July 2015
Sales & Administrative Assistant
Dublin, CA
Employee Pillar – Company sustainability; Finding and filling a need; Helping a co-worker in the time of need; Contribute to the improvement of group productivity; Engaging in continuous process improvements
On May 28, 2015, the internet and phone service collapsed at the Valin North Salt Lake office. Julie Brumfield, from the Dublin, CA office (740 miles away) took the initiative and created methods to communicate on behalf of the departments and employees located there. Julie not only created the temporary communication networks and processes, she carried them out flawlessly and with success. Julie’s specific actions included the following:
- Identified and added customer service representatives from other branches into the North Salt Lake phone queue.
- Encouraged management to acquire laptops to function on wireless hotspots to communicate by email.
- Created a complex matrix that identified the appropriate team dynamics to be able to keep customer communications open. This matrix included:
- Identification of those that had the knowledge to handle specific supplier inquiries and to procure the tools needed to access each supplier portal.
- Identify Valin personnel available to respond to customers from other Valin offices.
- Gathered all personal and business cell phone numbers to forward particular caller needs.
- Identified and made known which responders were available by phone, by email, or both.
- Micromanage the phone queue to maximize its effectiveness for the customer.
- Notified personnel of temporary gaps in the temporary communication response channel.
- Ensured that voicemail messages and email signatures displayed correct and accurate contact information.
Julie was a natural leader that everyone gravitated to for help and communication. She took charge and enabled the fastest and most efficient possible recovery of the outage that lasted 2-1/2 days. Her ideas were vital, and her execution of those ideas was timely. Without Julie, many urgent expedites, orders, quotes, and technical support would have been left undone, and many shipments would have been delayed until the following week. The North Salt Lake location owes many May booking and shipments to Julie Brumfield.
