SurePayroll - Contact Center of the Year

Company: SurePayroll, Glenview, IL
Company Description: From the day we opened our doors in 2000, SurePayroll has been true to its mission: to help U.S. small business succeed by providing payroll and related services through innovation and world-class support. Our innovative solution is now recognized by industry experts as the top choice for small businesses. In 2011, SurePayroll joined the Paychex, Inc. family as a wholly owned subsidiary.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Contact Center of the Year (Up to 100 Seats) - Financial Services Industries

Nomination Title: How a Payroll Company Keeps Pace with Apple, Google, and Amazon

Tell the story about what this nominated contact center achieved since the beginning of July 2017 (up to 650 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:

As companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon revolutionize commerce and the consumer experience, the average buyer’s expectations and habits have evolved. And while many of these digital enhancements are aimed at consumers’ day-to-day chores like grocery shopping, new furniture set-up, and online payments, the expectations these technologies drive are not confined to the consumer space—we are seeing a collapse between consumer and business buyer behaviors that is challenging the way B2B companies service their customers.

How can B2B providers compete in this new landscape? By adopting best practices from the brands disrupting the digital consumer space.

When it comes to payroll, SurePayroll (https: //www.surepayroll.com/) was created with two guiding principles in mind:

-Small business owners need a simple, self-service interface to run payroll
-When questions arise, customers should have options, allowing them to get help using the channel they prefer, when they need it

This foundation established us as the first online payroll service in 2001, and pushes us to evolve and deliver the continuous product and service improvements that our customers need.

So what does best-in-class customer service look like for a B2B payroll provider? A combination of accurate, responsive, and fast customer service engagement and a cultural environment that fosters direct partnership between the service, product, and IT organizations to develop features and enhancements that drive a better customer experience.

Through 2018, SurePayroll received an average net promoter score (NPS) of 9, for an average total NPS of 70.5, putting us firmly on par with “world class” scores achieved by Apple, Google, and Amazon. Additionally, 97% of our 357 Google reviews gave us a rating of 4-5 stars, for an average rating of 4.86 stars.

Here’s how.

Multi-Channel, Multiplied

We have long recognized the world we live in is multi-channel, and different customers have different expectations when it comes to communication. For years we have supported our customers across a variety of both traditional and digital channels, including: phone, fax, web form, email, and chat.

In 2018, we took steps to increase the availability and utility of these channels, with improvements including:

-Opening a second contact center location in Tampa, Florida. This new east coast location offers additional support for our evening and weekend hours, and ensures business continuity in inclement weather.

-Implementation of AI capabilities in chat. Automating responses and resources for some of the most commonly asked and easily answered questions made it easier for customers to get the answers they need quickly and also opened bandwidth for high-touch engagements.

-Infrastructure updates shifted sales and service onto a unified voice system and allowed us to consolidate additional data in Salesforce, enabling us to mine voice, email, and chat data to identify trends and opportunities. We use these insights to develop targeted service training, communications, and new AI chat scripts.

The results? Nearly 80% of the average 1938 inbound daily customer service contacts were addressed in under a minute.

Proactive Product Development

With users increasingly accustomed to immediate gratification, the best customer service model is proactive—which is reflected in the product development initiatives our Service org sponsored this year.

These new features took aim at some of the most common and addressable customer service issues, including:

Expedited Payroll: With everything that goes into running a small business, missing the payroll processing deadline happens. We expanded and automated the ability to expedite payroll for a majority of our customer base.

Cancel Payroll: Previously, an inaccurate payroll submission would cause stress and require a call to our contact center to resolve. Our team sponsored “Cancel Payroll,” which allows customers to undo a payroll they’ve submitted in error, so long as they are within the cancellation window.

Auto Payroll: Many of our customers run the same payroll each pay period. Auto Payroll lets them set a default payroll and put their payroll on cruise control, meaning they don’t need to log in to ensure their payroll is run on time.