Day-in-the-life of a Customer Experience Agent: Kinga
Hi, my name is Kinga. I’ve been at Maersk for since November 2021 and I’m a Customer Experience Agent. Here’s what I get up to at work in a day.
Arrive at the office
My team and I work at home 4 days a week and one day in the office. Today, I’m going to office. I usually arrive at 10 minutes before I start work as I like a leisurely start to my day.
Even though it takes me an hour and a half to travel into the office as I am living in my home town for now, I really enjoy meeting my colleagues, so whenever I have chance, I like to go into the office to see my team. However, hopefully soon my travel time will reduce to 20 minutes when I move closer to the office. Coffee is the first thing on my mind when I arrive in the office! In the kitchen you can meet a lot of colleagues by the coffee machine, I enjoy talking to them and sharing my morning before staring work.
Time to start work
Back at my desk, the first thing I do is check my calendar to see what meetings I have scheduled throughout the day. I look for the customer calls that I have already scheduled so that I can structure my day to fit ad-hoc tasks and make time to deal with unexpected customer issues. Next, I check what cases have come in from my customers overnight on the case management system. We also use email but that is more for internal conversations between colleagues.
Most of the work is unique because it depends on specific bookings and customers’ needs. The more regular tasks include contact with terminals, notification of containers in the port system, checking leasing and container holds.
Morning
I work on the most urgent cases and requests, some are time sensitive and need to be dealt with before the afternoon or the end of the day, these are the ones I work on first.
For the rest of the morning, I work on other customer queries and requests. Sometimes, these queries can be very interesting and challenging to solve due to the complex nature of some of my customers’ business. For example, one of my customers is a company that imports fish from the Mar Del Plata terminal in Argentina to Poland. Shipping is via transit in London, UK and Bremerhaven, Germany.
In the port in Germany, a veterinary inspection must be carried out. The container must be offloaded from the ship, there is an order to everything, and arrangements have to made with the customer of when it can be inspected. Due to this, I need to contact many other Maersk departments so important to ensure that the process goes smoothly. After the veterinary inspection before the container can carry on its journey to Poland, we need to remove the previous customs alloy which prevents it from being allowed to sail.
As you can see, there are many instances in the process and journey which can lead to a delay, time is very important especially as these containers contain frozen products so being off schedule can affect the goods.
Training
Once a month, I have one-to-one meetings with my manager. This is time where I can talk about everything what’s on my mind with her. We talk about thinks that have gone well in the past month and what needs to change, priorities and new challenges. After these meetings I always feel full of energy and motivation.
Today isn’t the day for my one-to-one meeting, but I am working on something else which is just as energising and exciting. Due to changes in the Operations department, our CX department have now taken over some of their tasks, so my colleagues and I are training to use local port systems which I find very interesting.
Lunchtime
1pm is when I usually take my lunch break. I try to take small breaks throughout the day to refill my water or make more coffee and stretch my legs. Lunch is the time of day with I get to spend more time with my colleagues in the office.
There isn’t a canteen on-site, but three different caterers come into the office with lunch options every day, usually there are healthy, vegan and meat options. Recently, I have been choosing the salads and the healthier food option. I eat my lunch while chatting with colleagues in the really nice open space kitchen we have in the Gdynia office; we talk a lot about our travels, pets and hobbies.
Afternoon
I have a couple of team meetings every week which are attended by all team members and led by our manager. Tuesday 1:30pm is the first one, in this meeting we like to keep a balance between work and life. We talk about current affairs, give each other advice on customer issues we are experiencing which can be difficult to deal with alone sometimes.
On Fridays in the afternoon, we have another “catch up call” with the whole team, this is more relaxed and is an opportunity for us to laugh and joke after a long week. As some of us may not be in the office during these meetings, we also have a Microsoft Teams meeting on so the ones at home can also join.
End of the day
It’s nearly the end of the day for me so I doublecheck that everything urgent has been done and start preparing for tomorrow’s tasks.
I go home immediately after work as it takes a while for me to get back but once a month after pay day my team meet up after work for food and drink. We also like to spend time together going to pub quizzes or escape rooms where our team skills come in very handy.
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