Anu Namchoon, Customer Service Officer
Sydney Processing Centre
What’s your role?
I’m a Customer Service Officer in the Customer Service Delivery team at the Sydney Processing Centre, responsible for taking and processing orders that come through from customers.
What’s the first thing you do when you arrive at work each day?
The first thing I do when I get to work is find out about what the day’s priorities are, then check email orders and identify ones for our routine blood delivery runs through the day. I also make sure there’s plenty of paper in the printers and photocopiers for faxed orders.
What does a typical work day look like for you?
I spend a lot of time on the phone in my job, talking to customers and also to different departments within the Blood Service. I need to make sure that we’re aware of what’s being produced so we know the right products are there to meet our customers’ needs.
We have customer service team huddles, which are where we come together to discuss changes that might be happening and how they might affect our days. We also take part in a daily Production and Customer Service Delivery team meeting, which is where we learn about a range of daily events and changes.
Orders for blood in life threatening situations are generally placed by phone, so they are prioritised to ensure they are filled straight away.
What is the most important aspect of your role?
Something that keeps me motivated at work is knowing that everything we do here affects patients of all ages, and that my work may help a little baby or pregnant woman or accident victim. Although it’s not nice for them it’s good to know we’re helping those patients.
I love it when we get feedback that the blood we sent out has saved someone’s life. It really makes it all worthwhile.
How are you and your team working to better serve customers?
Our team has recently been through customer service excellence training, which really helped us identify how we can better serve our customers.
I want to be able to give the best service possible and it’s amazing how the training really helped me better understand how to handle a range of different situations—both when things go wrong and when things go right.
What’s something unique or interesting about your team that customers might not know?
We are a team of problem solvers. We are the people who make sure the right orders get to our customers on time and that’s really important.
Photo: Anu Namchoon