Company: Constant Contact, Waltham, MA Entry Submitted By: Perkett PR Company Description: Constant Contact®, Inc. is a leading provider of email marketing and online surveys for small businesses and organizations. With more than 130,000 customers, Constant Contact offers small businesses, associations, and nonprofits practical and affordable tools to help them build lasting customer relationships, drive sales, deliver business results, and be more successful. Nomination Category: Customer Service Categories Nomination Sub Category: Best Customer Service Team
Nomination Title: Constant Contact Customer Services Team helps increase number of customers to more than 150,000
- Tell the story about what this nominated team achieved since January 1 2007 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:
Constant Contact, Inc., a leading provider of email marketing and online survey tools for small organizations, has experienced rapid customer growth. With more than 150,000 customers today, Constant Contact provides industry-leading, free customer support options that answer the varied needs of small businesses, nonprofits, and associations. This level of customer service sets the bar (and is a rarity) within the email marketing industry and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model, and sets Constant Contact apart from other companies in the marketplace.
The company’s customer-centric mindset spurred innovative services that ensure the success of its customers. The goal of providing outstanding customer support is part of the fabric of the company and part of every employee’s mandate. Since inception, the company knew that new customers needed help getting their initial email campaigns off the ground and would need expert tips and guidance moving forward. To achieve this objective, Constant Contact provided an extensive FAQ knowledge-base, customer support blog, webinars, face- to-face seminars, an online user community, customized support for business partners, as well as live phone, email, and chat support. Constant Contact’s overall customer satisfaction is consistently over 90 percent. To monitor and meet this desired results, the company established measurable goals including decreasing and maintaining low customer wait-time via phone, email, and chat; routinely and systematically soliciting feedback from customers regarding all of the available support options. A true testament to Constant Contact’s customer satisfaction is that 45 percent of all new customers come from word-of- mouth referrals.
Being available to help customers is of the highest importance to Constant Contact. In early 2006, they extended their customer service hours, enhanced their support options, and launched an online community. The company continued to expand upon these initiatives throughout 2006 and 2007. New customer service representatives go through a comprehensive training program to give them a full understanding of the products, the company, best practices in both email marketing and online surveys, and the customers. Training has evolved both philosophically and technically, so that new hires to the company are highly prepared and knowledgeable when helping customers.
To maintain high quality and motivation levels with a large customer service group, Constant Contact set in place a number of quality assurance programs. These include regular call quality reviews and performance management initiatives. These performance initiatives help to motivate and provide an incentive for representatives to align their performance with Constant Contact’s goals of providing high quality service in an efficient manner. All employees are required to listen in on support calls at least twice a year to help them stay abreast of customers’ needs, as well as provide feedback on tools and techniques that will enhance representatives’ productivity. The insight and feedback from those listening to calls is then documented and used to help improve the customer experience throughout the company. And, the great success of this program has been reflected in the customer satisfaction numbers and testimonials.
Constant Contact’s executive leadership drove this initiative within the company and took the commitment of members in numerous departments, including marketing, product, customer support, and engineering. The entire company worked closely together to successfully provide customers with this high level of support.
The online community, ConnectUp!, will celebrate its first anniversary in early 2008. ConnectUp! brings together thousands of small business owners and entrepreneurs who help each other solve real business problems, share and gain insights on email marketing and other topics of interest, and read and post to discussion boards. To date, ConnectUp! has seen exceptional growth, with more than 14,000 members and 6,600 posts on about 1,800 topics (as of December 10, 2007). And, it’s still growing!
- 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]:
Constant Contact Surpasses 150,000 Customers as Small Business Community Continues Rapid Adoption of Email Marketing http://www.constantcontact.com/about-constant-contact/press/press_2007_1127.jsp
Constant Contact Passes 50,000 Customer Milestone: Doubling Number of Customers in Past Year http://www.constantcontact.com/about-constant- contact/press/2005/press_2005_1222.jsp
Constant Contact Forms customer Advisory Board http://www.constantcontact.com/about-constant- contact/press/2005/press_2005_0816.jsp
Small Businesses Save $1.5 Billion with Constant Contact’s Email Marketing Service http://www.constantcontact.com/about-constant- contact/press/2005/press_2005_0726.jsp
SBA and Constant Contact Introduce Online Resource for Small Business Email Marketing http://www.constantcontact.com/about-constant- contact/press/2005/press_2005_0315.jsp
About Constant Contact http://www.constantcontact.com/about-constant-contact/index.jsp
Constant Contact’s User Community - ConnectUp! http://community.constantcontact.com/
- Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated team:
Tom Howd, Vice President, Services, has spent more than 19 years in software development and professional services at companies including Direct Hit Technologies, and Marcam Corporation.
Eric Groves, Senior Vice President of Sales and Business Development, joined Constant Contact with more than 16 years of senior level experience in sales, business development, marketing, and Internet strategy.
Gail Goodman, President and Chief Executive Officer, is a seasoned software executive with senior management, marketing, product management, business development and management consulting experience. At Constant Contact, Gail develops and tracks best practices in email marketing, focused specifically on permission-based email and stopping spam.
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