Sales Assistant and Customer Service Lead

The Sales Assistant and Customer Service Lead is the liaison between the Customers and the Sales Team and between the Sales Team and Plant Operations. This key position ensures overall customer satisfaction by ensuring prompt response to customer inquiries, conducting consistent customer outreach, and ensuring that request responses are managed in a timely and professional manner.

This position will lead the Customer Service team, who are responsible for ensuring all customers receive excellent professional service. This includes ensuring correct and complete orders, correct pricing, and order set up with accurate on time pickup or delivery. The Customer Service Lead must also ensure timely and accurate communication regarding customer satisfaction, questions and/or problems.

Pasta Montana employees are expected to maintain a positive work atmosphere through communication and behaving in a manner that is courteous and respectful of customers, co-workers, supervisors, management, vendors, and contractors. This position is required to adhere to the policies and procedures of Pasta Montana's food safety, quality, and legality programs.

EMPLOYMENT IS CONTINGENT UPON COMPLETING AND PASSING PRE-EMPLOYMENT DRUG TEST

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS

Develop positive relationships with customers, learn the customer needs and plans for future growth. Responsible for developing/maintaining a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to document customer contact information to assist others in getting to know our customers. Communicates this information with the Sales Department personnel.

• Will develop a proactive customer satisfaction program that contacts all customers at a predetermined frequency to inquire about their levels of satisfaction, needs, and/or concerns.
• Will attend bi-weekly sales meetings to stay informed on new opportunities and to communicate new information with sales team.
• Will attend weekly All Hands meetings to coordinate sales efforts with manufacturing team.

Track and manage customer communications to ensure that responses to customer requests are handled in a timely and professional manner.

• Will be trained and authorized to make several decisions regarding customer pricing, credit requests, sample requests and other items to reduce the company response times.

Coordinates all Customer Complaint Communications, ensuring timely and professional CCRs (Customer Complaint Responses). Resolves customer issues and complaints in a timely manner. Reports all unresolved issues and complaints to Customer's Sales Manager and/or the Executive Vice President.

Coordinates all Customer sample requests, including Dot Foods sample kit preparations and inventory maintenance.

Assists the Assistant Controller and Scheduler in covering Transportation Manager's responsibilities in that person's absence.

Assists the Assistant Controller and Executive Vice President in maintaining GS1 datapool information. This includes uploading and publishing product data to customers and responding to requests for additional product information.

Primary backup for Customer Service Representative (CSR), and actively participated in assisting in all Customer Service duties, including:

• Receiving all Costa/Pasta Montana orders and entering them into computer system, confirming items, pricing, and coordinating delivery/pickup dates with Transportation Manager.
• Responding to customer orders in a timely manner and coordinating consumer complaint procedures.
• Working closely with Scheduler/Planner and Transportation Manager after receiving customer orders to achieve required delivery commitments.
• Communicating with third-party warehouse(s) regarding all aspects of order process, customer pickup/ delivery and stock fulfillment orders.
• Processing customer shipments from third-party warehouse(s) after pickup/delivery and stock fulfillment shipments.

Notifying customs of border crossing dates and times for Canadian shipments. Sending customs information to carriers for Canadian load manifest. Processing and sending advance shipment notification to Canadian customer(s). Creating Canadian load weight sheets.

Performing clerical duties as required. This…