Flo Langley, v-p of customer service at Penguin Random House, is retiring in April after nearly 45 years of service to the company and its predecessors, Random House, Bantam Doubleday Dell and Dell Magazines.
In a memo to the company, Annette Danek, senior v-p, director of fulfillment, wrote: "Flo is embedded into the fabric of our business, our culture, and indeed into the DNA of our company, past and present. With her equal devotion to both big-scale planning, as well as to the everyday details of our business, she has been a bellwether and beacon for our sales and operations teams. With her bottomless knowledge, account-centric peripheral vision, and business foresight, she always sees how everything we do must connect back to our core mission of unwaveringly providing the best fulfillment service, unmatched in our industry....
"Flo has expertly led [customer service,] this vital part of our business, serving as the bridge and the glue between sales and operations, unifying our work together on behalf of our publishers, authors and booksellers, in her own unique and extraordinary way. Early on, she set our customer services standard for prompt, thorough, and sensitive responsiveness and follow-up to our accounts, encouraging them to reach out to us directly with their concerns, thereby enhancing our good will and positive relationships within the bookselling community....
"Past her April retirement I can anticipate that while shopping in bookstores all over her home 'territory' Flo regularly will be calling into customer service to report on how we are doing. She will undoubtedly say we are 'fabulous,' and just before she hangs up, we'll hear, 'Love ya... mean it.' "
