Regional Project Manager
Travelport
Total years of experience :12 years, 8 Months
Travelport is a travel commerce platform providing travel agencies and corporations with distribution, technology, and payment solutions globally. As an established GDS powering travel providers, agencies and OTA’s, I am responsible for new agencies, OTA’s and any new businesses onboarding, including installations of our proposed solutions, hardware’s and training of our customers employees within the Europe, Middle East and African region.
Key Responsibilities
• Project planning & tracking; creating & managing key milestone and performance indicators. Organizing, leading and scheduling activities such as pre-sales & time in motion discoveries, installation of proposed solutions, coordinating training and technical services such as hardware installations and implementation of our Uapi for OTA’s.
• Financial management including budgeting, forecasting and obtaining funding from sponsors.
• Management of third party vendors, contractors and suppliers across the project. Including setting up of internal operations for Travelport’s NDC markets, ensuring standards are maintained across countries and region.
• Providing high level project summaries & reports to stakeholders, project team, executive steering committee and PMO and ultimately to board level for high yield/focus projects.
• Delivering objectives to strict budgets, deadlines and service level agreements.
Professional Growth
• Implemented over 1m segments worth of customer contracts achieving targets from the get go.
• Played an integral role in designing and defining a globally launched Customer Onboarding Playbook.
• Delivered projects ahead of plan and within allocated budgets.
• Achieved exceptional rating and Beyond Award for outstanding performance within the first year of employment.
Starz Play is a new Streaming Video on Demand (SVOD) service in the Middle East offering premium and quality TV Series and Movies content. As a new venture launched in 2015 across the Middle East region, I have set-up and launched the Regional Customer Services Team which I now head and manage, responsible for Customer Operations across all service delivery touch points.
Key Top Achievements
• Set-up and launch of the Regional Customer Services team and operations across People and Processes, Service Delivery and Customer Care, Systems and Application, Platform Testing and QA, and end-to-end Subscriber Management Services.
• Working in conjunction with Marketing in planning, executing and managing the launch of Special Promotional Campaign Programs with key market partners such as Souq.com and Cobone
• Set-up and launch of the Outbound Telesales team including sales incentive schemes, customer segmentations and scenarios, call scripts, training, call scheduling, systems and applications, CRM, and Customer Database Management
• Consistently meeting one of the highest SKA/KPI targets of First Contact Resolution (FCR), Response Time, and setting up the proactive response process where Customer Streaming is monitored round the clock to ensure any service issues are identified and resolved ahead of any customer calls. This includes proactively calling customers and informing them of any known issues and advising them of solutions and timelines in real-time.
Leading the Customer Services Team for the UAE including managing the Contact Centre with over 90 team members for the largest E-commerce organization in the Middle East, across all key areas of Strategy, People and Processes, Technology, end-to-end Customer Engagement and Experience, Order Management, Delivery, Logistics and Supply Chain, Training and Quality, Daily Operations, Service Levels, and Channel Partner Relationships such as leading telecom operators like Du.
In addition to heading the UAE Team - reporting directly to the Regional Customer Services Director - I lead on key strategic Customer Services projects for SOUQ.com across the region for all change management roll-outs including new systems, processes, service metrics, infrastructure, product and content and quality and training initiatives.
Direct reports include two supervisors, eight team leaders, and one QA and Training Lead, also have direct financial reporting responsibilities, budget and operational planning, and managing top key regional roll-out and projects
Key Top Achievements
Driving key changes in processes, technology, structure, and scaling-up the team from 12 to over 90 agents and team leaders in under a year, while consistently meeting high service levels
Establishment of a fully integrated Contact Centre, and roll-out of services beyond the UAE to cover other GCC and Middle East region
Setting up and managing the whole customer end-to-end operation, logistics and customer care for Du online store, Toys R Us and Babies R Us
Design and launch of the customer care self-help channel
Leading the team successfully through two major platform migrations
Implemented a new Ticket system, processes and structure
Professional Growth
Started as a Customer Service Agent and promoted three levels up within three years to Team Leader (2012), Supervisor (2013) and Senior Supervisor heading the UAE CS Team in Q3 - 2013
In-depth expert knowledge of end-to-end E-Commerce operations, processes, systems (including ERP, PABX/ACD, IVR, Back-office Data systems)
Achieved Employee of the Month and other recognitions and training across Customer Care and E-Commerce.
Acquired certificates for successfully completing S.T.A.R (Students Taking Active Role) Leadership workshops on Team Building and Culture Understanding. Achieved trophies and certificates for basketball, table tennis, 8 ball pool and dance in inter-university and intra-university tournaments.