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Careerbuilder.com - Best Customer Service team

Company: CareerBuilder.com, Chicago, IL
Company Description: CareerBuilder.com is the nation’s largest online job site with more than 22 million unique visitors and over 1.5 million jobs. Owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI), Tribune Company (NYSE:TRB), The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), the company offers a vast online and print network to help job seekers connect with employers.
Category: Customer Service Team of the Year

Nomination Title: CareerBuilder.com Customer Care Team

  1. How many people are in your organization's entire customer service department?

    260

  2. What were your organization's sales during the eligibility period? If this figure is confidential, simply enter "Confidential" in this space:

    $672 million in revenue in 2006

  3. Describe the nominated team's top 3 accomplishments during the eligibility period (up to 100 words):

    1. Even during CareerBuilder.com’s rapid growth ($283 million in revenue in 
    2004 to $672 million in 2006), the Customer Care team reported 92% job
    satisfaction. Our satisfied employees significantly improved the customer
    experience and company margins. Improved average customer resolution time by
    58%; customer satisfaction by 22 percent (Net Promoter); and customer service
    costs by 26%.

    2. Increased consumer product sales by 64% by better educating customers on
    product value and effective use of products.

    3. Rapid international expansion required simultaneous ramp up in five
    additional countries. Hired numerous employees that speak other languages while
    maintaining high customer satisfaction levels.

  4. List the nominated team's top 3 lessons learned during the eligibility period (up to 100 words):

    1. Making it easy for customers to reach you can actually make you more 
    efficient. We redesigned the help section and encouraged customers to call us.
    We used these interactions to make improvements to the site, which decreased
    customer inquires by 15%.

    2. Customers don’t always know how to best use our service even if they have
    used it in past. Our efforts to proactively call and train customers who were
    not fully using the services they purchased, increased usage by more that 25%.

    3. Our customers want less email and want greater control over the content they
    receive.

  5. Briefly describe the qualities that distinguish the nominated customer service team from other customer service teams in your industry (up to 100 words):

    We don’t hide from customers or dictate how they reach us – we make it easy for 
    them to communicate with us in whatever manner they prefer – by phone, chat,
    email or using an automatic service attendant. This differs from many of our
    competitors as our toll free number is on every page and we make it clear that
    customers can get service "their way." We don’t pass customers through Voice
    Response prompts and live service is encouraged even for non-paying jobseekers.
    We also provide free resume analysis to our 23 million unique visitors that
    access the site for free.

  6. Provide a brief biography of the leader(s) of the nominated customer service team (up to 100 words):

    As the Vice President of Customer Care for CareerBuilder.com, Michael Hargis is 
    responsible for delivering the strategic vision and managing the daily
    operations for the company’s global customer care division. With 15 years of
    expertise in the human capital industry, Hargis focuses on leveraging an in-
    depth understanding of hiring trends, employee behavior and employment branding
    for CareerBuilder.com customers so that they can effectively attract the right
    candidates and grow profitable businesses.

    Prior to joining the CareerBuilder.com team, Hargis worked in various general
    management roles at GE Money and GE Capital, Retailer Financial Services
    Company.