Episode 6 of Amplify is live! Listen in below or read the transcript to hear Brad and Kiannah interview BUILT Customer Service Specialist, Kelly.
Brad Schaefer: [00:00:00] Welcome to Amplify. A podcast created to inspire our listeners to learn more about today’s modern workspaces. I’m your host, Brad Shaefer.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:00:08] And I’m your host Kiannah Vandenberg.
Today. We will be talking with the voice of BUILT Systems, our amazing customer service specialist, Kelly Shelton. How are you doing today Kelly?
Kelly Shelton: [00:00:17] I’m doing great. Thanks.
Brad Schaefer: [00:00:20] We are assuming this is your first podcast. So who just want to tell you to relax and have a little bit of fun. I do want to ask if you’re nervous.
Kelly Shelton: [00:00:27] Very
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:00:28] To kick things off, we’re going to start today’s podcast with another question. So today’s question is what two items would you take with you if you were shipwrecked on a deserted island, if all your food and water needs were taken care of?
Brad Schaefer: [00:00:43] I love this question.
Kelly Shelton: [00:00:45] I would take my Bible.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:00:47] Oh, there you go.
Kelly Shelton: [00:00:49] Because religion and faith is very important to me. And I need one more thing?
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:00:53] One more thing.
Kelly Shelton: [00:00:55] A photo album of all my family.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:00:58] That’s a very wholesome answer.
Brad Schaefer: [00:00:59] Wow! Not what I would have said.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:01:01] Yeah. What would you say, Brad?
Brad Schaefer: [00:01:03] Uh, food and water are taken care of, take a knife and some rope.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:01:07] What do you need a knife for? If all your food is taken care of.
Brad Schaefer: [00:01:11] I need to build a shelter or something to live in. If I’m stuck on a deserted island.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:01:14] Can I bring a tent? I’d bring a tent.
Brad Schaefer: [00:01:16] That would work.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:01:16] There’s my shelter. Like a good tent. One that doesn’t blow over the wind.
Brad Schaefer: [00:01:20] I guess I’m used to one of those I’m like survival thing. So I would take these five necessities: a knife, some cordage, some this and that. And if half of that’s taken care of, I don’t need much. That’s just me. I asked my son this question. He goes, I take a cell phone, someone to call to come. I’ll call them.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:01:39] I mean, I thought about that, like maybe like a satellite tablet or something that runs because you probably could get help.
Brad Schaefer: [00:01:47] Right. That’s what he said. I was like, okay, you’re too smart for me.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:01:52] I thought about the same thing. I was like maybe a little shelter at first and something for fire, but maybe a satellite tablet, because that can just, you know…
Brad Schaefer: [00:01:59] Communicate with everybody across the globe. Man. I’m stranded in this location. Come get me.
Kelly Shelton: [00:02:05] That’s cheating.
Brad Schaefer: [00:02:06] Today’s episode. We wanted to take a look at some of the behind the scenes of BUILT. We will be talking with Kelly and anyone who’s ever called BUILT has, has talked to her now, probably what has talked to her
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:02:21] And we don’t want this to be a work only podcast. So let’s get a little history about you, Kelly, and then we’ll dig in. So, when did you start at BUILT Systems?
Kelly Shelton: [00:02:28] I would say that was about four years ago.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:02:31] And what is your current position and responsibilities?
Kelly Shelton: [00:02:34] I am a customer service specialist. I enter orders and take phone calls and direct calls to the right people. Um, if they have questions about their bases, if it’s something simple, I can help them. If not, I redirect them.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:02:49] Perfect. So outside of work, what do you like to do in your free time?
Kelly Shelton: [00:02:54] I like to swim in our pool and we like to go hiking.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:02:59] Yeah. That’s awesome. Thanks for that Kelly
Brad Schaefer: [00:03:05] Given you’re customer service at BUILT, can you tell us a little bit about what your job entails? A little bit of a, kind of a breakdown of your processes, your everyday processes?
Kelly Shelton: [00:03:15] Um, we have an orders mailbox where our orders come in and as soon as they come in, I, uh, Wait and see, we all have, um, it comes in and then the engineers are copied in and sales is copied in.
