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Constant Contact

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

  1. 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!

  2. 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/

  3. 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.