Tess Howard is the SSC Manager of Customer Relations. She supervises
Customer Care staff and students, builds and maintains customer
relationships for the Seed Lab, develops and implements strategies to
improve efficiency and customer service, and trains and coaches staff on
procedures. Some of her other duties include assisting customers with testing
information by email, phone, and in person, project management for CySeed
(in-house database) with our programmer to improve processes and
utilization of the system, assisting with marketing efforts as needed and
publish bi-monthly newsletter. Howard represent the SSC and the Seed Lab
at trade shows and other seed industry events to promote services and
increase sales. Since joining the SSC, she has increased Customer Care
efficiency by implementing electronic reports, invoices, and notification
emails to keep our customers informed on sample progress, collaborated with
our CySeed programmer on the addition of CACKLE as an in-house
simplified CRM system, and implemented our bi-monthly Seed Lab
Newsletter “Roots,” and was part of the TEAM CYtation Award team.