
Operations setup: Staffing requirement, Hiring, creation of SOPs and Training.
Result: Improved lead qualification by 8% through better qualification process. Process contributed to ~35% of the
overall Sales funnel. Expanded the process to outsourcers currently handling `12% of process.
Self Service Registration (SSR): Program designed to empower any seller to register for selling on Amazon.in. Also
aimed at reducing the gestation period for launch though providing step by step support till launch .
Determined the staff forecasting, Hiring, Training and Metrics for Performance Management.
Result:- 8500 Sellers launched till date contributing 28% of seller base. Reduced the time to launch from 48 to 12 days.
Improved team Productivity from 6 launches/week to 18 per week. Worked in close Association with Risk Management
and Legal teams to chalk out Legal processes which enabled faster registrations and onboarding of Seller s. Improved the
uniqueness of the catalog with contributions coming from far east and traditional Indian Sellers. Improving average
GMS of these class of Sellers by ~9.8.
New Launches:
Amazon India Seller Support Launch: Seller Support is the department that is face of Amazon for Sellers . The team
is the point of contact for Sellers who work to resolve Seller queries related to their Selling account on Amazon by
interfacing with multiple internal departments namely Retail Catalog, Seller Performance and Fulfillment Center
Operations etc.
Launched and scaled Seller Support Operations for Amazon India, Supported in the expansion of the support team
from 15 to ~130 FTE; Ensured the readiness of the site for providing quality seller experience in spite exponential
increase in contacts from 200 to 15K per Week.
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Helped in providing timely and accurate resolution by reducing AHT from 13 to 7mins and improving Overall
Quality metric by 500bps
Observed a Contact Reduction by 200bps by improving process, Seller UI and eliminating non-value add activities
at Associate level.
Easy Ship Program: Amazon Easy Ship program caters to merchant fulfillment network sellers in India with the goal
of making it easy for sellers to ship products bought on Amazon.in website. Orders are picked up from the seller’s
location by an Amazon Logistics associate and delivered to the buyers’ location wi th minimal effort from sellers.
Provides better customer experience though faster and predictable delivery with complete tracking information and
option of Cash on Delivery.
Created goals to handle additional contacts triggered through this program for Seller Support
Re-invented the “Pickup Missed” process for rescheduling appointments thus improving de livery time. This
also reduced the TAT on these contacts by 2 days and improved the First Contact Resolution by 3.8%.
Redesigned the process of Lost & Damaged reimbursements which had a 55% defect rate, within 3 months,
reduced defect rate to 29%, elimina ting 80% of Associate errors.
Designed the processes to reduce dependency on internal teams to handle Seller contacts thus increasing First
Contact Resolution and lowering Time Take for Resolution (TTR. The overall project reduced the TTR by 6
days.
Worked with the Program, PR, Legal and Editorial teams. To keep the sellers and associates up to date about
new launches and feature enhancements.
Result: Improve Delivery experience by reducing the order delivery time and proving sellers an easier way to ship their
orders hence reducing late shipments and subsequent cancellations. This project impacted 50% customer base in India
Executive Seller Relations/SAFE Program - India
SAFE is the program designed to handle Social Media and CEO/Country Manager Escalations.
Devised and launched a team of 5 FTE basis trend analysis and in conjunction with peer departments of
Amazon.
Sellers escalating situations to CEO or Country Manager, receive issue closure in 24 hours;
5 Why and root cause summary along with identifying owners through Corr ection of Error (COE) is the
approach followed to close items.
On an average 3 – 5 items are resolved by this team every week.
Seller Forums
Channel to encourage healthy and informative discussions between Sellers. Sellers educating within the Seller grou p is
encouraged in this program.
Worked in Association with the global Forums Program team to launch Seller Forums in India
Result: Improve Seller Experience by following structured and streamlined approach to address and nail down negative
Seller Experience.
Process Improvements:
Voice Of Seller (VoS):
A program launched to collate Seller feedback through various channels and track it to closure in conjunction with a
variety of Program, Product and Technology teams thus eliminating Seller Trustbusters.
