Payal Gulia

Led a customer support organization of 60+ people including an offshore contact center and an onshore internal support team handling 300,000+ cases per year for two products Eviti and NaviNet.

Accomplishments:

• Overachieved the targeted 85% First Contact Resolution (FCR) rate for NaviNet and Eviti.
• Decreased phone support volume by promoting lower-cost online support channels (such as web forms) and using Pendo guides on NaviNet to reduce calls arising from issues impacting users.
• Reduced Abandonment Rate from 5.14% to 2.5% for Eviti.
• Improved CSAT rating for the highest score from 70% to 75% for Eviti.
• Maintained Mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) to less than 1 day for Eviti.

Responsibilities:

• Implemented and spearheaded a quality management program for regular coaching and mentoring called MaestroQA for Eviti and NaviNet.
• Achieved operational readiness by actively participating in the RFP process and forecasting support volumes based on upcoming new lines of business and updates to existing business needs for NaviNet and Eviti.
• Led an effective transition by proactively implementing cross-training efforts for support analysts to handle incoming volume via product releases, reducing the need for additional headcount.
• Established skills-based routing and rebuilt workflows to take advantage of the product features.
• Established vendor relationships for call center and telephony systems to achieve business continuity.
• Negotiated favorable contracts with vendors for reduced costs and improved service quality.
• Worked on Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) methodology, to drive knowledge sharing, transfer of cross-functional work with other teams, and improve operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
• Achieved a 23% reduction in time to productivity for new analysts by ramping up training time.
• Promoted self-service for end users by publishing 20% of help articles on the NN Help Center aiding in case deflection.
• Navigated complex regulatory environments to ensure compliance with local laws, standards, and regulations relevant to the business domain.
• Managed risk effectively by identifying potential threats, developing contingency plans, and implementing mitigation strategies in line with overall business objectives.
• Managed budgets effectively, achieving financial objectives while maintaining strict control over expenditures.
• Fostered work culture of collaboration and inclusion to increase morale and reduce turnover.

Accomplishments:

• Progressed to manage a high visibility team for the office of the CEO within six months of hire.
• Recognized for providing a creative solution to managing reports.

Responsibilities:

• Managed critical customer relationships for escalations directly to the office of the CEO.
• Led quality audit for eight call center calls, chats, and other customer interactions.
• Identified and reported on customer pain points and valuable voice of customer insight.
• Managed CSAT survey callbacks and reported survey contact rate and issue resolution rate.
• Achieved operational excellence by streamlining processes and implementing best practices for Quality Audit Management.
• Collaborated with Sales, Billing, Engineering, Service Delivery, and Call Center teams on strategies to identify gaps and recommend process changes to create a positive customer experience and to drive organizational success jointly as one cohesive unit.
• Built and created critical escalation reports for senior executives using SalesForce and Qualtrics.
• Implemented cost-saving measures through effective resource allocation and budget.
• Worked closely with the Customer Support team on identifying recurring issues, recommending solutions, and updating knowledge base articles.
• Demonstrated exceptional adaptability in navigating complex situations or rapidly changing environments with ease.

• Managed requests and issues related to the IT platform (Elevate) for HD-OPE from staff.
• Collaborated with HR reps and the Rapid Application Development team on issues.
• Devised and implemented processes and procedures to streamline operations.
• Analyzed data sets to identify trends and opportunities for process improvements and escalated them to the Agile Implementation Team for further action.
• Managed client relationships through regular check-ins and updates on progress.

• Set up and transformed customer support teams and processes from the ground up successfully.
• Participated in strategic planning to strengthen core services and support disciplines.
• Interfaced with customers and maintained cross-functional relationships with internal teams such as Engineering, Integration, and Product teams as issues arise to troubleshoot, monitor bug fixes, track feature development in code releases to ensure operational reliability, update help desk workflows, provide root cause analysis and to create knowledge management articles.
• Owned escalated issues and customer communication for updates, upgrades, and service outages.
• Formalized and reported on customer support department statistics including creating KPIs such as average call, email, and chat handling time, answer rate, number of cases, and resolution times as per issue priority, and retained existing customers by maintaining a 100% CSAT level for service and resolution times, etc.
• Created, reviewed, updated, tracked, and reported all Customer Support SLAs.
• Spearheaded critical customer relationship management starting with customer onboarding and post-sale support.
• Hired, trained, and coached Tier I, II, and III Customer Support staff.

• Collaborated, liaised, and shared best practices with Meridian's internal stakeholders such as project managers, product support, IT, and other team members and customers to collect, assess, analyze, manage, and resolve Learning Management Software issues.
• Developed and maintained a high-performing team by providing mentorship, guidance and opportunities for professional growth
• Created lunch-and-learns and brown bag sessions to upgrade skills and subject knowledge for each application version.
• Designed the department's SharePoint site, JIRA Confluence, Desk.com, and SalesForce.com resolving automation deficiencies.
• Identified and implemented a new CRM for high-quality metrics that helps manage customer relationships and can be used as a service recovery source by studying, evaluating, and redesigning processes; establishing service metrics; and monitoring and analyzing results.
• Spearheaded and supported the rollout of the new CRM system (Desk.com) for all internal departments with a 100% acceptance rate.
• Facilitated and coordinated capture, validation, and implementation of lessons learned and best practices for use by teams across.
• Hired and managed 8-12 local and remote (including international) customer support team members and 4 application developers to achieve defined department goals and key performance metrics for all touchpoints, and balanced workload intake during core and non-core hours.
• Reported department statistics to C-Suite, addressed and resolved customer escalations within specified SLA effectively.
• Conducted Performance Reviews based on the internal KPIs.

Accomplishments:

• Stellar award recipient for the following years: 2008-2010.
• Highest Customer Satisfaction award for Live Chat during 2011.

Responsibilities:

• Managed all inbound/outbound customer touchpoints for technical and non-technical inquiries.
• Wrote, edited, and reviewed all help articles, documentation for Knowledge Management Software (KMS such as Confluence and Wiki on Google Sites), Twitter posts, and blog posts.
• Collaborated with the user experience team on taxonomy and search techniques.
• Prioritized workload to ensure quick turnaround for customer inquiries and generated projects and project reports by consulting with cross-functional teams.
• Built strategies to proactively forecast potential service issues, address at-risk customers, increase usage, provide excellent service, and thereby maintain a 95% customer renewal rate.
• Aided product developers in launching a successful digital redesign by providing use cases.
• Managed a team of 12-15 Customer and Technical Support Specialists (local and remote) and developed a comprehensive onboarding and training program for new hires.
• Implemented SalesForce and LiveChat for the support team.
• Created robust processes and procedures that increased team productivity by 10%.
• Conducted Performance Reviews using KPIs such as live call and chat answer rate (>95%).
• Grew talent pool by actively recruiting top-tier candidates from diverse backgrounds while implementing robust training programs for skill development across all levels of staff members.

• Managed three operation functions’ calls and projects for - Credit, Collections, and Return checks.
• Exceeded customer satisfaction survey and collections target every quarter.
• Promoted to the role of Credit Analyst in Credit and Collections (Escalation) department.
• Trained a team of 10-15 representatives and offered a win-win solution for the challenging situations.
• Wrote process documents and shared best practices.
• Met compliance standards on all calls as per the company’s policy.