Customer Onboarding and Account Specialist

Role Overview

• Serve as the primary contact during the onboarding process, balancing customer expectations, production capabilities, and business objectives to determine appropriate onboarding strategies and timelines.
• Develop and manage detailed onboarding project timelines, key milestones, responsibilities, and deliverables.
• Coordinate and lead pre-trial, pre-production, press approvals, and post-mortem activities to ensure alignment between customer expectations and internal execution.
• Document onboarding progress in CRM and project management tools.
• Guide customers through Inland’s processes, including artwork submission, proofing cycles, press approvals, inventory management, and reorder procedures.
• Maintain organized and centralized onboarding documentation for internal reference and future account management.
• Independently assess customer onboarding and account issues, determine appropriate resolution strategies, and implement solutions, escalating only highly complex or high-risk matters when necessary.
• Actively support refinement and standardization of onboarding workflows, documentation, and best practices to enhance efficiency, scalability, and customer experience consistency.
• Serve as a reliable, day-to-day contact for customers during onboarding and transition, ensuring timely and accurate communication across all channels (phone, email, virtual meetings).
• Respond promptly to customer questions, concerns, and service issues.
• Investigate root causes, coordinate internally to develop solutions, and communicate clear next steps to customers.
• Support billing resolution and past-due follow-up in partnership with accounting.
• Evaluate customer specifications, pricing structures, and operational requirements to ensure alignment with production capabilities and profitability objectives, making recommendations or adjustments in coordination with Sales and Operations leadership.
• Maintain up-to-date customer records in CRM and internal systems.
• Assist in managing customer inventory and forecasting needs.
• Monitor customer ordering patterns and communicate trends or potential growth opportunities to Sales.
• Anticipate potential delays, supply constraints, or operational challenges that could impact the customer. Communicate proactively and provide alternative solutions when needed.
• Build trust-based relationships through consistent follow-up, reliability, and a positive, service-oriented attitude.
• Analyze customer performance, service trends, and operational workflows to identify improvement opportunities and recommend process changes that enhance customer retention, operational efficiency, and account profitability.
• Support implementation of improvements that enhance long-term customer retention and operational performance.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in customer service, sales, business administration, marketing, communications, or organizational management, or a combination of relevant experience and education.
• Minimum of 3 years in a customer-facing role, demonstrating strong customer engagement and relationship-building skills.
• Personable and adept at fostering cross-functional collaboration, with a proven track record of success in team environments.
• Exceptional organizational, written, and verbal communication skills, along with strong listening and presentation abilities.
• Results-driven with a keen focus on metrics and performance indicators to track success.
• Demonstrated ability to manage projects or customer relationships with a high degree of ownership and accountability.
• Passionate about customer satisfaction and dedicated to enhancing the customer experience, serving as an internal advocate for their needs.
• Ability to foresee potential roadblocks that could delay progress and develop effective plans to mitigate them.
• Capable of self-directing work as priorities shift and organizational needs evolve, requiring minimal supervision.
• Strong reasoning, analytical, and problem-solving abilities, with a knack for defining issues, conducting research, gathering and analyzing data, and making fact-based decisions.
• Proficient in Excel and comfortable with Salesforce; experience with other CRM or customer support software is a plus.
• Business acumen with the ability to understand financial and operational impact of customer-related decisions.

Benefits

• Comprehensive on-the-job training
• Opportunities for career advancement