Conceptualized and launched Voice of Seller to identify Seller pain points and trustbusters
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Program was launched in all the team across Amazon India which are Seller facing to collate Seller feedback
through all channels
On an average ~5 items/week are channelized to various teams such as Product, Technology, Program,
Fulfilment Center, Delivery Experience, Customer Experience, Risk Management etc.
As a part of this activity, I organized Seller outreach process to collate feedback, interact with Sellers who have
expressed higher rate of dissatisfaction as well as Sellers who have been neutral by not taking the surveys to
understand the Seller pulse.
Essential component of Weekly and Monthly Business Reviews for Seller Services and India Business
Result: Improvements to Seller UI to schedule bulk removal orders from Fulfilment Center; revise s the 90-day payment
hold policy on suspended accounts; Self Service Registration quiz improvements; Easy Ship (Cash On Delivery) pick-up
slot availability; Amazon branded packaging material etc. Are some of the improvements achieved through of this
process
Some of the benchmarking projects undertaken through this program are: Seller Support operational – Hours of
operations were modified from 9X5 to 18X7; launch of Chat support, weekend Phone Coverage for Sellers etc as well
are some of the achievements from this activity.
Total Time to Resolution reduction project:
(a) Initiated a project to reduce resolution time of Sellers brand registry and Universal Product Code Exemption related
issues. Resolution time for such cases reduced from 13 days to 4.2 days
These are the nature of contacts that enables manufacturers and brand owners to add listings to Amazon catalog
without providing the Universal Product Codes (UPC) thus enabling in bringing uniqueness to the Amazon
catalog.
Rootcause analysis gave insight on the amount of time wasted in multiple interactions between Sellers and
Amazon (multiple teams) owing to lack of sufficient details on the Seller UI that enables the Seller to ap ply for
this exemption process.
Worked on migrating the process to a single team, the Seller Support team. Reduce the dependency of having to
rely on multiple internal teams and thus improved the consistent experience to Sellers.
(b) Initiated a project to reduce the resolution time of Seller reimbursement process. Resolution time for these nature of
contacts from Sellers reduced from 8 days to 2 days thus resolving the Seller trustbuster regarding delay in funds
processing.
In these nature of contacts Sellers are reimbursed for either for a shipment lost or damaged by Amazon
Transportation Service or other nature of reimbursements per Seller Agreement policy.
Eliminated the dependency on downstream teams with no value add by enabling and empowering the
Associates to be self-sufficient. Thus reducing the touch points from 3 to 1.
Migrated the required tools, worked with the technology teams to incorporate the same in the existing network
of Support tools.
Created audit mechanisms and standard operating procedures to cater to the complex process
Account Management
Program launched to hand hold Sellers during the first 90 days from the time of launch.
Initiated a project as an outcome of Seller attrition owing to Performance issue. In association with the Seller
Services – Account Management team launched a team to mass account manage newly launched Sellers
On an average 800-1000 newly launched Seller accounts were monitored and this enabled Sellers to perform
successfully on the Amazon selling platform.
The core job of this team is to coach and guide the Sellers
My key contributions to this project were - Conceptualization and design of the process map, staffing
requirements, training and goal setting
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This improved the Merchant Fulfilled Order defect r ate (ODR) by ~25% in 2014, thus reducing Seller attrition
owing to Performance Issues
Flash Report Project:
A by-product of the Account Management Program
Created flash report which captured the Seller Performance metrics including attributes such as - Seller health,
active Seller base, Sellers with high order defect rate etc.
This tracked the success and misses WoW
Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) Project:
Seller Support Associates rely heavily on SOPs to address Seller contacts. Hence, it is im perative to create and revise
SOPs for easy access of Associates thus improving Associate experience thereby Seller Experience.
Deployed a project in association with the global SOP team to scope ~400 SOPs across geographies; An
outcome of which was replicating ~236 SOPs to Amazon India Seller Support.
Worked in partnership with the Program and Technology teams to create newer SOPs; An incredible ~43 new
SOPs were launched as a result of this.
