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Could you tell us about your background and how you became the Operations Manager at Clearhill?
Before I worked here, I owned my car wash and valeting business for ten years. Brian was one of my clients, and during a conversation about my next career move, he told me that Clearhill were recruiting for a Field Service Engineer. I thought about this over the weekend and applied for the role on Monday.
My application was successful, and I joined the company in 2014 as a Field Service engineer. I have progressed steadily through the ranks, learning about the industry with every opportunity, from Workshop Engineer in 2016 to Technical Support Engineer in 2018 and finally Operations Manager in 2020.
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What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
It’s not so much advice but a great life lesson. When I was growing up, my parents instilled a strong work ethic in all of us. I was always encouraged to put my heart and soul into everything I put my hand to, as hard work would be rewarded and was required to help me achieve my goals.
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What is one thing you wish you could automate in your job?
A pain point in my role as Operations Manager is the time it takes to plan service schedules and routes for our engineers. To ensure customer satisfaction and engineer efficiency, I need to ensure that I strike the right balance with the routes and allow enough time for the calls to maintain our high standard of customer service. If I could automate this task, it would free up a significant portion of my time.
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Describe a typical day for you in Clearhill.
A typical day for me is varied. After our morning meeting, I check in with the operations team to see if they have any issues that they need help resolving and the progress of the projects we are working on. The work the operations team carries out includes;
- Reviewing machine performance.
- Planning machine moves.
- Warehouse & workshop planning.
- Maintaining site standards.
- Collaborating with the team to improve processes.
I will also take some calls from engineers to help with more complex issues I may have previously faced on the road.
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How does Clearhill create an environment of collaboration within the company?
The ethos of Lean and the improvement processes built into this culture ensure that procedures are in place to help our team share ideas to make our jobs easier. For this to be successful, we had to ensure that we created a safe environment for staff to highlight defects, make mistakes and bring these to the team to help fix them. We’ve recently introduced an Improvement process so we can start documenting these changes and show our innovation throughout the year.
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Why should shopping centres and grocery stores partner with Clearhill?
Clearhill has 30+ years of experience delivering a wide range of leisure entertainment for unused space in shopping centres and grocery stores. Shopping can be boring for kids. Our wide range of kiddie rides, claw machines and candy & toy carts can provide excitement while increasing dwell time in the shopping centre and revenue when the children get rewarded for their patience. Our network of service engineers is on hand to ensure that all our machines are in top working order, with well-stocked parts boxes to enable first-time fixes. Our engineers work with our fantastic Customer Service Team, who are on hand to help if needed. This end-to-end service allows our Clearhill Team to provide a high standard of care and support with only one phone call.
