The Road to Quality: Interview with Hapag-Lloyd's Karen Santore

Peachtree Road. Peachtree Street. Peachtree Parkway. Peachtree Industrial Boulevard. Old Peachtree Road. South Old Peachtree Road. The Atlanta area has 71 streets with some variant of “Peachtree” in their names. It is no wonder that Customer Service Booking Senior Manager, Karen Santore, got lost a lot in the first few weeks that she moved to Georgia.

Aside from this minor challenge, Karen has made many changes in the past few months. With the reorganization of Hapag-Lloyd North America, she moved roughly 750 miles from Chicago to join the Quality Service Center (QSC) in Atlanta. When asked how she is adjusting to her new office, Karen stated, “it’s a big office but everyone is friendly and there is a great atmosphere.”

QSC’s are a new blueprint for Hapag-Lloyd. With so many departments under one roof, we will experience a more streamlined and standardized process with opportunities for cross training. This will enable all of our teams to sit and work closely together and will further empower and educate our staff. Karen also recognizes the benefits of the QSC. “We are centralized which promotes root cause analysis and quick turnaround for problem resolution. We are all open minded, listening to each other’s ideas. We want to provide high quality service to our customers and the structure of QSC’s will help to differentiate Hapag-Lloyd from our competitors. Hapag-Lloyd is making it easier for our customers to do business with us.”

In line with Strategy 2023, Hapag-Lloyd’s mission is to be number one in quality. We are continuing to educate and empower our staff to maintain high levels of service in order to be the High Service Alternative. Karen has worked with Hapag-Lloyd for 14 years. Throughout all this time, she recognized that the biggest change is “the different culture at the QSC. Everyone is working towards a common goal: the customer.”

At the QSC, Karen is most excited about “working with, mentoring, and developing a new team.” She is also looking forward to “working across internal functional areas to solve immediate issues and developing strategic long-term resolutions. We will be doing all these tasks while providing the best service in the industry.”

When asked what she is most proud of at Hapag-Lloyd, Karen stated, “The quality of the employees and how everyone works as a team. We genuinely like the people we work with. I also am proud of the history of the company and how adaptive we are to new ideas.”

Karen is adjusting very well to her new city. Although she explains that navigating the streets is one of the challenges she faced during her transition, in the two months she has been here, she has already seen a concert, toured the World of Coca Cola, and is excited to visit the aquarium. She has also since bought a map to help navigate the streets of Atlanta on her journey to be number one in quality.