Eric S. Hart Email & Phone Number

Oakland, Ca

Business and IT Operations and Sustainability Consulting for small businesses and non-profits

Oakland

Oakland, Ca

Driven by a passion for sustainability, I took a hiatus from the business world and used the finance and project management skills acquired there to purchase and faithfully restore a historic 1917 multi-family building that was in the process of being red-tagged by the city. Learning about construction as I went, I turned it into a model green community apartment home using eco-friendly building practices and materials, energy and water efficient equipment, smart home technology, and sustainable living lease agreements. The building received over 150 tenant applications in one week for the 2 remaining open apartments, is now full of happy stable tenants, and has a wait list for openings. It has become a model for green remodeling and a cornerstone and driving force for improvement in the neighborhood.

Directed an organization of technical managers, IT Business Analysts, and their teams responsible for supporting a worldwide network of 110,000 internal desktops and 200,000 vendor workstations. We were tasked with maintaining the integrity, stability, and security of the workstations, operating systems, and over 500 applications on the desktops for disparate customer facing organizations such as Customer Service, Billing, Tech Support, and Sales for our flagship products (DSL, Wireless, and Uverse Broadband/IP Telephony/Television) as well as our core residential landline business. Organizational Rebuild - Within months of taking over the organization comprised of support teams patched together from 5 merged Bell companies and 15 international outsource vendors, I met with senior leadership to put forth a proposal to rebuild the organization. Successful changes to organizational team structure, as well as improvements to security, infrastructure, asset tracking, and support processes and systems resulted in: • 42% increase in field client satisfaction ratings • 35% headcount savings in my organization • $4 million in savings from the IT and Operations organizations.

Led a highly technical team of desktop and network managers responsible for managing systems outages for the customer facing organizations while leading on special projects at Senior VP’s direction. System Reliability – Partner with IT to monitor and analyze outages on 40 mission critical systems, identify improvement opportunities and costs, and build an ongoing process for achieving stability. • Achieved a 52% frequency reduction, 15% severity reduction, and 28% duration reduction in outages. Business Continuity Plan – Develop plans to keep all critical aspects of the call centers going during any manner of natural or manmade disaster, or catastrophic system failure, and to care for our impacted employees and customers. • The BCP was activated twice while I was in this position, most significantly during the 2007 California Wildfires: This firestorm spread from LA to the Mexico border causing the evacuation of over 1 million people. It shut down several critical call centers, offices, and network facilities, and threatened/destroyed employees’ homes. • Successful implementation of the BCP allowed us to maintain CPUC mandated service levels in our call centers, take care of our impacted employees and their families, and set up special support services for impacted customers both onsite at evacuation centers and remotely through call centers out of state. Strike Preparedness – Put together and led a cross organizational team to build a plan to keep priority customer facing operations running should the company face a labor strike. I was tasked to maintain 70% of critical customer support functions normally handled by union service reps, but with 30% of the headcount using management pulled from other areas of the business and temporarily trained. • The plan enabled our organization to beat corporate service targets by 15%, enabling us to support our customers during a 2009 union walkout.

Led the IT/Internal Client interface team composed of product managers, UX designers, project managers, and business analysts who were responsible for system and process improvement for the customer contact operations organizations and for managing the real estate and facilities. Operations – Tasked with improving 3 focus areas; customer experience, employee experience, and operational efficiency. • Each quarter the team initiated or received proposals for an average of 80 projects, analyzed and triaged them down to 10-15, and managed them through implementation bringing an operational savings of approximately $2 million per quarter. Real Estate/Facility Management – Work with partner organizations to manage the facilities and equipment for 40 call centers in the Western US. • Partnered with Corporate Real Estate to ensure smooth, safe, and cost efficient daily operations • Oversaw 15 projects to relocate and consolidate call centers, moving several thousand people, their equipment, and their work, without work interruption. • Oversaw 21 projects to update call center technology such new data and voice networks, workstations, call management, and telephony, without work interruption • Partnered with Corporate Real Estate, IT, and Finance partners to select a location, design and build a state of the art, eco-friendly, and employee well-being focused call center. This call center is now the West Coast flagship call center and used as a model for new centers nationwide.

Area Manager, eCommerce and Web Applications, Consumer Sales and Service (8/2001-8/2003)Individual contributor position working for the call center senior leadership, responsible for working with IT to improve existing and design new call center systems.• Selected to represent my VP organization on the project team to build the first online shopping cart and online account billing management for the company. • Represented my Regional President on a program to overhaul operations including IP telephony development and deployment, voice recognition IVR deployment, knowledge management software, and new systems and interfaces for the call centers. Worked directly with leadership teams from Operations and IT to guide the project direction, make strategic decisions, and sign off on each project on behalf of my leadership. Led the team to deploy the system and train 5000 reps across 25 call centers. • Gave Systems and Operations Review presentations to the CA Public Utilities Commission and CA Attorney General.

Responsible for managing a portfolio of call center support projects through successful completion • Proposed and managed a quick-hit project to build a system to automatically clean up Service Rep order errors. Total cost $50,000, savings over $4 mil. • Proposed and managed a project to mechanize call contact flows and scripting, replacing paper scripting and procedure manuals. Total cost including hardware $80,000; business savings over $1 mil/year, plus environmental benefits by eliminating use and shipping of 1-2 tons of paper a month.

Hired onto a team to build and manage the largest call center in the company with almost 1000 new hire customer service reps.• Responsible for training, service levels, customer satisfaction ratings, sales targets, and sales quality for a team of 25 Customer Service representatives. Met or exceeded all metrics for 5 quarters

Greater San Diego Area

Managed a team of 20 customer service representatives responsible for servicing HMO and PPO health plan customers. • Handled crisis escalations.• Designed the process and wrote scripting for 2 major HMO plan conversions. • When Prudential decided to move all their call center operations to Los Angeles, I was asked to move to LA to help open and run the new call center. I was unable to leave San Diego at the time so declined the promotion, but agreed to spend several months in LA to manage the transition and help get the new center underway before leaving the company.

Greater San Diego Area

Supported HMO and PPO health plan customers by answering billing, benefits, and claims questions. Provided a friendly, supportive, and professional voice to help them understand how their health plan works and how to get the most out of it, and how navigate through the company processes during a stressful and difficult time in their lives.