Company: DHL Express, Tempe, AZ
Company Description: DHL has built the world's premier global delivery network by trailblazing express shipping in one country after another. Over 220 countries and territories later, DHL is the global market leader of the international express and logistics industry. DHL specializes in providing customers with innovative and customized transportation solutions from a single source.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year

Nomination Title: DHL Key Accounts Department

Tell the story about what this nominated organization/department achieved since January 1 2011 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

The DHL Key Accounts Department (KAD) is designed to provide a single point of contact for DHL’s largest and most valuable customers. In 2011, DHL’s Key Account team of 29 executives supported 240 different customers that included over 2,000 account numbers. The experienced team is empowered to take whatever action is necessary to resolve a customer issue including same-day deliveries, week-end pickups and deliveries, and other service that may be required to meet the customer’s requirements.

The needs of each customer are unique, so are the services and solutions provided to them. To accomplish this, KAD works collaboratively with our Sales Executives to design the precise support packages that are designed to make our customers more successful by allowing them to focus on their core business while the Key Account team takes care of their express shipping needs. This allows many customers to comfortably rely upon DHL’s stellar service performance and concierge-style KAD team to reduce their inventory costs and prevent an interruption in their production lines.

The result is relationship-oriented versus transactional and can be best explained by a Sales Executive who stated that a major DHL Key Account customer had increased their business with DHL by 167% and he largely attributed this to the outstanding efforts of the Key Account Executive assigned to their account.

KAD Executives are often viewed as an extension of our customers’ on-site staff which is not surprising since the KAD Executives consider their customers truly their own.

The services we provide run the gamut from very basic rate and transit quotes to explaining the most complex licensing and documentation requirements of foreign countries in basic terms for our customers or providing detailed daily reports designed to meet our customers’ business needs.

Customer satisfaction is of utmost importance to the KAD and we survey all the identified contacts within an account twice a year. The questions cover a wide rage of issues including the Executives’ knowledge, responsiveness, and accuracy. In 2011, the KAD Quality Circle (a departmental process improvement team) investigated the results of and commentary from prior surveys to determine a course of action to further improve the customer experience for our customers and drove the survey results from a 92.9% positive rating in Q2 of 2011 to 95.8% in six months!

What drives these numbers is the focus on consistent service excellence with metrics to support it. While achieving 100% is always our goal, time zones, geopolitical issues and weather can make this a challenge. However, in 2011 the DHL KAD team successfully met our on-time call-back commitments to customers and responses to international tracing teams 95.82%. This means the team keeps their promises to customers and international peers when working on issues for them. Treating every contact – internal and external – like a valued customer is the hallmark of DHL’s Key Account Department and a clear differentiator for the company.

Upload a collection of supporting files and web addresses to our server to provide more background information to the judges. You may upload any number of attachments and URLs through the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above. (Do NOT list your URLs below.)

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated organization/department:

Judy Williams is the Director of KAD. She joined DHL after 20+ years in the voice/data industry with roles in training, contract administration, and project management. While at DHL, Judy has led the CS Training Organization and managed the Customer Contact before joining the Key Account department in April of 2011.