Leslie — Customer Service Manager, MCE Automation: Expert Operational Profile

Executive summary

Leslie has served as Customer Service Manager at MCE Automation since 2019 and oversees a team of 28 support specialists across North America and EMEA. Under Leslie’s leadership the support organization increased first-contact resolution (FCR) from 62% to 78% in three years (2019–2022) and raised average Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) from 78% to 92% by Q4 2023. These improvements were driven by a deliberate blend of process redesign, selective automation, and a data-driven coaching program.

MCE Automation is a mid-market industrial automation systems provider headquartered in Austin, TX; typical product lines include PLC integration, motion control, and IIoT telemetry. Leslie combines domain knowledge of control systems with practical contact center engineering to match service-level objectives to product warranties, typically delivering 24/7 critical-response SLAs for premium customers and business-hours support for standard accounts.

Roles and responsibilities

Leslie’s day-to-day responsibilities include SLA governance, workforce planning, escalation management, and vendor coordination for automation tooling. Operational tasks executed weekly: review of missed SLAs, priority routing adjustments, and two-hour incident triage for high-severity outages (Severity 1 = production down). Leslie also runs monthly root-cause analysis (RCA) workshops to convert recurring tickets into product fixes or knowledge-base articles; the RCA cadence reduced ticket repeat rates by 18% in the first 12 months.

Strategically, Leslie forms the bridge between R&D and field service. She defines cross-functional KPIs, approves automation investments up to $150,000 per quarter, and negotiates third-party maintenance contracts. She also manages vendor relationships for CRM and RPA licensing, ensuring per-seat and per-robot costs align with ROI targets: typical ROI threshold is 6–9 months for self-service automations and 12–18 months for full incident orchestration bots.

Operational KPIs and targets

Leslie tracks a concise set of performance metrics and reports them weekly to the executive team. Targets used in 2024 include: CSAT 90%+, Net Promoter Score (NPS) 40+, FCR 80%, Average Handle Time (AHT) 6 minutes, Average Speed of Answer (ASA) under 20 seconds, and Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) for Severity 1 incidents under 4 hours. These metrics are segmented by region and product line to identify local performance gaps quickly.

• Key KPIs (monitored in dashboards): CSAT (92% current), NPS (45), FCR (78%), AHT (6:12), ASA (18s), MTTR S1 (3h45m), ticket backlog (<450 open tickets), cost per ticket ($18 average).
• SLA structure: Premium (24/7 S1 response ≤ 1 hour, resolution ≤ 4 hours), Standard (business hours S1 response ≤ 2 hours, resolution ≤ 24–48 hours), Field Service (onsite within 24–72 hours depending on contract).

Reporting cadence is daily operational huddles, weekly leadership reviews, and monthly business reviews with finance showing cost-per-ticket and automation ROI. Forecasting uses a 90-day rolling model tied to product release schedules—historly predicting 70% accuracy for volume spikes when a new firmware drop occurs.

Automation architecture and tooling

Leslie’s automation strategy distinguishes between front-line automation (self-service and IVR), back-office RPA, and orchestration for complex incidents. Front-line tools include a modern IVR tied to the CRM for intent detection and a knowledge base that surfaces step-by-step resolution scripts; these reduced repetitive call volume by 34% after targeted knowledge-article pushes. Back-office automations use UiPath robots for ticket enrichment, log retrieval, and routine account maintenance—robots process roughly 2,400 tickets/month as of May 2024.

• Core automation stack: Salesforce Service Cloud (CRM), Zendesk for multi-channel ticketing, UiPath (RPA) for back-office tasks, Twilio Flex for programmable contact routing, Elasticsearch + Kibana for log analysis, and Confluence for knowledge management.
• Integration patterns: RESTful APIs and webhooks for real-time eventing, Kafka for high-volume telemetry ingestion, and secured SFTP for legacy vendor exchanges. Authentication is standardized with OAuth2 and mutual TLS for device telemetry endpoints.

Operationally, Leslie enforces change-control for automation: each new bot or IVR flow must pass unit tests, a 30-day shadow phase, and a rollback plan. This governance reduced automation-induced incidents to less than 0.5% of total tickets in 2023, and saved an estimated $420,000 in labor costs that year (based on $18/ticket average and 23,500 tickets automated/eliminated).

Customer experience programs and pricing

Leslie oversees tiered service packages designed to align support responsiveness with customer value. Pricing as of 2025 (indicative): Basic Support — $1,200/year (email + business-hours portal), Standard Support — $3,500/year (phone + 16×5), Premium Support — $9,500/year (24×7 S1, dedicated escalation path). Field service SLAs and onsite labor are billed separately: standard onsite dispatch $250/trip plus $120/hour for technician labor; 24-hour rush dispatch fee $450.

Experience programs include annual on-site health checks (priced at $1,800 per site), quarterly firmware review sessions (included with Premium), and a customer education portal with role-based curricula; customers that completed the education path showed 27% fewer avoidable tickets. Leslie runs a voice-of-customer (VoC) program: 90-day cohort NPS analysis, quarterly focus groups, and a “fix-or-refund” policy for missed high-severity SLAs that limits financial exposure to 2% of annual support revenue.

Implementation roadmap and practical steps

For organizations looking to emulate Leslie’s model, the recommended 12-month roadmap is: months 1–3 stabilize reporting and define SLAs; months 3–6 automate repetitive tasks (ticket enrichment, basic self-service); months 6–9 implement orchestration for multi-system incidents and escalate automated diagnostics; months 9–12 optimize workforce and finalize ROI validation. Key milestones include a pilot RPA bot in month 4 and a full IVR-to-CRM intent handoff live by month 7.

Practical checkpoints: baseline metrics before any automation, a 30-day shadow period for each automation, rollback playbooks, and scheduled post-deployment audits at 30/90/180 days. Budget expectations: plan for $60,000–$150,000 in tooling and professional services in year one for a mid-sized deployment (28–50 agents), with recurring licensing of $12,000–$36,000/year depending on vendor tiers.

Contact and company information

Corporate HQ: MCE Automation, 1500 Automation Way, Suite 300, Austin, TX 78701. Main support line (US): +1 (512) 555-0134. Escalations (24/7 for Premium customers): +1 (512) 555-0148. Web: https://www.mce-automation.com. For partner inquiries, email [email protected]; for support contracts, contact [email protected]. Office hours for standard sales and admin: Mon–Fri, 08:30–17:30 CT.

Leslie is available for advisory engagements and regularly publishes playbooks and RCA templates on the MCE Automation customer portal. Typical consulting engagements led by Leslie run 6–12 weeks, priced from $12,000 for a focused operational assessment up to $75,000 for a full automation program design and initial implementation roadmap.