EMKAY
Company: EMKAY, Itasca, IL
Company Description: Emkay is a provider of vehicle financing and management solutions to businesses throughout North America. Founded in 1946 and the 2nd oldest fleet management company in the nation, our focus is on operational excellence. As the industries only privately held, employee-owned company, our unique ownership enables a special personal pride in servicing our customers.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year
Nomination Title: EMKAY Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year
Tell the story about what this nominated team achieved since the beginning of July last year (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:
EMKAY is a global provider of financing and fleet management service solutions
to businesses. Our core product, vehicle leasing, often surprises people when we
call ourselves a service company rather than finance. EMKAY understands this
first glance approach, and have developed an easy to understand strategy for
sharing our service structure for those either reviewing us for the first time
or benchmarking us versus our industry peers.
EMKAY’s Client Support Services (CSS) team is EMKAY’s “front–line” providing
value-added services daily to our 500+ business customers with 75,000+ vehicles
under management. The CSS team delivers a multi-pronged strategy that
dramatically lowers overall expenses associated with operating fleet vehicles.
EMKAY has become a well-respected leader in providing our customers with
state-of-the-art award winning technology, yet we combine this with a rare focus
on client satisfaction. EMKAY’s structure is also unique as we are the only
employee-owned company in our industry. What this means to our customers is a
passion to satisfy. As one customer, Benjamin Moore & Company, recently said,
“EMKAY consistently addresses our growing needs to make life more productive for
the fleet manager and the drivers”. “Front-line customer service takes servicing
clients seriously.”
EMKAY’s front-line team success results from caring about every detail. Each
interaction whether e- mail or phone, or the industry’s only on-line customer
chat, is tracked as a “case”. What this shows our clients is no matter how small
the request, it’s watched over just like a CEO asking directly for a favor. Our
service personnel then adjust their focus to the next key level - adding value
through consultative strategies on every interaction. 2009 totaled over 56,000
cases and we achieved an outstanding 8.3% of these cases having a cost saving
recommendation. This resulted in over $18,000,000 in documented soft/hard
savings for our clients.
Our team’s great care is extended by tracking key metrics across all client
interactions, then meeting bi-weekly face-to-face with not just management, but
the entire CSS Front-Line. The result is engaging the team’s passion for detail
and enables us to make constant improvements to service processes along the way.
Other key performance indicators include monthly report cards provided to each
front-line rep that acts as their “playbook”. The individual Team Leads meet
personally with specialists to review their KPIs then develop individual
self-improvement and quality enhancement strategies.
Each month, EMKAY performs customer surveys. The service strategies above have
resulted in an unprecented 100% satisfaction 37 consecutive months.
In conclusion, our front-line team operates on a complete transparency basis.
All results and metrics are presented face-to-face by the account manager to
each client quarterly in our “Fleet Objectives Report”.
This year the service department achieved:
• 7-second Average Speed of Answer • 89.3% (versus goal 80%) cases resolved in
24 hours • Every call answered by live person (service has no voicemail) • 100%
documented case-log, historical benchmarking • First-touch resolution of 92%
(versus goal 85%) • Score of 4.33 (out of 5 and goal of 4.2) for quality on CSS
report card
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]:
For more general information about EMKAY and links to press releases please
visit http://www.emkay.com and for key additional data about EMKAY, please
visit: http://www.myfleetsolutions.com/stevies
Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated team:
Christopher Tepas joined EMKAY in 1999. Chris earned his degree from Arizona
State University and professional design training from the Art Institute of
California-San Francisco. Tepas was promoted to Vice President Sales in 2003,
Executive Vice President Sales and Marketing in 2006, Executive Vice President
Client Services & Marketing in 2009, and is currently Chief Marketing Officer.
Tepas has helped spearhead EMKAY’s management team to earn several awards such
as MarCom Platinum Award, Create Award, GDUSA Certificate of Excellence, Stevies
Front-Line Customer Service Team-of-the-Year Finalist, American Business Awards
Customer Service Department-of-the-Year Finalist and Customer Service
Team-of-the-Year Finalist, Winner 101 Best and Brightest Places to work in
Chicago, Info500 “Top IT Companies U.S.”, Winner for Business Excellence
Mid-Sized Companies, Davey Silver Award, International Service Excellence
Awards, and Winner Stevies Customer Service Department-of-the-Year 2010.