Webs, Inc
Company: Webs, Inc, Silver Spring, MD
Company Description: Webs is the most popular website building and hosting solution for entrepreneurs. With our Site Builder, Webs has become the world's largest, award-winning do-it-yourself website-creation solution. 50 million sites have been built with Webs and, together, these sites receive 300 million page views each month. Clearly, our customers trust us to help them create, manage and host their websites.
Nomination Category: Support Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Support Department of the Year
Nomination Title: Webs, Inc Customer Support Department
Tell the story about what this nominated department achieved since January 1 2010 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
About Webs, Inc.
Webs, Inc. is the world’s largest do-it-yourself website-building solution
serving over 50 million customers, enabling small and micro-businesses to easily
create an eye-catching, robust website that projects a professional image.
About Webs Customer Support
Customer feedback has always been integral component to the growth of Webs, and
is the voice of all of our customers to the rest of the Webs organization.
Small but mighty, the Customer Support team supports over 50 million customers
with a staff of less than 20 people.
2009: Working Harder, Not Smarter
Prior to 2010, several issues presented roadblocks for the Customer Support
team. Inadequate support tools and lack of documented, formalized procedures
resulted in various inefficiencies and a poor customer experience. At the same
time, the Webs product became more robust and our customer base was consistently
increasing. Support costs also continued to increase for unexplained reasons,
and the entire team was inefficient and lacked focus due to the absence of key
performance metrics. Since responses to customer inquiries were taking days
rather than hours, repeat inquiries were snowballing causing the average number
of inquires to rise over 5,000. The small Support staff was overwhelmed. By
the end of 2009, these inefficiencies resulted in customer satisfaction reaching
an all time low. We were working hard, not smart.
2010: Working Smarter, Not Harder
Our challenging goals in 2010 were to increase customer satisfaction to
acceptable levels and reduce Support costs while we continued to grow. We
quickly recognized the need to leverage a crowd-sourcing option and new,
streamlined internal processes while adding social media sources as an
additional channel. This needed to be done while reducing transaction
times/costs at the same time.
In 2010 Customer Support became a vibrant community designed to feed both social
media initiatives and self–service preferences of customers.
Measuring Success
5 key performance areas were identified and defined to chart success in 2010:
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of visits to the Support Page that resulted
in a trouble ticket being submitted.
• Resolution Time: The total time from a time an inquiry is submitted to the
time the customer’s issue is resolved.
• Customer Satisfaction: Customer’s rating on satisfaction surveys; scale of
1-5.
• Reopened Rate: The percentage of inquiries reopened after resolved.
• Support Operating Costs: Total monthly Support costs.
Accomplishments
Customer Support’s success during 2010 is evident through outstanding customer
satisfaction ratings that have increased significantly, a decreased workload by
implementing operational efficiencies, and lower costs. Improvements in every
metric were only achieved by working smarter, not harder and accomplishing more
with fewer costs:
Conversion Rate (% of inquiries converted to trouble tickets)
2009: 2.3
2010: 1.1
Reduced by 52%
Resolution Time (Average time to resolution; all Tiers combined)
2009: 49 hours
2010: 31 hours
Reduced by 37%
Customer Satisfaction (5 point scale)
2009: 2.5
2010: 4.1
Increased 64%
Reopened Rate (% of inquiries reopened after resolved)
2009: 57%
2010: 22%
Reduced by 61%
Support Costs (monthly)
2009: $32,000/month
2010: $21,000/month
Reduced by 34%
List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
http://webstestimonials.webs.com Webs Customer Testimonials
http://www.webs.com Website
https://www.facebook.com/Websdotcom Facebook
http://twitter.com/#!/websdotcom Twitter
http://blog.webs.com Webs Blog
Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated organization/department:
Jerry Weinberger has been responsible for leading Customer Care organizations
for 20+ years, including multi-site operations for FedEx, MCI and Fleet Bank.
His leadership resulted in customer satisfaction ratings among the best in the
industry and numerous awards for Quality, Sales and Service.
He was part of the FedEx leadership team when they won the Malcolm Baldrige
National Quality Award, and he and his team were awarded the JD Power Award for
Call Center Excellence at Virgin Mobile. PC Magazine also ranked Virgin’s
Customer Care #1 for two years straight.
Jerry currently leads Customer Service/Retention for Webs’ 50+ million customers.