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Lifesize, Austin, TX: Amy Downs

Gold Stevie Award Winner 2012, Click to Enter The 2014 American Business Awards

Company: Lifesize, Austin, TX
Company Description: Lifesize is the only company to deliver video conferencing that’s as easy, as lifelike, and as remarkable as meeting in person. Founded in 2003 and acquired by Logitech in 2009, Lifesize continues to reinvent the video conferencing industry.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Executive of the Year

Nomination Title: Amy Downs, VP of Customer Care & Happiness

Tell the story about what this nominee has achieved since January 1, 2014 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms.

Over the past 9 months, Lifesize has undergone a significant transformation from a hardware-based partner focused organization to a dynamic SaaS cloud-based company where Customer Obsession is at the epicenter of everything we do. It’s such an interesting time for us. It’s like having a fast growing start-up embedded in a traditional slower moving organization. As part of this transformation, we needed to completely reinvent ourselves into a company who puts customers at the heart of everything we do and that moves at the pace of an early-stage start-up. Enter Amy Downs, VP of Customer Care and Happiness.

Prior to Amy joining, the Lifesize sales leaders were unable to sell into the existing customer and partner base because service was so poor. Customers and partners were complaining about long wait times and most of the time when a service or support request was sent, it went completely unanswered. Survey responses said things like, “you should be ashamed of yourselves” and “why do I bother, you never answer my support requests”; team morale was at an all time low. Lifesize CEO, Craig Malloy, who was dealing with upset customers directly said, “two months after Amy joined the complaints just stopped”. Sales leaders were floored; customers and partners were actually happy again and began buying. Sales was able to focus on selling rather than firefighting.

So what happened? How, within two months, did Lifesize go from treating customers so poorly to making them happy and reaping all the great benefits that customers bring?

Amy says, “It’s simple, you just have to show your customers that you care. We have amazingly great people, they just were not empowered nor did they have the structure and tools they needed to be successful.” Amy spent the first few weeks sharing her vision for the team to help them understand the importance of the part they play in our customers’ lives. Immediately following, Amy dug into customer surveys, did customer and partner interviews, pulled data and had one-on-one meetings with the entire team to better understand what was working and what wasn’t. “There was very little structure in the organization. The team was unsure what was expected of them and unclear on how they were measured.

There was no clear path for growth and they lacked the necessary tools to help customers.” Within the first few months, Amy secured a tool that helped the team to understand ticket aging, she worked alongside her team to make changes to the processes and ticketing systems to ensure that customers were responded to quickly and meaningfully, the biggest complaint from survey feedback. Within the first month, the team implemented a transactional NPS survey to bring the voice of customers into the operational rhythm of the team and to create a culture of continuous process improvement based on what’s important to customers.

The transactional NPS score when Amy arrived in June, 2014 was -4, since January, 2015, Lifesize consistently hits 50% or more week over week. When Amy arrived roles and responsibilities were redefined and clarified. Metrics were simplified … “the only thing that matters is happy customers”. Team members were empowered to do the right thing for customers and encouraged to use their best judgment. Within 6 months, she procured out an external facing community to help bring customers much closer to the Lifesize family. Within one month of launch, the community has over 1,000 members and is thriving.

In a recent relationship NPS survey, 35% of customers are willing to be references and 34% are willing to do case studies. This emphasizes the cultural shift and highlights that all of Lifesize, not just the teams closest to the customer, is fully vested in Customer Obsession and are living it as a core value each and every day.

In bullet-list form, briefly summarize up to ten (10) accomplishments of the nominee since the beginning of 2014 (up to 150 words).

• Implemented Net Promoter System to bring insights and the voice of the customer closer to the business. Now NPS is an operational model embedded in Lifesize’s culture.
• Empowered and rejuvenated customer service teams with 0% attrition in a time of significant change
• Implemented Customer Obsession as a core value and differentiator company-wide to re-energize Lifesize around customers
• Created a customer segmentation strategy to align
• Defined a customer segmentation strategy and a team based approach to managing relationships with customers
• Introduced Extreme Support including 24x7x365, multi-channel experiences, community, customer success and more
• Redefined company’s standard on meaningful responses from days and weeks to 1 hour
• Transformed a -4 transactional NPS to a consistent 50% or more week over week in the first 6 months
• Re-energized sales team, happy customers allows them to focus on selling.
• Rolled out customer insights that weren’t available