So I get information feedback from sales and engineering, whether or not it’s something that’s already something they can order immediately, or if it needs some design time or any kind of adjustments. And then once I get that information from engineering and sales, I can enter the order based on what they tell me.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:03:51] So you answered the phone a ton here at work. What does a typical phone call sound like?
Kelly Shelton: [00:03:57] I get it a variety of calls actually. I get some asking for pricing and then I know I need to redirect to the sales group and sometimes it’s technical questions and I know that needs to go right over to engineering.
As, I don’t know all the technical answers, I can answer some. I actually, I’m quite impressed that I can answer quite a few. And I think that just came with time. Sometimes it’s just how to reset their base. And I know how to do that. So they’re really thrilled that they don’t have to go any further than just asking me and I can help them walk through it.
Brad Schaefer: [00:04:31] Do you get questions about when will my order ship and tracking and things like that as well, or is that very often?
Kelly Shelton: [00:04:36] I get a lot of emails about that phone calls on occasion. It’s a lot more of the emails, phone calls are more, a new customer kind of things. Maybe I’ll get some regular people that just love using the phone, and they’re always my same customers. And you know, you see that the name come up and you, you, you already know them. So that’s kind of fun.
Brad Schaefer: [00:05:00] After that initial phone call, when an order, a customer places, an order, what does that look like for you? How does that, that order get entered in and what kind of process does that take?
Kelly Shelton: [00:05:10] Well, once the engineering team tells me that there’s a certain part number I can use, I enter that in and then it has to go to our purchasing group and to our scheduling team to make sure we get the right timing for the customer. And once they give me my feedback and let me know when that order has to be scheduled for, then I put it into the system and it generates the production order from there. So then I acknowledge the order the very next day I wait until the next day, because there’s time involved. And, uh, then the customer knows when they’re getting the product.
Brad Schaefer: [00:05:46] Cool.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:05:47] Yeah. So looking at like, kind of like the PO and the order placement, what steps should a customer go through in order to ensure their order is placed efficiently on their side?
Kelly Shelton: [00:05:57] I need to know exactly what product they’re looking for. If they have a part number, I want it on there. If they have a special color or a special design that I have to know about the detail, I need that on the order as well. If they want it to ship a special way, it needs to be specified. If it’s not specified, I’m going to send it best way, prepaid an ad.
So if they want it to go using their shipping company, I need to know that on the order and whose attention it goes to.
Brad Schaefer: [00:06:25] You do a lot. How do you keep yourself organized?
Kelly Shelton: [00:06:32] I have a lot of stuff on my desk. If you’ve walked by my desk, you know what it looks like. I have folders for every week. So every week has the orders that are shipping out that I keep track of.
And I also have orders that have to be approved. That’s in a separate blue folder. And as soon as it’s approved by scheduling and purchasing, I move it to my Manila folder. And once the Manila folder is in, then I know it’s time to acknowledge to the customer. So I have it all kind of laid out on my desk by week and by situation.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:07:07] And color-coded. I ove it. So besides that, is there anything unique you do to stay organized or just productive in general?
Kelly Shelton: [00:07:15] I do have a list and I, I have little boxes that I check off as I go, that it has to be done every single day. And I do it in order because if I don’t do it in an order with all the phone calls that I get and all the conversations from people on the floor or engineers or salesman, I need to have that list so that I can keep checking them off.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:07:36] Yeah.
Brad Schaefer: [00:07:39] All right, the crazy question. What part of your job do you really like?
Kelly Shelton: [00:07:44] The people I work with and some of the customers are really fun. So everybody I work with has a unique personality and we have a great, we have a great time. There’s a lot of laughter and a lot of fun and real lighthearted stuff going on, which makes it a lot easier to keep my busy day fun.
Brad Schaefer: [00:08:04] So you’re saying we are goofy?
Kelly Shelton: [00:08:07] Goofy, crazy goofy. Sometimes we laugh. We get those deep belly laughs and we have a really good time.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:08:15] Oh yeah. Yeah. I can definitely second that. So Kelly kind of turning on a different note. What would you say your favorite holiday tradition is?
