KEY ACCOUNT MANAGER-AIRLINE

Business unit Purpose:

To effectively manage customer relationships, identify and implement sales solutions, oversee projects and contract management, ensure adherence to SLAs, and drive continuous improvements in processes and customer satisfaction through strategic analysis and cross-departmental coordination.

Job Purpose:

The role is responsible for managing all aspects of service delivery for assigned Airline customers and act as a management interface between the client and internal stakeholders. The role will also pro-actively identify client needs, potential service risks and mitigate any potential service failures and lead service recovery efforts where required.

Key Result Areas:

1. Manage the relationship with assigned customer accounts to ensure business has pertinent information to perform profitably and meet customer expectations.
2. Demonstrate skills in identification of customer needs, potential sales solutions while proposing improvements and new initiatives using best available techniques to improve current systems and processes enabling customer satisfaction.
3. Manage and conclude assigned projects, Request For Proposals, New Menus and tasks effectively and ensure the relevant Commercial and Services Department’s deliverables are achieved in a timely manner.
4. Develop and maintain excellent customer relationships by maintaining communication between the customer and internal stakeholders to ensure that Airline Customer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are met or exceeded.
5. Coordinate within the business on menu proposals required by customers ensuring that all pertinent information, targets and timelines are captured in Company’s submission.
6. Attend menu presentations, pro-actively provide menu improvement recommendations and ensure timelines of menu prices post presentation and launch are met.
7. Follow up on the issuance process, investigation, and timely response to customer feedback and address non-conformances by ensuring appropriate actions are taken and outcomes are communicated, while continuously monitoring preventative actions internally to ensure adherence to SOPs, SLAs, and contractual obligations.
8. Analyse airline customers’ performance indicators related to KPI/KRAs, audit results and metrics, and conduct trend analysis of identified deviations.
9. Prepare and submit weekly reports or as needed to the Head of Department on a continuous basis on status of customers’ projects, new airlines, competitor activity, service performance, Consumer Price Index (CPI’s) and commodities locally and across different geographical locations in order to take any strategic measure to improve efficiency, sales, productivity and profit including and provide reports on the same.
10. Manage the updates in systems including ERP & Salesforce to maintain customer data and contracts database, monitor the validity of airline contracts, prepare draft contracts and addendums covering operational & commercials aspects in adherence with SLAs, SOPs and EKFC policies to ensure valid and legally compliant contracts are available.

Knowledge, Skills & Minimum Experience:

Education Qualification:

• Bachelor’s degree in hospitality, Business Administration or equivalent qualification (required)
• Master’s degree in hospitality, Business Administration or a relevant discipline (preferred)

Work Experience:

• 7 years’ experience in a key account management position preferably in aviation, inflight service, airline catering or hospitality industry.

• Demonstrated commitment to customer service excellence and continuous improvement.

• Demonstrated results in providing flexible business solutions in a dynamic working environment.

• Working knowledge of Food Safety standards.

Skills:

• Excellent written and verbal English communication skills.
• High level of proficiency in the use of the Microsoft Office Suite.
• High level of proficiency in Salesforce.
• Strong negotiation skills and proven ability to achieve service recovery outcomes that benefit both the customer and EKFC.
• High level of organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Ability to analyse and correctly assess priorities under pressure.
• Ability to build effective working relationships with customers and co-workers.
• Highest standard of professional behaviour and personal presentation.
• Self-motivated with the ability and initiative to achieve results individually and as part of a team.
• Culturally aware and sensitive to the needs of individual clients.

Ability to work to strict deadlines without compromising quality.