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Enterasys Networks

How to EnterCompany: Enterasys Networks, Salem, NH
Company Description: Enterasys Networks is a premier global provider of wired and wireless network infrastructure and security solutions. Our solutions enable organizations to drive down IT costs while improving business productivity and efficiency through a unique combination of automation, visibility and control capabilities. Enterasys provides a broad range of enterprise networking and security solutions.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Award for Innovation in Customer Service

Nomination Title:  Enterasys Network's Customer Service Innovations

Tell the story about your organization's innovations in customer service since the beginning of July 2011 (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:

For Enterasys Networks, the old saying, “the customer comes first” is exactly how we run our organization. Nowhere is this more present than in our customer support team where resolving issues on the first call via the first person that the caller speaks isn’t a goal, it’s business as usual. Considering Enterasys serves more than 5,000 customers in 80 countries, the popular, problem-prone method of outsourcing customer service simply isn’t an option.

In addition to telephone support, social media is quickly becoming the mainstay of the online world. This exponential increase in usage is the result of these portals becoming the default home page of users on a variety of mobile devices – laptops, tablets, smart phones and more. Remedial process is insufficient to keep these devices functioning. Imagine if your network could speak directly to you — in your terms, in your language? An exchange begins between you and a machine.

Imagine if your network could securely communicate issues and alerts to you over your favorite social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Salesforce.com Chatter? Imagine that anyone on your IT staff could securely and proactively manage and control your IT infrastructure in real-time — anytime, anywhere?

During the summer of 2011, Enterasys introduced Isaac - the first of its kind technology that revolutionized the way network management is done. Isaac allows you to stay ahead of potential network issues and protect your business by providing a predictable, secure, real-time solution for managing your enterprise network and all the applications it supports with an easy-to-use interface – social media.

Isaac’s true value is realized when its use is combined with our Global Technical Assistance Center (GTAC). Contrary to traditional service departments, Enterasys’ support center is comprised with 100% in-house product experts who have an average tenure of 13 years. Through GTAC, customers get direct, high-touch access to expert-level Enterasys personnel, as opposed to a one-hour call back, or call-coordinator strategy used by many other vendors in the networking marketplace. Additionally, Enterasys utilizes Salesforce.com’s cloud-based CRM tools, enabling workforce optimization through automated workflows and balanced performance scoring, as well as internal and external cross-functional collaboration and self-service capabilities. This all has resulted in Enterasys’ customers realizing the following benefits:

- Reduced transaction time by approximately 20% per case
- Increase capacity of support staff by over 13% leading to a 20% improvement in call abandon rate
- Improved first-contact closure rates by 19%
- Cut talk time by 15%
- Reduced case-resolution time by 71%
- Boosted overall customer satisfaction to 97% and customer-referral rate to 98%
- Delivered multi-channel contact and more than double the percentage of contact sourced from electronic channels
- Reduced employee attrition to less than 2%
- Increased first day resolutions by 15% and decrease average time a case remains open by 50%
- Enterasys was selected as one of Massachusetts's "Best Places to Work" based on employee-satisfaction surveys
- Developed method for predicting customer issues to help the service team proactively identify and resolve customer issues.

 

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated customer service organization:

Vala Afshar is Enterasys Networks’ Chief Customer Officer and Chief Marketing Officer. Afshar is responsible for worldwide services operations and technical support, including contact center operations, field engineering, support engineering and infrastructure technologies. Afshar’s team have successfully implemented an award winning (CRM Magazine Elite Services) cloud computing customer relationship management framework enabling Enterasys to use business and performance management analytics to achieve best-in-class customer satisfaction and employee retention. Afshar joined Cabletron in 1996 and has held a variety of increasingly senior-level management positions at both Cabletron and Enterasys. Afshar earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts.