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Chrissy Mackay - KEA Campers

18/11/2013

I started at KEA Campers as a junior detailer (campervan cleaner) and never imagined I would be managing the team within four short years. Since leaving school I had been focussed on being a mum, so was late in starting my career.


I’d done odd jobs, but nothing too intense during that time. I certainly wasn’t expecting to be where I am now when I started. I did go to university. I did one semester, but then my husband and I separated and I was left with four children to look after. I probably could have carried on but it just would have been so hard and my youngest at that stage was still in nappies. So I stopped.

I completed ServiceIQ’s Customer Service Award soon after I started at KEA, while training in the customer service team. This gave me a kick-start and helped me gain my role as KEA Campers’ Housekeeping Manager.

With a team of around 10 staff and no prior management experience, I jumped at the chance to enrol in ServiceIQ’s National Certificate in First Line Management. My job, I think, first and foremost is to lead a successful team and to keep them happy. The job here is a difficult one and it takes a certain type of person to work out in the campervan bay and still be a happy worker.

It’s about trying to keep that balance of being sympathetic to their needs and still getting the job done, which is challenging but through ServiceIQ I’ve actually learnt a lot that has helped me manage that.

When I say my team is the backbone of this company I’m dead set serious, but they’re hard girls, so they’re straight up and all the rest of it. Dealing with whatever issues and conflicts they have, I have to deal with them differently to what I would if I was in customer service or if I was duty manager, simply because of the people that work out there.

ChrissyMackay

Regular study groups with others in the organisation was a huge help and made the study more enjoyable. Sharing knowledge with other supervisors and managers also helped broaden my perspective and better understand other departments in the business.

Jenny Osborn, one of ServiceIQ’s Assessor and  Learning Support Team is fantastic. She helps make it easy. If I have queries I know that I can just email Jenny and she gets straight back to me, so there’s help there and Jenny tries to guide us as best she can. She certainly does help take the pressure off.

For more information, please contact ServiceIQ on 0800 863 693 or email intel@ServiceIQ.org.nz