Company: Travelzoo, New York, NY
Entry Submitted By: Maleztky Media
Company Description: Travelzoo is the most trusted publisher of travel, entertainment and local deals. Our team researches, evaluates and tests thousands of deals to find those with true value. We recommend only deals whose accuracy and availability we can confirm. With over 25 million subscribers, we are the largest publisher of deals on the Internet.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Executive of the Year

Nomination Title: Lisa P. Oswald, Vice President of Customer Service

Tell the story about what this nominee achieved since January 1 2012 (up to 525 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:

Travelzoo’s customer service operation upholds the company’s brand promise to be “the most trusted” publisher of travel deals on the Internet to 25+ million subscribers.

Lisa Oswald joined Travelzoo in May 2011 soon after the company entered the local deals business, selling direct to consumers for the first time in the company’s 14-year history. Within 10 months, with modest resources and mile-high ambition, she designed and built a service organization that delivers “wow” service to customers and inspires her colleagues to live a “one company, one customer” philosophy.

The company trusted her decade+ experience heading sales and service for Priceline.com, the world’s largest online travel agency, and she immediately set about stabilizing customer service, which was operating in start-up mode without an ACD, IVR, a CRM platform or a unified set of policies and processes. 

Lisa has successfully led the transformation of our service organization, as a change agent and operations expert, improving the company’s competitive position and profitability and nurturing a company-wide commitment to customer satisfaction and quality.

The transformation is ongoing as she has delivered these contributions:

- “Five Miles to Wow” multi-year global strategy (roadmap) for customer success
- Scalable, centralized customer care operation supporting e-commerce travel, entertainment and local deals business in US, Canada, UK, Germany, France and Spain
- Flexible, cloud-based ACD/IVR solution
- Designed and implemented a proprietary web-based customer care case management system 
- Social media customer response strategy
- Mobile/native app customer support solutions
- Merchant services organization and business partner support tools, including extranet, barcode scanner app and smartphone redemption tools
- Established outsourced customer service contracts with contact center partners in North America and Europe

Once the foundation was laid, Lisa focused next on efficiency, delivering self-service and automation initiatives in 2012 that improved service quality and reduced cost:

- Reduced contact volume by 30% by June 2012 via solutions for online cancellations and IVR self-service options
- Improved product quality (published advertising content) by 68% since March 2012 by institutionalizing quality control procedures with sales and production teams. Error rates dropped from an average of 14% in March (metric introduced) to a 5% average in November 2012 as a result of training programs for sales/production, QC processes and weekly metric reporting
- Lowered escalation rates for BBB/AG complaints by 47% from Q4 2011 through Q3 2012
- Lowered customer care costs as a percentage of net revenue by 38% from Q3 2011 to Q3 2012               
- Earned 82% customer satisfaction rating (excellent/good) for ecommerce business in first full operating year, with three of four customers recommending Travelzoo to friends/family
- Achieved 96% overall satisfaction rating (top two box) and a 98% likelihood to return rating for e-commerce business
               
Lisa continues to drive consumer experience improvements through her collaboration with sales, production and product development teams to push product quality as a primary customer satisfier and create a best-in-class service culture.

Upload a collection of supporting files and web addresses to our server to provide more background information to the judges. You may upload any number of attachments and URLs through the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above. (Do NOT list your URLs below.)

Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the nominee::

Lisa Oswald joined Travelzoo in 2011 as Vice President, Customer Service, responsible for operations and service strategy across North America and Europe. She has successfully led the transformation of customer service organizations at a variety of traditional and entrepreneurial companies, including Priceline.com. Whether as a change agent creating best-in-class service cultures or an operations expert building the most efficient service organization in an industry, she creates value for companies and customers. Lisa is President-Elect of NY Metro Chapter of Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals, an award-winning printmaker (www.studiomonotype.com) and an Arts Commissioner in her hometown, Hastings-On-Hudson, NY.