This resulted in creating uniform experience for Seller cont acts of similar nature.
Improved Associate productivity by ~4.2% as an outcome.
Operational Excellence:
Weekly and Monthly Business Review
Owner and representative of Seller Support Operations and Program in multiple weekly and monthly Business reviews
including Program, Business and Seller Services.
Owner for the Action Items which are outcome of these reviews. Couple of the high priority Country Manager level action
items close looped: Benchmarking of Seller Support Amazon quality performance with the In dian competitors; Reformat
the metric representation – Manhattan charts, introduction of details of value add etc
Drive high impact open issues to closure through this forum
Work in close coordination with the Analytics and Finance team for the completion of the review decks; publish metrics
data manually basis necessity.
Amazon Peak
Partnered and represented the Operational Excellence discussions during peak seasons.
Outcome of this is to channelize issues requiring immediate attention from Technology, P roduct team
Prepping the downstream teams with the potential newer nature of issues being reported by Sellers
Seller Support Team Manager (May 2011 till Aug 2013)
Leadership Experience:
Handled a team of 20-25 FTE, that supported sellers on the US, UK and Canadian Orgs including specialized
platforms like FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon), CBA (Checkout By Amazon ) and WBA (WebStore By
Amazon).
Simultaneously responsible for a team of 4-5 regional Escalations Specialists who monitored and drove high
severity issues impacting the network.
Real time monitoring and skill management to meet Turnaround Time and enhance productivity.
Goal setting and one on ones with Team Members.
Career progression and coaching for skill development of Team Members
Site Level Initiatives:
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Specific Point of Contact for site wide and network wide issues like improving positive feedback percentage
(HMD Driving), identifying issues contributing to seller pain & implementing long term solutions.
Active participant of multiple process development initiatives(Kaizen) whose goal was to have a more
‘lean’(reduce wastage; improve efficiency) and create a more structured, streamlined process.
Technical Escalations Lead (May 2010 till May 2011)
Was also the focal point of contact for our enterprise partners(Marks & Spencer, Lacoste, Mothercare & Benefit) to
monitor seamless implementation of new updates and drive all high severity events to a timely resolution.
Implemented Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for events handled by the team like Natural Disasters, Network
Outage and Order drop issues.
Handled the weekly business calls with senior leadership teams to help them understand the impact of the high severity
issues and what steps we have taken to ensure that such issues do not occur again viz., Correction of Error.
Technical Escalations Specialist (August 2008 till May 2010)
Was a part of the technical escalations team driving high severity issues for all Amazon orgs and also our enterprise
partners.
Worked on Trouble Tickets assigned to Seller Support from other internal teams.
Was a Point of Contact (PoC) for FBA operations and also in charge of delivering Advanced training for associates.
Also a major contributor for the Shingi led Kaizen event, as a part of which implemented a solution which resulted in
savings amounting to USD 1.2 Million. The scope of the Kaizen was handling ‘Feedback removal requests on Order’
from Sellers.
Technical Lead (Jan 2007 till August 2008)
Was in charge of supporting a team working on providing technical support to sellers. Apart from providing support and
driving technical trouble tickets cut to engineering teams, was also responsible for the team metrics, conducting analys is
of negative feedback polls and delivering timely feedback to the associates. Was also actively involved in coaching new
hires on advanced training topics.
Technical Associate (Oct 2005 till Jan 2007)
Part of the pilot batch launched in Hyderabad for Technical Account Management. The first point of contact for seller
issues on US, UK and CA via email. Worked to identify and resolve long term seller facing issue. Ramped up quickly in
training and mentored subsequent new hire batches. Was also deeply involved in the start of specialized support for our
FBA program.
WORKSHOPS & TRAININGS
Development Programs delivered by External & Internal Trainers within Amazon
Kaizen, Shingi Participation Certification Training from Amazon
EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS
B-Tech (JNTU Hyderabad) – 1999/ 2003
Board of Intermediate Education AP - 1997/99
St, Ann’s Girls High School (SSC AP)
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