Alan Smith

As a customer strategy director at Cresta I served as a bridge between our most strategic clients and internal teams - including Sales, Implementation and Customer Success - to translate bold visions into rapid, measurable value. This included:

• Owning the development of compelling, long-term business cases and strategic road maps
• Leading Business Value Assessments that quantified ROI
• Ensuring a seamless handoff at each transition point
• Creation of scalable playbooks designed to speed up onboarding and/or drive adoption

By orchestrating cross-functional delivery, continuously monitoring progress and leveraging executive sponsorship when pivots were required, I guided customers toward sustained success.

Along with the below duties, New responsibilities included:

• Designed, developed, implemented and maintained world-class routing automation to reduce customer effort and ensure customers were routed to the best team to assist them, resulting in a drop of over 2min in average time to answer and a 6pt rise in customer satisfaction scores.
• Consistently exceeded department goals in revenue (98% to plan +3pts vs other retail channels, 9 of 12 months goal exceeded) and customer experience metrics (104% to plan) in an unstable post-pandemic environment.
• Spearheaded new initiative to move team to a new chat platform that opened up omni-channel communication options creating new revenue stream opportunities, opening the door for international sales and ensuring future-proof communication 

Along with the below, new responsibilies and accomplishments included:

• Showed significant, sustained sales growth (500% growth since 2017) by prioritizing conversion growth and added efficiencies.
• Consistently exceeded department goals in revenue and customer experience metrics in a rapidly changing pandemic environment.
• Managed all aspects of the digital sales and service team, generating over $50mil in revenue over 2 years.
• Right-sized headcount as the economy and customer focus shifted to ensure we continued to deliver a world-class customer experience while operating at maximum budget savings by reducing team size to 35 utilizing performance management tools.
• Coached and mentored 5 direct people leaders, three of which have since been promoted outside the team.
• Spearheaded onboarding of first of its kind real-time sales based AI technology which led to doubling conversion rates in the first two years, leading to approximately $25mil in additional revenue.
• Implemented automation aimed at adding efficiency by directing customers to self-service options to reduce weight on sales agents. In the first 6 months the automation saved over 5.5k hours of agent talk time and saved the company over $90k.
• One of 5 nominees for company's top technology award in 2021 for cross-functional effort to bring forward secure payment automation for the customer.
• 2 time winner of company's top sales award as a sales manager.

• Built, managed, and developed a dynamic sales team comprised of over 50 agents with expertise in both sales and customer service.
• Supervised all aspects of the digital sales and service team, generating over $70mil in revenue over 3 years.
• Oversaw daily frontline operations, coordinated daily workflows and scheduling, and provided a high-quality customer experience, including identifying resolutions to escalated issues.
• Provided coaching and training to team members to build a collaborative work culture centered on customer experience and service.
• Provided upper management with statistical performance reports and plans for improvement.
• Two time winner of company's top sales award as a sales supervisor.

• Led a team of 5 social media specialists in engaging with new and current customers to increase brand awareness and engagement.
• Increased brand engagement reach each year from 35k unique conversations in 2015 to over 130k unique conversations in 2017.
• Designed and implemented a ticket tracking tool to track customer journey, volume, sentiment and customer voice for reporting purposes that currently contains over 1mil social interactions, each with rich data around brand sentiment, VOC and SLA performance.
• Analyzed social media metrics and KPIs to track customer voice and reported findings with context to senior leadership
• Collaborated with marketing, PR, and creative teams to align social media strategies with overall business objectives and messaging.
• Drove an "industry best" response rate on Twitter according to their own internal metrics of over 96% of customer comments engaged with.
• Designed and delivered social media specific customer experience training that is still used in 2024.
• Mentored team members, providing guidance on best practices, industry trends, and innovative techniques to drive social media growth.
• Conducted in-depth analysis of social media data to identify trends, optimize performance, and provide actionable insights
• Monitored conversations and mentions on social media to maintain brand reputation and address customer inquiries in a timely manner

• Acted as a brand ambassador by engaging with followers, responding to comments and messages, and fostering a positive online community.
• Engaged with over 15k unique customers per year.
• Stayed current on industry trends and best practices to continuously improve brand engagement