BRETT DUNLOP

Outline:

Promoted to this role, which included continuing to manage the customer service department of our B2C arm, New Skills Academy. The role is focused on our B2B arm, Staff Skills Academy+, with the following responsibilities:

Key Responsibilities:

• Collaborated with marketing to enhance workflow processes and implement automation through HubSpot CRM.
• Introduced a chatbot to the B2B website to streamline enquiries and prevent sales teams from being inundated with customer service requests.
• Spearheaded collection and analysis of customer insights to inform product development and service improvements. This included designing and distributing NPS and feedback surveys via HubSpot, conducting in-depth client interviews, and compiling actionable insights in Trello for development team to refine the LMS both in its beta phase and after launch.
• Account-managed one of our largest clients, fostering a strong partnership and leveraging their feedback to drive enhancements in product quality and service standards.
• Conducted competitor analysis and regular evaluations of key market players to monitor product and commercial developments.

Key Achievements:

• Increased efficiency for the sales team by reducing volume of customer service enquiries through improved processes and chatbot implementation.
• Contributed to significant reduction in customer churn, from 35% in 2023/2024 to 23% in the 2024/2025 financial year.
• Developed expertise in HubSpot CRM, Trello, and survey distribution and analysis.

Outline:

I took over the role of Head of Customer Service, a B2C online training provider, with one other in the team. I interviewed and trained the new starters to grow the team to 10 customer service executives, including one supervisor. This team was a mixture of office based and remote professionals. I’ve developed a huge passion for interacting with customers and this has become one of my biggest strengths. This role includes ensuring CS team are delivering exceptional customer service by proactively listening to concerns and feedback and answering questions through Helpscout, live chat, social media messaging and telephone. Reporting to the CEO of the business.

Key Responsibilities:

• Ensuring CS team are constantly delivering on the KPI’s set by CEO, which includes response time, resolved on first response and satisfaction ratings
• Dealing with complicated customer queries, refund requests and chargebacks
• Liaising with other department heads to resolve bug fixes, implement new features, provide product feedback and sales leads
• Organise regular training with the team to help achieve our goals
• Weekly analysis and reporting of CS stats to senior management team
• Ensuring team are motivated with regular check in’s, one to ones and team incentives

Key Achievements:

• Growing and nurturing my team to become the biggest department in the company, which consistently performs to expectations
• Creating and maintaining a database of stock responses used across Helpscout and social media messaging, to ensure consistency of response throughout the team and to keep in line with our tone of voice and high standards
• Helped implement the CS functions of our backend, which has helped resolve over 100,000 customer enquiries
• Maintained a 90% customer satisfaction score over the last 3 years, a 4.9 Trustpilot score and exceeded response time targets 80% of the time
• Introduction of customer surveys using Jotform to gather feedback on CS performance and product quality

Outline:

Joined a brand new sales division of New Skills Academy, an online training company based in Hertfordshire. Reporting to Sales Manager and responsible for selling online training courses to businesses across the UK. This role included cold calling, cold emailing, prospecting, negotiating, onboarding, lead generation, affiliate marketing and account management.

Key Responsibilities:

• Hitting target on the number of prospecting calls and emails per week, generating new leads and opportunities to maximise revenue.
• Hitting sales targets
• Analysed industry and competitor trends to enhance sales strategy
• Account managed client relationships from early stages of sales process through to post-sales
• Customer service for clients staff members
• Administrative duties including onboarding clients and general system help

Key Achievements:

• Securing deals with 3 large recruitment companies, that offered courses to their candidates, making a huge difference to jobseekers and kept great client relationships for long periods
• Helped create successful B2B arm of the business, Staff Skills Training
• Hitting sales target for 7 months in a row

Outline:

Working for a prominent electronic components distributor, based in their head office in Stevenage. Reporting to the Finance Manager and responsible for overseeing the timely and accurate processing of purchase invoices including preparation and execution of BACS payment runs, coding invoices, data entry, scanning, discrepancy resolution and account reconciliation.

Key Responsibilities:

• Receive, match and batch up to 3000 purchase invoices per month
• Reconcile all purchase orders related to accounts payable invoices
• Prepare and execute weekly payment runs
• Identify unpaid purchase invoices and flag them to Finance Manager for approval
• Resolved invoice queries and raised credit notes by communicating clearly and professionally
• Followed documentation procedures to maintain robust record keeping system
• Daily use of Microsoft Excel with intermediate functions

Key Achievements:

• Training several members of staff to perform the role of Purchase Ledger Clerk efficiently and effectively
• Re-negotiating payment terms with several suppliers from Net 7 to Net 60 days, improving cash flow to the business
• Creating and running a booking system that allowed sales people to book pool cars