Melissa Papaj has over 20 years of experience in customer service, operations management, and human resources. She has a proven track record of leading teams, improving processes, resolving issues, and achieving business results. Her background includes managing client accounts and call centers as well as developing employees.

1. MELISSA PAPAJ
5204 South Zeno Way Home: 303-680-5524
Centennial, Colorado 80015 rmpapaj2@msn.com Cell: 303-258-6961
SUMMARY
Customer Service Professional with extensive and diverse operations management of B2B accounts. Innovative problem
solver consistently recognized for effective talent management, achieving business results, and strong project management
capabilities. Skills include:
• Team leadership • Customer service and relationship management
• Employee selection, training, and development • Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Strong analytical and decision making abilities • Call center management
• Employee relations, coaching, and conflict
management
• Outstanding interpersonal and influencing skills
• Extensive project experience including scripting
and testing system upgrades / enhancements
• Account reconciliation and collections
EXPERIENCE
ELAVON, Englewood, Colorado 2015-2016
Senior Manager, Client Training and Implementation Support
Manage five unique customer-facing functions in support of client activation, training, and communication.
• Led team of Relationship Managers providing customer service, on-boarding, and account maintenance support.
• Revamped client survey process for training team covering six applications/topics.
• Resolved activation backlog related to partner product offering.
• Eliminated interdepartmental handoff and reduced maintenance requests related to card type acceptance.
• Provided advance notification of maintenance/system outage to various client groups.
STAPLES, Aurora, Colorado 2011-2015
Team Manager/Supervisor
Held various leadership positions in customer service and within Staples’ National Furniture Support Center.
• Managed up to 21 inbound contact advisors/senior service reps supporting a high-growth line of business.
• Grew staff 75% in 2014 to support record sales growth; rated exceeds expectations for fiscal 2014.
• Received two customer compliments in 2014 for exceptional customer service and follow through.
• At the request of management, moved and led three unique customer service teams in 2013.
• Prepared and delivered employee documentation including performance reviews, corrective action, and performance
improvement plans.
• Facilitated staff meetings and development-focused one-on-ones.
• Performed monthly quality assurance checks on all advisors. Served as “Ambassador” for rollout of new QA model.
• Streamlined, developed, and owned on-boarding process for all new hires and incumbents moving across departments
and platforms.
• Developed manager-level system training and testing.
• Selected to train newly-hired managers on systems and management functions after little more than one year with the
company.
• Achieved employee satisfaction scores of 97.7%, 94.4%, and 94% under “My Immediate Manager” on employee
satisfaction surveys.
FIRST DATA CORPORATION, Englewood, Colorado 1996-2009
Director, Client Services and Operations (2007-2009)

2. Directed service organization of 70+ employees with budget of $2.5 million and $2 billion in daily sales through product
wind-down.
• Provided ongoing service to fulfill contract terms while terminating approximately 1,200 clients.
• Analyzed client volumes and staff attrition to determine appropriate severance timing.
• Implemented technology initiatives to replace expensive legacy mainframe systems and manual processes.
• Handled identification and return of risk/fraudulent items averaging one million per day.
• Led employee morale team, organizing team events and incentives.
Senior Manager (2004-2007)
Managed day-to-day operations of service team providing account management, exception processing, and customer service
for over 800 accounts.
• Achieved a record-breaking 98.8% in overall leadership satisfaction on final (2006) employee survey.
• Reduced staff 27% over 18 months, saving over $240,000.
• Realized shipment cost reduction of 83% and exception item reduction of 76% in one year.
• Developed and led Writing Initiative Network (WIN) program.
• Identified business requirements, scripted, tested and implemented new product offering.
• Attained between 94 & 97% customer satisfaction scores on last three client surveys.
Project Office (POINT) Senior Manager (2002-2004)
Built training, communication, and project team to support 150 people.
• Improved employee satisfaction with respect to training nearly 300% in one year, while delivering 6,000 hours of
training.
• Managed Project Analysts on mainframe and web-based projects and process improvement initiatives.
• Developed and presented exception training to 40 team members, enabling redeployment of three FTE.
Senior Manager, Accounting (2001-2002)
Oversaw three departments, providing accounts receivable and abandoned property reporting services for over ten business
units with revenues of $75 million monthly.
• Led accounts receivable team through successful conversion to Oracle software, while realizing 10% unit cost reduction.
• Partnered with product and finance groups to ensure maximum revenue recognition, collection efficiency and risk
mitigation.
Senior Manager, Exception Processing and Client Account Balancing (1996-2001)
Spear-headed migration of Official Check/Money Order units from New York to Denver.
• Built exception processing, stop payment and client support groups from ground up.
• Tested and implemented client self-service web site, eliminating a department of nine FTE over time.
• Negotiated financial settlements on AR balances >180 days, recovering hundreds of thousands of dollars for unit.
• Ran two high-volume balancing units with over 2,000 accounts.
• Served as subject-matter-expert and project representative for all product mainframe and web initiatives.
• Assessed client behaviors and implemented corrective actions.
• Led Six Sigma team to reduce exceptions 50% in three months.
CITICORP GLOBAL TRANSACTION SERVICES, Amherst, New York 1986-1996
Department Manager/Assistant Vice President (1993-1996)
Directed staff of 25+ supporting various operations for four product groups.
• Reported approximately $40 million of USD and multi-currency abandoned items annually to respective states.
• Achieved a perfect score on internal audit of abandoned property.
• Conducted monthly departmental audits and authored training manuals and procedures.
Operations Supervisor 1990-1993
EDUCATION
B.S., Office Administration, Summa cum Laude, State University College at Buffalo, New York

3. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Graduate Certificate, Human Resource Management and Development, 4.0 GPA
University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, August 2010
Project Management, University of Phoenix, Lone Tree, Colorado, 2002