Karen Laven

I'm the secretary to the New England chapter of It's My Heart. An amazing nonprofit organization that helps families who have children with Congenital Heart Defects (CHD). This volunteer job is the most rewarding and amazing position that I've ever held. Someday when I retire, I hope to make volunteering my full time career. Helping others is my passion.

• Work closely with product managers, Sales reps, buyers/planners on product lead times, availability, pricing issues and anything pertaining to customer access and any issues • Handle all customer correspondence in a professional and timely manner, and ensure that customer requests for pricing, availability, delivery and expediting are reviewed and satisfied and that a response is made the same day • Refer customer and end-users to the properly authorized representative and/or distributor for product information • Review orders prior to entry for completeness and accuracy to avoid future credits and or returns • Process customer orders with accuracy and coordinate with credit/planning/shipping departments and freight forwarders to ensure a timely delivery • Process and follow up on return material authorizations (RMA) as needed • Investigate customer complaints and assist the customer service manager in resolving current issue as well as in correcting processes in order to prevent future complaints from occurring • Consistently build strong rapport with clients and key accounts to ensure repeat business • Process all documentation pertaining to Letters of Credit as required • Assure that proper modifications and/or special features are added correctly to customer orders • Coordinate with sales representatives on product specifications to ensure client satisfaction • Escalate appropriate calls to Product Manager or Engineering department as needed • Configure part numbers and pricing including modifications and special features • Coordinate scheduling according to deliver lead-time schedule for stock orders

• Verified stock availability, kept track of Hospital inventory and worked directly with the account’s purchasing departments to review their contracts and verify all pricing before creating and processing all orders to ensure that everything was billed out accurately to avoid future payment discrepancies • Maintained a great level of trust and communication with all of my accounts to ensure a great working relationship • Entered credit memos and RMA orders for all returned parts • Assisted sales reps with various requests including but not limited to: generating reports of monthly figures and inventory, emailing quotes to customers on their behalf, processing pricing requests, setting up new accounts and Doctors in our system and providing general administrative support as requested • Worked directly with our warehouse staff to resolve all inventory issues on a daily basis • Worked closely with sales reps on the field and with Dr.’s offices to ensure that patients had all the necessary info to make educated decisions on purchasing our products • Answered calls from patients and handled all questions regarding our products and billing related issues • Entered new orders in the system and billed them to insurance companies and/or patients with all proper documentation • Called various insurance companies to verify benefits and eligibility and faxed necessary documentation to insurance companies to get approval on patient’s products