What is customer care and how is it different than customer service? Customer care strives to go beyond simply making a sale or answering a question to building emotional connections and long-term relationships with customers. This blog profiles three Da-Lite Customer Care representatives and how they’re building those connections and relationships with customers every day.

Da-Lite’s Senior Customer Care Manager Amanda Fleming’s office feels a lot like home. A bright, warm interior welcomes visitors with walls covered in photos of family and friends plus a few items that reveal the quirkiness of her team. A paper cut-out of a pink flamingo dons the back of the door. A cardboard moose head sits atop an overhead cabinet. It’s a souvenir from her cabin-themed trailer which was stationed in the parking lot for months during renovations at Da-Lite’s headquarters in Warsaw, Indiana. Her most recent acquisition: a camouflaged hardhat used to protect hair from flying Nerf projectiles, toys given to her team for Customer Care Appreciation Week.

Senior Customer Care Manager Amanda Fleming

Fleming ensures that her team feels valued. Customer care is a rewarding and demanding career path, injecting a little fun in the work day keeps everyone’s attitude positive. She also embraces change and promotes adaptability in her team. She explains, “The Legrand acquisition has been positive for Da-Lite. They’ve provided a support system for management to mentor individuals who are passionate about what they do and to develop their careers.”

Personally, she’s practiced her customer care skills over the past 16 years, honing a calm, direct and thoroughly professional demeanor in all forms of communication. Her team takes pride in supporting customers where ever they are in the purchasing or post-sale process, assisting with screen selection, troubleshooting, tech support, shipment tracking and returns. They work cross functionally within the organization from Sales to Production, touching every part of the business – whatever is needed to get the right answer for the customer.

What is Fleming’s favorite part of the job? Employing her problem-solving skills, ensuring win-win solutions for those who reach Da-Lite Customer Care or Tech Support. She explains there is deep respect for everyone at Da-Lite and within the AV industry in general. End users, dealers, integrators and others know her and her team members by name, even though they rarely or never work with them face-to-face in the field.

“Working at Da-Lite is like coming home. Sometimes people leave but most come back,” says Fleming. She took a four-year hiatus from Da-Lite but ultimately missed it too much. “I’ve loved this job since the first day out of college!” She estimates at least 13 members of her husband’s family have worked for Da-Lite over its long history in Warsaw including his mother, grandmother, aunt and cousins. He worked there as a young man as well, once getting written up for excessive honking on his forklift!

International Customer Care Specialist Margee Ebright echoes Fleming’s sentiments – that deep sense of loyalty and belonging felt at Da-Lite. Ebright should know, she started working for the company on a date she can never forget: August 8, 1988 (8/8/88). She came to Da-Lite from Mishawaka, Indiana as a single mother to live with her father in Warsaw. “He drove me to almost every business in town to fill out applications,” she recalls.

International Customer Care Specialist Margee Ebright answers emails at her desk in Warsaw, Indiana.

When she was first hired, Ebright was one of two customer care representatives that worked exclusively with international customers. She was their go-to for all questions or issues: placing orders, generating quotes, troubleshooting and designing projects. She’s worked just about every customer care role since then – supporting both international and domestic customers, and briefly operating the switchboard (intercom system) until modern telecom equipment was installed.

Working 30+ years for Da-Lite, Ebright has her fair share of memories and anecdotes. Like the time a deer jumped through an office window during the day, wildly running to the plant floor where workers guided it out a dock door. Or the tornado that nearly leveled the manufacturing facility but spared the office in 2001. The perseverance of the Da-Lite team easily overcame that disaster. Customer Care personnel worked out of the Blue Ash, Ohio facility for a day until phones could be reconnected in Warsaw. Management turned the misfortune into opportunity by rebuilding an even larger manufacturing floor.

Currently, she’s come full circle and is working with international customers again and loves it. Other employees and customers make it all worthwhile for her. Like Fleming, she’s gotten to know some customers so well they’re just like coworkers sitting next to her. There’s comfort in coming to work every day. Da-Lite is home to her.

Ebright also enjoys watching the company grow. She used to know everyone by name, now that’s nearly impossible. Customer Care Lead Austin Moore is one of those new Da-Lite recruits.

Customer Care Lead Austin Moore answering questions via chat on www.legrandav.com.

Moore started working for Da-Lite Customer Care in June 2016, newly graduated from Marian University in Indianapolis. His focus is on generating quotes; assisting customers with design and screen selection. On average he answers about 30 calls and online chats per day in addition to responding to email questions.

A recent desk move puts him closer to Tech Support, where he enjoys learning more about troubleshooting common field issues from that team. Moore is always looking for ways to expand his product knowledge and be a better asset to the those who reach him for assistance.

The daily camaraderie of the team and the little things management does to keep the work environment engaging is important to Moore as well. Potlucks, jack-o-lantern decorating, chili cook-offs and the occasional good-natured prank brings everyone closer together - like wrapping Margee’s desk in tinfoil for her 30^th anniversary or covering a very tidy employee’s desk with hundreds of toy army men.

Foiled again! The Customer Care team covered Margee Ebright’s desk in tinfoil and butterflies to commemorate her 30^th anniversary.

The Da-Lite team celebrated Halloween with a pumpkin decorating contest and treats for Customer Care Appreciation Week in October 2018.

Moore admits there are always challenges and hard-to-please customers. He gets through those situations by relying on his empathy, frequently asking himself, “What would I want in this situation? How would I want this resolved?”

His most stressful experience was the first day answering phone calls by himself - a common feeling among new hires. “The panic subsides when you realize there’s no fear or shame in asking questions or escalating calls,” he explains. Everyone on the team is open and kind, “more than willing to help.”

That cooperative spirit and willingness to help has made Da-Lite the industry leader it is today. A strong sense of togetherness is conveyed throughout the organization. It really does feel like coming home when you enter headquarters in Warsaw, Indiana. The Customer Care team works hard to extend those feelings to everyone by phone, chat, email…however you reach them, you’re part of the Da-Lite family too.

Like and follow Da-Lite for the latest information on new products and services.