Summary
Developed a low-tech solution to drive customer retention and improve customer onboarding consistency.
Skills Demonstrated
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Problem Statement​​​​​​​
Current State
In a department with over 100 sales representatives, averaging 9 new customers each month each rep had a system which told them how often each customer was engaging with the offerings which was a strong indicator of customer retention.  Additionally, each management level up could see only an aggregated view of the customer engagements under their organization.  It took several hours for leaders to match up each customer with their respective sales rep and the information changed every day.  The administrative burden made the effort prohibitive.  A trend of lower than expected retention resulted in long-term loss of revenue and often a debt to the customer.
Gap
The current system in use did not have the capability to align and assign customers by representative, manager, director, etc. which prevents managers from taking timely action to improve the trend.

The raw data tables to connect the hierarchy to the daily customer engagement results was accessible but the skillset to bring the two together with a level of automation required to make it timely enough to be actionable was not present in the department.

Desired Future State
A solution that allows all levels of leadership in the hierarchy to see customer’s engagement assigned to the sales rep, manager, director, etc. so all levels of leadership would have situational awareness and be able to take effective action to improve retention.

It must be a low tech solution that the department could manage without additional technology support that included enough automation to provide the information to all levels of the hierarchy each morning allowing time for coaching and effective action to take place.

My Contributions
Results
Challenges

 The technology skillset to develop the low tech solution did not exist in the department
Resolution/Outcome

Outcome:  Successful

Timeline:  On-Time (2 months from concept to delivery)
I personally designed, developed, deployed, and trained on the solution using excel functions, formulas, and VBA coding.  The low-tech solution was simple enough that I could train all of the directors and managers in the division on its’ use and proper upkeep.  It was so successful at improving situational awareness and customer retention that other divisions requested that I deploy the solution in their divisions as well.
Lessons Learned

Improved Excel skills - and VBA.
I greatly improved my Excel skills using functions and VBA to develop the solution.
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