At Twill we are always working hard to deliver for our clients around the world. The shipping industry relies on thousands of different people doing many different jobs and each person and job is important in the chain – without one, none of the others can succeed. This couldn’t be truer than when it comes to our Customer Care team – they keep our entire operation ticking.
So how do they do it? We spoke to Javier Pedrajas from our import Customer Care team and found out what a usual day in the office entails for him:
**Arriving & helping customers**9:00 am – “I get to work just before 9am and get myself settled for what is always a busy day – the Twill offices have amazing coffee; which always make the mornings easier!
“Where other jobs might ease into the day, we are straight to work because we have to check in with our colleagues in China, Vietnam and across Asia due to time differences. When we arrive at 9am it’s already 4pm in Shanghai and they’re nearing the end of the working day – so we have to make sure everything is going well for them and that if they have any issues we get them rectified as soon as possible. This is especially the case around busy periods such as Chinese New Year.”
**Customer care huddle**10:00 am – “Three times a week at 10am we have our Customer Care Huddle – this is when everyone in the customer care team gathers together to discuss the day and week ahead and it’s a chance for us to see who has limited capacity and might need some support. Twill has a great environment for being able to talk and work together and this is a good example of that! Language barriers mean we can’t always help team members in dealing directly with customers – but we can help them with things like checking and updating ETAs (Estimated Time of Arrival) for shipments in transit to lighten their load.”
**Tech check-in & assisting customers**11:00am – “Around mid-morning I’ll have my ‘tech check-in’ which is when I will get in touch with the tech support who provide the upkeep of our digital platform and review any tweaks, issues or changes that may need to be made to the platform. This isn’t always necessary, but at Twill we really want to deliver for our customers. So when I have a customer raise a difficulty or issue they’re having, I get a lot of joy out of fixing that for them – we always celebrate those small improvements here at Twill and I think that’s important.
“After our tech check-in, it’s back to helping our customers with their imports. We control shipments that have arrived, releasing them to go through customs and keeping them informed at all times with notifications on our platform and if it’s urgent then we will call them. We do this for all our customers, so there is some multi-tasking involved! But I find that a great challenge.”
**Updating Twill platform & invoicing**2:00pm – “After a break for lunch, the afternoon at my desk is a mix of different jobs and tasks. I’ll continue to help our customers with their imports of course – this never really stops because we want to keep everything moving as smoothly as we can.
“Other than that, I will use the afternoon to go onto our digital platform and update the milestones for our customers – these show how cargo is progressing on its journey across the sea; then from the port and through customs. We are currently working on a smart milestone process, looking to atomize it from end-to-end, which will mean our customers are updated earlier on their shipments and we in the customer care team will be able to give more focus to urgent and rare cases that need more attention.
“The afternoon is also a chance for us to handle any admin tasks such as invoicing, or the ETA updates that I mentioned earlier. Equally, this might be when I look to give my colleagues some help if I have any time to spare.”
**Idea generation meeting**4:00pm – “One of the more special things that we have at Twill, which is not something I have experienced at any other company, is an ‘idea generation meeting’ which is held every week. The purpose of this meeting is to gather the entire import customer care team and give us the opportunity to suggest changes and improvements that could be made to the Twill platform through our experiences with it.
“It’s this kind of start-up mentality that I always find exciting, being open and encouraging of change and making things better and smoother for our customers. It’s possible that we might even relay feedback or a suggested change that has been made by a customer – all ideas are welcomed no matter how small.”
**Home!**5:30pm – “After a busy day, it’s off home to rest and relax before doing it again tomorrow. I’ve been at Twill since July last year – not long after it launched – and I love the modern, forward-thinking mind-set in the company and the way we can communicate with each other openly to bring the platform forward together!”
Javier Pedrajas – Twill Customer Care Ninja