Agilence - Customer Service Department of the Year
Company: Agilence, Mt. Laurel, NJ
Company Description: Agilence, Inc. is the leader in cloud-based data analytics and reporting solutions for retail and restaurant organizations. Agilence develops the 20/20 Data Analytics™ family of powerful, cloud-based reporting solutions to provide organizations with a complete view of their business; empowering them to make decisions faster, to increase efficiency and improve profit margins across the enterprise.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year – Computer Software - Up to 100 Employees
Nomination Title: Agilence
Led by Catherine Penizotto, a Bronze Stevie® Award Winner for Executive of the Year in 2020 for Women in Business, the Customer Success (CS) Team is the backbone of Agilence. The team’s goal has remained the same: support customers so they and their companies can succeed. The team does this by forming strong relationships and communication with every single customer so the CS team can best understand their needs and exceed their expectations.
For Jeanne Heidtke at Wolverine, monthly calls are the best way the CS team guarantees Wolverine’s needs are met. Jeanne said, “These calls are excellent; we never walk away from these calls not feeling phenomenal.”
Whether it is the User Forum, training content, educational webinars, or Agilence Office Hours the CS team strives to help each customer succeed and be confident in their use of our software – and it shows. Agilence has consistently received a Net Promotor Score (NPS), which measures customer experience, well above the industry average. The latest calculated NPS score was 80, almost double our competitor's average of 41.
Previously, Agilence has been honored to be Stevie® award winners in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 for Customer Service Department of the Year.
-Earned a Net Promotor Score (NPS) of 80, nearly double our competitors' average of 41.
-Received a satisfaction score of 100% for overall customer satisfactions (previously 99.5%) and 100% for training satisfaction (previously 96.3%).
-Held a 98.8% customer retention score throughout the pandemic.
-Increased customer alerting usage by 57.4% leading to 74% of customers using this functionality.
-Reduced case resolution time to an average of 6.9 hours – the goal for 2021 was 48 hours.
-Awarded a ‘Best Place to Work’ in theregion by Philadelphia Business Journal.
-Held Agilence’s virtual annual User Forum attended by 69% of the customer community.
-Implemented Monthly JAM sessions, where customers can come together to learn and share best practices. JAM sessions routinely have 25% of customers attend live and others joining asynchronously.
-Created an improved Agilence Water Cooler (community) allowing customers to easily find answers to their questions, access training and master classes, network with other Agilence customers to share use cases and best practices, and JAM sessions.
-Identified decreased product usage due to pandemic related furloughs, contacted the companies’ leadership to describe Agilence’s value, and trained new employees which resulted in expanded use of Agilence throughout other departments.
-Efforts put forth by the CS team to educate the community, provide accessible training tools, establish community networking, and broaden resources has led to a decrease in total Agilence’s customer support cases four years in a row with a 55% reduction in 2019 and a 23% reduction in 2020.
Agilence’s CS team has worked tirelessly to ensure each customer received ample support throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and implemented new ways for customers to connect with the CS team and each other.
By comparing in-use and unused licenses, the CS team ensured that customers received the maximum benefit of their investment. Their focus on expanding use of the Agilence Analytics Platform beyond loss prevention departments allowed companies who were forced to furlough employees the ability to continue delivering the highest possible quality of service. Additionally, through training initiatives by the CS team, the usage of the alert functionality in Agilence increased by 57.4%. Lastly, the CS team beat their 48-hour goal for average case resolution time with an average of only 6.9 hours, always ensuring a timely response.
In times where individuals are isolated from each other, Agilence’s CS team aimed to reinforce the sense of community within our customer base. Monthly Jam sessions and Office Hours offer customers the opportunity to meet with members of the CS team, as well as other members of the Agilence community, to discuss industry trends, best practices, and use cases. Agilence’s Watercooler has been completely redesigned to better serve our customers in their search for answers, training, and best practice. Now accessed directly from the Agilence application, customers can ask questions and communicate directly with the Agilence CS team, and other members of the community.
At Agilence, the main objective has been and will always be to best serve our customers.
In the attached PDF PowerPoint, we included customer Use Cases, highlighting 6 customers: Lunds and Byerly's, Sally Beauty, Genesco, Rexall, Sprouts, and Buffalo Wild Wings. These cases focus on a specific problem that was identified and how the CS team helped in finding a solution. This PowerPoint also breaks down the numbers behind the CS Team’s efforts and successes, from the overall satisfaction score (100%) to logo retention rate (98.8%). Lastly, our PowerPoint includes customer quotes collected over the past year because no one knows our CS Team’s efforts better than the valued members of the Agilence customer community.
Additionally, we have included...
An article ‘Best Places to Work in 2021’ from Top 100 Workplace Philly Inquirer naming Agilence
Customer Testimonials from Sally Beauty and Brumit Restaurant Group
A cut down video of a webinar we hosted with Mod Pizza (an Agilence customer)
Our 'Customer Experience' video
An activity book we created and sent to customers at the beginning of the pandemic to serve as lighthearted mental break.
An essayfurther explaining our achievements over the past 2 years.