Kelly Shelton: [00:08:25] We like putting up the tree and decorating it. It’s a little family thing that we do. We adjust our family time because we have a blended family. So we have a lot of adjustments to make. So when it works out for the kids to all get together at the same time, I have four boys and one girl. So when it works for all of us to be together, that’s Christmas.
And that’s just the way it works. Everybody that lives in at home, all my kids are gone except for one daughter. Everybody else has moved on. So we decorate the tree, but then we arrange it to, we can all be together. On whatever day works for everyone.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:09:04] Yeah. That’s awesome. I’d say the same thing for me. I mean, decorating and getting a tree too is just, I mean, that’s my favorite part of Christmas because it’s always been every year I go and get a tree. Sometimes the people are different, but I’m always in the snow cutting down a tree with someone. I love it.
Brad Schaefer: [00:09:20] Oh, I did not like those days. We used to do fresh cut trees every year. And last year, we did not. And my whole family was depressed because it was not a fresh cut tree. I was happy because I didn’t have to go truck through the cold weather. And yeah. But I think this year we’re going to get a real one. We’ll see.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:09:41] Oh, it’s always worth it. I’m telling ya.
Kelly Shelton: [00:09:43] I do have one thing that we always do every year. We give each kid a Christmas ornament that fits their personality. So our, our son is a chef, so he got one with a chef hat and we have one that’s really religious, so we got him a religious one and then a little princess for, for our daughter, stuff like that. So that we do every year.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:10:05] No, I love that. I love annual ornaments.
Brad Schaefer: [00:10:08] I just realized that we do this same exact thing, but not just for like my immediate kids, but we’ve set that with my sister and my wife’s siblings. We just, we give ornaments to each other instead of trying to buy a gift for everybody. We do family ornaments and we’ve done that for my sister. Her and her husband have a farmhouse out in, yeah. I don’t remember where exactly. Anyway, like last year we got him a Cardinal in a glass ball type thing, you know, just kind of, cause it fits for them and you know, two of my two boys are very sports centric, so we get sports in that one. And my daughter has music, so we got, yeah, so we do very similar. That’s interesting. And then you said, you mentioned the annual ornament. Do you do anything like that too, or?
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:10:53] I’ve never done it yet, but it’s something I wanted to start. I noticed my parents used to do this when I was really young, they would get, um, ornaments that kind of reflected like their like wedding dates. They had a wedding, um, one for their wedding day and then every year they would get one. Similar to that. So I, I absolutely loved that. And they were like, not fancy ornaments. Like sometimes it was like Disney ornaments that just like were like little romantic things. So like, I always wanted to continue that, like when I start a family, cause obviously I have not yet. So it’s just something to look forward to in the future. For me.
Brad Schaefer: [00:11:27] Don’t hold me to this, but I think the intent is when my kids move out and always to give them all those ornaments, I don’t don’t hold me to that, but I believe that’s what her intent is. Which I think is cool. Any final thoughts today, Kelly?
Kelly Shelton: [00:11:44] Um, yeah, I’ve enjoyed my customers a lot. I love the calls. People can call me anytime if they need anything, even if it’s very small and if they want to make it light, that’s always fun too. I enjoy that.
Brad Schaefer: [00:12:00] Awesome.
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:12:04] Thanks for tuning in and listening to this episode. Look for our next episode, which will be released on December 24th, our Christmas special. In this episode, we will be doing a live recording in our office with the team, and we’ll be discussing our favorite Christmas traditions. Tune into that episode to see if you have won the BUILT systems gift package.
Brad Schaefer: [00:12:22] Remember, you still have time to register to win. Visit our podcast website at anchor.fm/BUILTSystems. And leave us a voice message with your name, contact info and your favorite holiday tradition. If you prefer, you can shoot us an email at info@builtsystems.net with your contact info and favorite holiday tradition.
We hope to hear from you!
Kiannah Vandenberg: [00:12:42] See you then.
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