Day-in-the-life of a Customer Experience Agent in Poland: Dominika’s Diary

10 二月 2023

Hello, my name is Dominika and I am based in Gdynia, Poland. I joined Maersk 2 years ago as a Customer Experience Agent, find out what it’s like to work at Maersk.

8:00

Let’s start a new day! I work 4 days at home and 1 day in the office, and today is my office day. I drive the 25-30 minutes to get to work and the first thing I do when I arrive, after dropping my bag off at my desk, is get a cup of coffee from the kitchen and catch up with colleagues. We often have colleagues visit our office from different countries, it’s a great way to meet new people. Today, I meet a colleague from Rotterdam who works in the Maersk Custom Agency.

8:15

When get back to my desk, I log on, say hello to my colleagues who are working from home and check my calendar to see what meetings I have today. I see that apart from my regular morning call at 9:00 I have three other meetings.

Next, I check what requests have come in from clients in my queue on the system. Every Customer Experience Agent (CX Agent) has their own queue and their own cases to resolve. Cases are emails with requests sent by our clients which we are responsible for resolving. I have one case which is relatively easy and takes 40 minutes to handle. While working on the case, I also picked up five calls from my clients, most of which were about notifications and invoice queries.

9:00

Now, it’s time for my daily meeting with our Intermodal team. They are the transport team responsible for organising land transportation to get containers to port so that they can continue their journey by vessel. On these calls the team gives me updates on how the transport day is looking such as the number of delays which may happen today, the status of trains, the number of inland deliveries and loadings. But before we start, we usually chat about ourselves and one of my colleagues even told us that today is National Peanut Butter Day!

9:30

I go back to resolving client requests after the meeting. One of my favourite clients calls me about changing the pickup date of an empty container but we have a tradition of him always telling a joke before we talk about work. Today’s joke was: “What do you call a someone without a body and nose? Nobody nose”.

The next case is more difficult, the client wants to make a change to the destination of her booking. The containers are currently discharged in transhipment port in Bremerhaven, and she wants to change the destination from Mombasa in Kenya to Qingdao in China. This requires me to make a special request to the operation team on our system so that they can check on their side if it is possible to make the change and how much it would cost.

10:30

I also get a call from a colleague about a problem with their clients’ SPOT booking. SPOT is a Maersk product which allows us to book vessel space. I have a lot of experience with our SPOT product so when my colleagues have a question, they usually come to me and I’m always happy to support.

11:00

I have my monthly one-to-one meeting with my manager. My manager is also in the office today, so we meet in our Maersk chill room. One-to-one meetings are my opportunity to share what I have been doing, talk about the new projects I’m committed to, and my development plans. I also discuss my problems with clients to get her advice and share with her my experience of recently becoming an E-STAR. Being an E-STAR means being more involved in our website in terms of appearance, functionality, and testing new solutions. I find it really exciting!

12:00

I finally get to take a 10-minute break. During this short break I get some more coffee, water and some free fruit provided by the office. On my way back to desk, I bump into my colleague who recently moved from my CX team to Sales after three years being a CX agent. She tells me that she adopted a dog few days ago!

When I get back to my desk, I prepare for my meeting with my client who wants to meet for lunch to discuss our cooperation. I also check on my change of destination case from earlier and see that operation team have responded saying that it is possible and has also given me the price details. I forward this information to my client and wait for their decision.

13:00

Time to head to my client lunch. The client and I talk about our partnership and he shares that their company is really satisfied with my support which is great news! He asks for additional reports of their shipments every week and tell them in return about a few new functions on our website where they can check the timings and costs of their bookings which he is pleased with because it will really help facilitate his work.

14:00

I get back to the office after the meeting and make a cup of tea before logging back on to my laptop. I have 10 cases in my queue to resolve now, most of them are invoice issues which I need to consult with my dispute team colleagues on and the rest are change request to client bookings. All are straight forward apart from one request which I need advice from our CX Operation team to resolve. The CX Operation team are geniuses, they always know the answers to my questions! They are based in India, so I always like to hear about the 30-plus degrees weather they are enjoying while in Poland it is -5 degrees and snowing.

14:30

I prepare for my next virtual meeting which is with a colleague form my team and her client. The client wants to learn how they can print their Bill of Lading by themselves on maersk.com. The Bill of Lading is document which details the type, quantity and destination of the goods being shipped. As an E-STAR, one of my responsibilities is to take a part in meetings (even when it’s not my client) to give support from Maersk side in website issues, questions, and functionality.

15:00

In the meeting I show the client how to access the website so they can print their Bill of Lading and get some feedback and concerns about the website. At the end we get really nice feedback about our Maersk customer service and our accessibility, so it was a very good and productive meeting!

16:00

There’s only 15 minutes left of my day as I usually finish at 16:15 so I finish my glass of water, check my emails one final time and finish off the last of my tasks. I see that the client who had wanted to change the destination of her shipment has decided to not go ahead, so there’s no further action for me. I also share the good feedback on the website to another member of the E-STAR team from the client meeting earlier today. As I prepare to leave the office, my colleague proposes going out for dinner and drinks, I don’t have any plans, so I gladly join them.