Company: Modern Campus, Camarillo, CA
Company Description: Modern Campus (MC) empowers 1,700+ higher ed institutions to attract, engage, and retain learners for life with software solutions that enable a modern student experience. The MC learner-to-earner lifecycle platform powers solutions for web CMS, conversational text messaging, catalog + curriculum management, career pathways, student engagement + development, and non-traditional student management.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year - Public Services & Education
 Nomination Title: Modern Campus
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the achievements since July 1, 2022 of the nominated department, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- Briefly describe the nominated department: its history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 197 words used.
Modern Campus’ mission is to help colleges and universities attract, engage, and retain learners for life with critical SaaS solutions that enable a modern student experience.
While the Modern Campus brand was formed in 2022, its software innovations, the passionate department that supports those products, and the commitment to exceptional customer service go back decades. We are the humbled recipient of 17 Stevie awards for customer service over the past 12 years.
Our department includes 45 full-time employees with an average tenure of 4.3 years (compared to industry average of <2), a testament to the strength and experience of its members. We work remotely from across the US and Canada, spanning all North American time zones. We are a multi-channel support team interacting with customers across web, embedded widget, chat, email and phone.
We leverage integrated technologies to efficiently share information across our customer facing teams. Support works closely with sales and product to ensure the voice of the customer is at the heart of our business.
Our goal is to consistently and totally satisfy our customers using our "triple-threat" holistic approach to customer service, combining creative problem solving, deep product knowledge, and complete customer empathy.
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions for this category, provide them in the spaces below.
- Outline the department's achievements since July 1 2022 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 241 words used.
Key achievements:
- Supporting Growth: Through expertly aligned processes and tools, the Modern Campus Customer Support Department has experienced a 25% increase in supported customers over the past two years, sustained with existing team size, while also improving on key KPIs including CSAT, response time, and on/off rate.
- Exceptional KPIs: By centralizing support activity within a single ticket tracking tool (Zendesk) across all product lines, we have enabled reliability and reportability of metrics including the following --
- Processing >30K support requests per year with a....
- 99%+ closure rate
- 98%+ customer satisfaction score
- 50% reduction in tickets per customer since Jan 2023
- 60% improvement in first-response time since Jan 2023
- Created over 800 new knowledge base articles and revision of over 400 existing articles which drove an amazing 115% increase in traffic to the knowledge base and contributed to the 50% reduction in the number of tickets per customer.
- Unwavering Dedication to Achievement: In addition to exceptional performance measurement and improvement, the team executed on the following initiatives in the past 18 months which have materially impacted efficiency, communication, and bottom line figures --
- Hosting and security infrastructure improvements; migration of legacy environments
- Integration of Zendesk with Jira, Salesforce and Zoom for communication and workflow
- Implemenation of answering service for consistent 24/7 coverage of Severity 1 escalations
- Leverage of AI to propagate product knowledge, improve communication, and facilitate customer self-service
- Ongoing product feedback loop to address areas of higher friction and manual support
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 121 words used.
Please find attached the file: '2024_Stevies_Modern Campus Customer Support Department.pdf' deck which provides additional information about our priorities, processes, and the value brought to our customers. Additionally, we have included just a small sample of the glowing comments we receive from our customers on a daily basis, be it from direct quotes from success stories, to CSAT comments. These can be found on the last two slides.
We are humbled to support such wonderful and expressive customers and regularly take the opportunity to celebrate these successes!
We are also proud to refer you to a customer case study featuring College of DuPage, where they highlight the importance of customer service as a key reason for selecting Modern Campus. Also attached.
- Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the department's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 238 words used.
As Modern Campus the company grows and changes, customers are comforted to find that customer service remains a steady focus. Despite product name changes, changes to support tools, and processes and points of contact, we see our commitment to consistent service reflected in maintaining high customer satisfaction scores. Contrast this with vendors expanding their footprint, leaving customers to feel "left behind" by prioritizing growth over service.
Reducing our average first response time has been a successful goal for customer experience consistency and improvement. Customers are assured that an agent has acknowledged awareness of their issue and resolution is in progress, well within SLA. The consistent improvement over our past average demonstrates our commitment to continuous improvement.
While our support is exemplary, sometimes the best customer experience means not needing support. Our initiative to enhance and expand our knowledge base and our training resources and programs was critical to reducing our tickets per customer count and means more customers were able to instantly get the information they needed to be successful.
We are fortunate to work wtih amazing customers. They demonstrate their partnership by sharing regular feedback, including frequently expressing appreciation for the assistance provided by the support department. This feedback comes up in all manner of calls with our account management, customer marketing, and leadership teams. As key performance indicators go, this direct customer feedback is our guiding star to driving our initiatives and confirming recognition of achivements.
| Attachments/Videos/Links: |
|---|
|
