After nearly 20 years, Renee Solum is as committed and driven as ever to building the success of CQ Partners and our members’ practices. Find out how Renee uses her accomplished customer service experience and the energy of her team to keep striving for greatness.
Q&A with Renee Solum, Customer Management Specialist:
What is your role at CQ Partners?
I am a Customer Management Specialist at CQ Partners. My role here is to assist with and resolve any customer questions or concerns. I handle all new CQ Partners applications that come in, which includes setting up practice, manufacturer, and vendor accounts. I also schedule and handle all onboarding calls and portal trainings with the new members. As a team, we place customer orders and help with daily order reconciliation. I also set up ship-to accounts and create the login information for our member’s portals. Some additional responsibilities I have are any special projects that come along, creating quotes for associates, secret shopper calls, and competitive analysis calls. As a team, customer management works together to cover many things.
Tell us a little about your background!
I graduated from Goldey-Beacom College, located in Delaware, with an associate degree in business administration. My first full time job out of school was working with The Franklin Mint, also in their customer service department. Eventually, I moved over to their retail division where I handled all the maintenance for their 50 retail stores across the country. During my 17 years at The Franklin Mint, I was able to gain a lot of skills and build great long-term friendships. Along the way, I took on a few part-time jobs which included cleaning banks, working in retail, restaurants and helping my brother, who owned his own sports bar.
What is your favorite part of your job?
For me, it’s about helping our patients, customers, the sales team, and everyone else. I love the diversity of my responsibilities in customer management. In addition, I have developed a passion for learning about the hearing aid world and the products over the years. We place the orders, so we get to learn a little bit more about the products during that process. I have also built a lot of great relationships along the way with our customers and vendors. I work with a fabulous team – the customer management team – and we work great together.
What are some of the values that drive your work?
I’m driven by providing quality and excellent service to our members and our vendors. It’s important to be reliable, honest, positive, and take accountability. I also believe that teamwork and having an overall passion for the job is crucial. I love what I do here and always have.
Tell us about a memorable experience you’ve had while working for CQ Partners.
One of the memorable experiences I have been a part of was a trip to one of our manufacturer partners. It was a part of an initiative to learn and grow. I took a day trip with my boss and got to see the facility and meet some of the people that I work with daily. We got to sit and talk to them in person. I was also very interested to see the order process, the shipping process at the facility, and as well as their customer service department. It was a really great experience to see how a company we work with operates and notice the differences and similarities between us.
How do you stay motivated in and out of work?
It all comes down to the people, the team that I work with here on daily basis, and the diversity of the job. I’m always busy and have my hand in so many different things, which keeps me going. I love working with this team and we help motivate each other every day.
What’s something you love to do outside of work?
Most importantly, I spend time with my family and friends. I have two kids, three sisters, and two brothers. Some of the activities I like to do outside of work include playing cornhole, tennis, and golf. I also play pool. On top of that, we love to spend time in the Chesapeake, Maryland area. It’s a beautiful area to jet ski, boat, and simply walk on the beach. We also enjoy watching baseball, football, a good series or movie, and attending country concerts.
Another passion of mine is fostering dogs. I foster through the Hinde’s Animal Rescue Boutique in Chadds Ford. Over the years we’ve fostered about 30 dogs of all ages from puppy to adulthood. It’s always very rewarding.
