DHL Express UAE - Back-Office Customer Service Professional of the Year

Company: DHL Express, United Arab Emirates
Company Description: DHL Express[2] is a division of the German logistics company Deutsche Post DHL providing international express mail services. Deutsche Post DHL is the world's largest logistics company operating around the world. Headquarters: Bonn, Germany Founded: 1969, San Francisco, California, United States CEO: Ken Allen (2008–) Number of employees: 325,000
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Back-Office Customer Service Professional of the Year - Other Service Industries

Nomination Title: Thejeshvi Chiyanna, Back-office International Certified Supervisor

Thejeshvi Chiyanna holds a Bachelor’s degree in Arts and 20 years of experience within DHL Express in Customer Service, is a professional in her field with many achievements to her credit which includes being a Certified International Specialist. She leads the back office team comprising of 26 heads whose primary responsibility is customer retention and care.

She has been consistently over achieving all her KPI Targets since 2010.

She has been nominated 6 times for the Employee of the Year awards. In 2006 & 2007 for Customer Service Employee, 2011 for Support Employee, 2014 & 2017 for Outstanding Achiever, and recently 2020 for her exceptional efforts during the pandemic.

Also awarded several Middle East and North Africa Continuous Improvement awards for her valuable initiatives in improving efficiency and quality.

Recognized as a top backliner in the region, Thejeshvi was amongst the first 3 selected from MENA region to join and graduate form the Global Certified International Specialist Supervisory Program with distinction.

It’s in her DNA to accept challenges while remaining positive in all situations. Thejeshvi has been instrumental through her dedication and skills in ensuring that the back office team has been high performing team for the last several years.

Outline the nominee's achievements since July 1 2019 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):

In March 2020, Thejeshvi believed that the pandemic was here to stay and was certain that Service Reliability was going to be the key factor in such circumstances and decided to come up with her focus strategy based on 4 key areas:

For Customers – Minimal disruption & effort
For People – Safety
For Business – Customer Retention & Revenue
For Myself – Being Adaptive & Innovative

Her strategy was inspired by the DHL group organization focus pillars, staff health & safety and voice of the customers.

With most of her team working from home, she made sure to maintain a high team engagement, planned creative activities such as online birthday celebrations and cake home delivery, online team games and meetings, introduced digital appreciation cards. These activities led to her receiving a high employee opinion survey scores.
Employee Engagement - 100%
Active Leadership - 91 %

The focus on quality was done through KPI performance management, meeting customer’s expectations, daily analysis of data, regular con calls with the network and stakeholders, providing team with regular feedback and coaching for improvement areas. This resulted in very high performance scores compared to global targets.

97.28% in Quality (target 90%)
97.39% in response times (target 90%)
86.05% case closure < 3 days. (target 75%)

Online shopping ecommerce during Covid19 double the backoffice inquiries. With her efficiency mind set Thej led continuous improvement project and was able to reduce the increase by half, which had a positive effect on team motivation and cost saving.

Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the nominee's past performance (up to 250 words):

Unlike previous years, 2020 posed huge challenges due to the situation presented by Covid 19. What was unique in 2020 was the early anticipation by her of the challenges that Covid 19 could pose. This made Thejeshvi think about the health/ safety of the team and the business continuity. She decided to create a focus strategy early on to ensure that there were no disruptions at all. This had a significant impact toward the service reliability that we provided to our customers. Making sure that the team was safe and secure helped the teams motivation even further which drove them to perform in an insanely customer centric manner which has had a direct impact on the business overall.

Though not her role, she volunteered to represent and lead the Global Claims/Complaints Audit and was instrumental in DHL Express completing the global audit successfully. She also received and appreciation from the auditors on her audit planning & support that she provided. Apart from this Thejeshvi this year has received appreciations from customers and internal stake holders.

Thejeshvi’ s experience within customer service and her industry knowledge sets her apart in terms of her anticipation and foresight toward problems and challenges that may arise. Her quick decision and problem solving ability helps the team achieve their targets and deliver exceptional results.

Thejeshvi has once again successfully demonstrated her passion towards her role, her customers, her people and the company. She has gone over and above what could have been expected.