National/international awards company

abby-perezI want to compliment one of your employees, Abby Perez. We are a national/international awards company. We sell plaques, trophies, acrylics, medals, etc. for every type of event from corporate awards to little league baseball/softball tournaments. We also supply many marathon races across the nation. We  recently had an issue with receiving 18,500 medals for one of our major customers. The issue began with our container getting stuck in customs x-ray on the west coast. We’ve been through this before and understand the delay that it can cause (usually up to 5-7 days). Unfortunately for us, this delay ended up being two weeks; and once it made it onto the rail, it arrived in Dallas, TX. on Thanksgiving Day.

This is where Abby comes into play…not sure the exact timing, but she notified me about our container when it was still in California. Once we found out about the x-ray, I started to get a little concerned about getting the medals to my customer in Memphis, TN on time. Abby stayed on this shipment and gave me updates (as best as she could) basically every day. When we realized that everything pretty much shuts down for Thanksgiving, Abby suggested that we expedite our shipment from Dallas to us in Ottawa, KS, a great move on her part! Once she got approval, she began communicating with the forwarder in California, the warehouse in Dallas and the trucking firm to make sure everyone was on board to do whatever they could to make sure we got our shipment on time. The medals were released to the trucker just yesterday afternoon, and by 10:00 pm last night he was sitting at our warehouse to be unloaded.

Abby even texted me once an hour to give me updates where the truck was so we could facilitate things on a timely basis on my end (she even texted me while she was reading her 2-year old daughter a bed time story!).  Our driver left at 11:30 pm last night and arrived in Memphis at 7:30 am this morning – an hour and half before our customer’s requested ETA time!

Because of her efforts and constant communication with me, what turned out to be a mission…did get accomplished! I deal with a lot of logistics people and have NEVER dealt with any one as compassionate about her job and taking care of their customer like Abby. I just want you to know how much our company appreciates all of her hard work…a pat on the back isn’t enough for this gal! 🙂

Director of inventory for a prominent national/international awards company