Executive Customer Relations Specialist

Job Summary

The Executive Customer Relations Specialist serves as the face of Optimum, ensuring a world-class customer service experience. The ECR Specialist is responsible for resolving the most highly escalated customer-initiated issues that are received by internal, partner employees, agencies, and executives. The objective of the position is to advocate for our customers by delivering world-class customer service and managing all escalations to obtain the best possible response/resolution while maintaining the highest professional standards. The ECR Specialist will provide responses to complaints and inquiries from Regulatory Agencies, Senior Executives, Government Affairs, and directly from customers. The primary activities of the position will include handling escalated customer issues by researching the customers concerns and working across internal and external stakeholders to resolve them. These activities require the consistent delivery of response and resolution for the customer, the ability to take ownership, and staying up-to-date with knowledge of Optimum policies, procedures, and service standards.

The Specialist is responsible for responding to, researching, and resolving customer escalations received on three levels. The first level of complaints handled is from Senior Executives - Office of the President, The CEO, the Chairman's office, other Senior Corporate Executive's, and complaints from Government Affairs. The second level of complaints are received from government agencies. This category will include but not be limited to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Attorney General Office (AGO) complaints. Responses to this category of escalation should be closely aligned with Legal and Government Affairs perspectives. The third level of complaints comes directly from customers.
 

Responsibilities

• Complete initial outbound contacts (written and voice) with the customer to confirm receipt and attempt to resolve the issue(s).
• Demonstrate ownership of customer issues and work proactively with all Optimum business units, partners, and vendors to manage issues through to a complete resolution promptly within SLA.
• Demonstrate sound negotiation, problem-solving, and conflict resolution skills by working to resolve issues within your authority and parameters while utilizing sound judgment to understand when it will be both effective and necessary to escalate to a higher authority.
• Advocate as the voice of the customer to Optimum. Proactively make recommendations to address the root causes of escalations and complaints by leveraging escalation contacts and processes.
• Capture all pertinent customer contact information accurately and concisely within the data capture systems and ensure data is maintained correctly.
• Follow escalation and complaint procedures in order to ensure that all customer escalations are appropriately tracked, and all relevant parties are informed of actions taken to resolve issues.
• Utilize appropriate tools to ensure the customer receives relevant information and identify knowledge gaps and/or outdated policy/procedure which caused frontline efforts to fail.
• Maintain contact with all other relevant customer groups within Optimum to ensure support for resolution of customer issues, consistency of approach, and smooth cross-department cooperation.
• Participate in team meetings, discussions, and other activities as required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree or relevant work experience
• Minimum of 5 years of customer service experience required
• Previous corporate escalations or higher tier experience desired. Lead or Supervisory experience is preferred
• Exceptional verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to communicate effectively with all levels of management and company personnel
• Exceptional problem-solving and critical thinking skills
• Highly effective organizational skills
• Demonstrated negotiation and conflict management skills
• Proficiency in MS Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Excel skills required
• Proven success working in a collaborative team within a fast-paced, highly visible, customer-centric and focused environment
• Ability to wear a telephone headset.
• Ability to work independently and follow directions related to your job with little follow-up by your manager.
• Schedules may include a weekend day.