Company: VerticalResponse
Company Description: VerticalResponse Inc. provides a full suite of self-service marketing solutions for small businesses including email marketing, social media marketing, event marketing, direct mail marketing and online surveys. Its mission is to empower small businesses and non-profit organizations to easily and affordably create, manage and analyze their own marketing campaigns.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year

Nomination Title: VerticalResponse Customer Support Team Celebrates Growth, Camaraderie

Tell the story about what this nominated organization/department 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:

VerticalResponse is a self-service online platform that enables small businesses to get up and running quickly and easily with their email marketing and social media campaigns. The company’s customer support team, at its San Francisco headquarters, comprises 22 full-time employees and services customers seven days a week on phone, email, instant message and Twitter.

Its management team most recently won a gold 2013 Sales & Customer Service Stevie Award for Customer Service Management Team of the Year. The department and its leaders also have won several other Stevie customer service awards in the past, including Team of the Year and Executive of the Year.

The team consists of customer support reps, team leads and managers. This year, the support teams and their managers went above and beyond to create an energized, engaged support department and foster career growth. Initiatives included:

• The launch of “Project Odyssey,” a program that allows top-performing support reps to spend time doing projects for other departments and to explore different career paths. Since the launch, eight support team members have been promoted to roles in other departments including product management, sales, engineering and email delivery compliance.

• The establishment of a new department-wide mission statement. Each manager worked with his/her reports to develop a team mission statement, which were then blended into one unified departmental statement.

• Continually improved customer service. Quality metrics increased from 85 percent in the third quarter of 2012 (the quarter when the teams worked on the mission statements) to 90 percent in the fourth quarter, after the mission statement project was completed. The department generally only sees a 1 percent change from quarter to quarter, so this jump was huge.

• The implementation of creative team-building initiatives, including:

- The “Star” program, which acknowledges above-and-beyond work that can’t be captured through hard metrics. Anyone in the department who notices someone doing something great for a customer can write on a paper “star” and attach it to the “star” employee’s desk wall.

- A “breakfast of champions” contest, to help support reps manage and balance two challenging channels – emails and instant message chats – at the same time. The team with the best overall ratio of emails to chats enjoyed breakfast prepared at the office by the department vice president, managers and leads.

Results: Improved ratios of chats and emails across all the teams, and a great start to the morning!

- A “Hunger Games”-themed contest in December 2012. The program was designed to:

1. Keep everyone focused during the holiday season, when distractions are high; and
2. Build team bonding across both the customer support and sales departments. Employees were divided into 12 “districts.”

The teams earned “resources” (clothing, fuel, etc.) by hitting their normal daily performance metrics or more challenging weekly goals. They also had to trade “resources” with other teams to survive. Prizes were given to the leading team each week, along with the announcement of a final winner. Results: A 10 percent increase in productivity across the board during the month. Perhaps more importantly, everyone bonded and got to know each other!

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Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated organization/department:

Kristen Hayer serves as vice president of sales and support at VerticalResponse. She brings more than 20 years of sales and technology management experience to this role, and specializes in leading high- performing teams through periods of growth and change.

Natalie Macks is the director of customer support at VerticalResponse, and is responsible for managing, training, scheduling and staffing of the customer support team. She has more than years of experience in "big box" retail and online service settings