Meet a WEXer: Nicole Olsen

For the past 17 years, Nicole Olsen has worked in Ogden, Utah – part of an area dubbed “Silicon Slopes” thanks to its concentration of tech businesses located with a view of the Wasatch Mountains. She didn’t officially become a WEXer until July of last year, when WEX acquired EFS, a provider of fleet payments solutions. Nicole’s journey to WEX, and her role as director of account management, provides a behind-the-scenes look at the growth of our fleet fuel card business.

After Nicole received her IT degree, she initially worked in the computer room of a food service company running daily jobs. With some extra time on her hands, she started helping other departments doing customer service. She found that she enjoyed working with customers much more than sitting in the computer room by herself, so she moved into an account management role.

It wasn’t long before she took her account management skills to TCH, a fleet fuel card company that would eventually morph into EFS. Within four years, Nicole was promoted to a supervisor of account management, and in 2011 she rose to her current role as director – the same year a TCH merger created EFS.

“In the six years since becoming director, the position and the company have changed dramatically,” says Nicole. “We’ve gotten really big, really fast, and my team of six people has grown to 30 account managers located in four offices across the country. We also have expanded our products and services, with more growth on the horizon as part of WEX.”

Account Management for the OTR Fleet

Nicole and her team’s main focus are OTR (over-the-road) fleets of 50 or more trucks that travel long distances. Each account manager serves as the primary contact for a specific group of customers, managing their accounts, fielding questions and resolving issues on a day-to-day basis. The customer base includes larger regional and national accounts, and her team’s point of contact is the fleet manager or whoever manages the company’s fuel program. Nicole notes that larger companies have entire departments tasked with this vital role.

The regional account managers in Nicole’s department handle specific geographic regions, and each is teamed up with one of our EFS sales reps. Sales works on the outside serving customers, while the account management team works on the inside handling their needs. Nicole oversees a separate team of national account managers who handle fleets in excess of 1,000 trucks, which enables them to give more focused attention to our big accounts.

“Our main focus is to keep customers happy, and every day is different,” observes Nicole. “We act as a liaison with every department at EFS to get answers and fast resolution on topics from credit to IT, and then communicate back to the customer. We also proactively reach out to our contacts, often using those check-ins as an opportunity to let them know about new products and services that may be a good fit for their fleet.”

In addition to a focus on providing great customer service, the ability to take ownership of an issue and see it through to resolution is a quality Nicole looks for in an account manager. As part of a technology company, her team also needs to be able to speak intelligently about this aspect of our business – especially since many of our large customers have real-time integrations with EFS and their respective ERP software packages.

Life as Director of Account Management

Nicole has maintained relationships with many larger accounts, and often gets directly involved if a customer has a technical issue. She has a deep understanding of our systems and customers which is sometimes tapped as part of product development at EFS. Her perspective on how a new product might impact our OTR customers makes her a great resource for project managers and business analysts as they vet and refine new offerings.

Since becoming part of WEX, Nicole has also been a member of the team working to migrate our FleetOne customer base onto the EFS platform. That migration opens the door for customers to access a wider range of products, and provides the ability to internally share products and technologies across our entire OTR customer base.

“It’s never boring here, and with the new products we’re implementing, there are always new things to learn,” says Nicole. “There’s a lot of satisfaction working in account management at EFS because you get fulfillment from helping customers and figuring out a problem, and it’s also exciting to grow and win new business.”