hello and welcome back to my channel in this month's interview we have emma ferry who is a
customer service advisor at penguin random house hope you find this useful and enjoy
hi my name is emma ferry i'm a customer service advisor
in the key accounts team at penguin random house
so my job is to provide the best possible customer service for account customers and bookshops
across the uk and the entire world we work really closely with the sales team and sales operations
to process orders apply discounts manage freight forwarders just make sure that the orders
arrive with customers smoothly as possible i currently work in the key accounts team um i've
previously worked in the export team dealing with international orders which i still dabble
in which i'll i'll get to that um so but one other thing my main things i work on at the moment is um
events across the uk so i process those orders for events in book shops that could be anything to do
with author events uh festivals so yeah i process the orders and they come in and we monitor them
really closely to make sure that they get there on time it's really pivotal to the sales of our
books for example if these books are going to an author event and they've been promised a copy with
their ticket they need to be there on time for that event so that's something that we do just
to make sure that every deadline is met so some of the key accounts that i work on at the moment
is um our penguin random house group customers which ties in the international work that i do
so this includes processing orders for ph india south africa australia new zealand and the us
majority of our meetings are on microsoft teams three times a week we have a customer
service departmental meeting um just to have any updates given to us and then twice a week i have
a meeting with my key accounts team again go over any updates go over any problems um
maybe occurring and just um catch up and communicate with my team i sometimes get to join a
meeting with the sales operations team for exports just because i do a lot of work
for the group customers it's quite important that i keep up to date with any
updates internationally especially after brexit things can change really quickly in distribution
i studied english literature at university not really knowing what i wanted to do once i'd
left uh it wasn't until my third year that i realized paying a random house did work
experience placements and internships so this is something i applied for a couple of times
the first time i wasn't successful but they were able to give me some really good feedback
on how to improve my application the next time the applications were due i reapplied not
really having much hope and i got it i couldn't believe it i was going to spend two weeks in a
in a dream job and just get an idea of what i could be doing in the future possibly so
yeah i was living at university at the time it was right towards the end of my final year um
i just thought it was just an amazing opportunity i couldn't pass it up so i spent two weeks in the
publicity department of penguin press which was um amazing i loved being in a publishing environment
straight away and i just knew that's where i wanted to work and after i finished uni i came
back home to live with my parents in essex and i was lucky enough to live near the pringle random
house distribution centre so i applied for a job within customer services and the rest is history
for this role i think there are three main skills that are really important first being attention to
detail we process a lot of orders every single day mistakes happen everyone's human but it's really
important to keep that attention to detail to make sure that we're processing orders to the correct
customers using their correct account numbers um if it's going internationally checking to see if
they need to go these orders need to go via a an air freight project order or a c freight things
that you can be checking for any discounts need amending if any prices need amending
if we're using the correct isbns stuff like that it's really important to make sure all of that is
correct second skill i think is really important is to be tech savvy or adaptable to technology
just because we use a lot of different systems in our work every day some really random ones at
that we use a system called vista which looks a lot like a teletex it's bright blue gives you a
headache looking at it too long but yeah just being adaptable if you've got any examples of
any systems you've used at university or um in other jobs it's a really good thing to mention
um and finally i think communication skills are really important in this role uh just
because we're dealing with customers every single day um over the phone or by email
you need to show a level of empathy for them especially if you're dragged into
a situation where there's problems and also we are speaking with different teams around
the company particularly the sales teams credit services people like that so just having those
having those basic communication skills both both verbally and non-verbally are super important
everyone who works in distribution can say the exact same thing and sometimes
things go wrong parcels go missing but ultimately we're the customer service team
so we bear the brunt when something goes wrong and actually that's very challenging and customers are
sometimes annoyed especially with um urgent orders maybe for an event that i deal with quite a lot um
in my job so yeah we have weird ones that are responsible for finding out what's gone wrong
and sometimes people don't have an answer i'll talk to the parcel delivery company and they'll
say we never receive this and then i'll speak to the warehouse and they'll say this was definitely
dispatched what can i do and then we have to figure out a solution from there so i guess supply
chain is the biggest issue but i'm sure everyone in distribution can vouch for that as well
so i don't think there is really a typical career path
um after my role i've known people to go off into completely different industries um i've also known
people to progress different roles within this my within my office and so a lot of people have
gone on to maybe credit services roles or um finance roles like that and i also know
people who have then progressed into roles in london so i know i know people who've gone into
rights and permissions and marketing so yeah it's very varied it's not a typical role at all
the advice i would give them is to emphasize any customer service experience you may have from
previous jobs would that be from a coffee shop a restaurant a retail anything like that emphasize
some examples of where you've gone out of your way to help a customer resolve a situation and
then also i would say to emphasize your passion for books and your passion for publishing because
you want to work in customer service in being a random house you're going to be around books a lot
and talking about books a lot it's genuinely what gets me through my job sometimes i'm not going to
lie customer service can be sometimes monotonous what gets me through is knowing that i'm getting
our books out there and distributing our books to the wider world so yeah showing your passion