Senior Manager Order Support

Job Summary

It’s all about the customer. Their needs. Their challenges. Their concerns. Their experience. In a day filled with frustrations and complications, Acuity Brands should stand out as a source of pleasure and success. We take care of it. With this core principle as the drumbeat of all that we do, ABL is seeking to form an Internal Agency Team. The purpose and vision of this team will be to take on the challenges and complexity of serving our direct channel partners. While admittedly ambitious, this goal will be attained by developing the skill and knowledge of your team of customer-focused agents. The team you bring to life will coordinate all necessary stakeholders across the Acuity matrix to plan, execute, and ship orders on time. This will include deep level collaboration with Order Support, Sales, Production, Customer Ops etc. 

As the leader of this team, you will, first and foremost, embody the customer-focused drive, laid out above, in all that you do. You will lead with kindness, empathy, and respect. Bearing those truths at the forefront of your mind, you will execute the formation of the highly skilled, deeply engaging, wildly efficient Internal Agency Team described in the preceding paragraph. You will help locate and select qualified candidates for this team, and then take a guiding hand in raising them up to the critical level of proficiency required for the execution of inherently significant orders. Accomplishing this will require an insatiable desire for greater knowledge of our products and processes. Modeling curiosity and continuous improvement for your team, you will serve as a point of escalation and guidance, digging into multi-faceted challenges as they inevitably arise. Additionally, you will cultivate close relationships with our customers and sales partners, with regular visits and consistent communication, to better understand their felt needs. 

Key Tasks & Responsibilities (Essential Functions)

    
Partnership

• You will be an active partner in management of the entire Order Excellence organization. We don’t make decisions in a vacuum. 
• You will be a partner for our Direct Sales organization. Communication and collaboration will be key. 

Order Management

• You will be an example of passionate customer service and model empathy, kindness, and respect, every day 
• You will manage a team of dedicated Internal Agents who take on and successfully manage the internal business of Acuity. They shield the customer & build confidence. 
• You will manage and appropriately align resources based on forecasted direct sales 
• You will serve as a point of escalation whenever needed, always encouraging the most efficient solution possible
• You will continually seek opportunities to refine processes across the entire Acuity matrix to better serve our customers, while enabling greater efficiency for our teams
• You will foster an environment of growth and learning for your team members, providing ample opportunities to increase in both skill and knowledge, enabling the furtherment of their careers

Direct Customers 

• Utilizing personal visits and consistent communication, establishing relationships with direct partners and distributors, ensuring that they feel heard, cared for, and have a high level of confidence in THEIR team at Acuity
• Serve as a source of up-to-date knowledge & news, communicating to relevant stakeholders with urgency & thoughtfulness 

Internal

• You will serve as a resource for the Sales Team, providing guidance around current capabilities as they seek to win project awards from key customers
• You will serve as an ambassador for CX across a variety of internal orgs, participating in events and discussions, while promoting service excellence as a guiding principal, as it seeps into all of our processes.

What we are looking for in you

• Naturally empathetic. The ability to step into someone else’s shoes and walk a few miles can make all the difference between someone who is successful in this position and someone who struggles. By truly being able to understand the customer’s pain, you can also produce the best solutions.  
• Customer advocacy. Customer Support leaders must be strong, natural advocates. Your entire job is to fight to improve the customer experience, which can sometimes be more difficult than it sounds 
• Process driven. We must serve our customers beyond their expectation, and we must have sustainable, repeatable, efficient, and continuously improving processes. The details matter.  
• Curious. There is always an improvement to be made. Be curious, learn, engage, and drive impact.  
• KPI driven. Everything in this function is measurable. You will find ways to measure how well we’re serving customers with metrics like Customer Effort Score, Customer Satisfaction Score, and transactional Net Promoter Score for customer service interactions.  
• Hungry. A deep desire to learn our business and the processes associated. You will seek to not only be an expert, but the authority, on anything that could impact the customer experience at any point and how we can resolve it.  
• Business acumen. Elevated level of business acumen, organizational skills, and interpersonal abilities.  
• Pace. An ability to multi-task and work effectively in a dynamic, fast paced environment 
• Leadership. An ability to lead and drive (directly and indirectly) to achieve results. You know that influence is greater than authority.

Skills and Minimum Experience Required

• A bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience or certifications 
• Solid understanding of staff management; Experience leading people  
• Superior management and interpersonal skills 
• Excellent problem solving and critical thinking skills 
• Ability to remain calm and focused in stressful situations  
• Experience collecting, assessing, and interpreting data to provide insights to customers and partners  
• A strong desire to grow within the company  

Travel Requirements