Company: EMKAY Inc., Itasca, IL
Company Description: Emkay is a provider of vehicle financing and management solutions to businesses throughout North America. Founded in 1946 and the 2nd oldest fleet management company in the nation, our focus is on operational excellence. As the industry’s only privately held, employee-owned company, our unique ownership enables a special personal pride in servicing our customers.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year

Nomination Title: EMKAY's Service Is SImple Better Different

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:

EMKAY is a top ten national leader in providing finance and fleet management service solutions to businesses. EMKAY’s customer service focus is to review savings opportunities with every client interaction, then provide value-added quantification and justification for soft and hard dollar expense reduction. The end result is a customer experience that is simple-better-different than the alternative choices in our industry today. Our customer service department delivers proven strategies and best practices that dramatically simplify and reduce time our customers spend on fleet, while at the same time reducing fleet expenses. One of the key milestone achievements we are most proud of is our 100% client service department satisfaction rating that’s been consistent for 61 consecutive months.

EMKAY has implemented essential KPI’s to benchmark our performance versus our peers/the industry. Our goal is to not just “say” that we outperform our competition, but actually share proof that we do. As a service provider, our differentiators are our ‘people-process-products’.

PEOPLE: EMKAY’s service team manages and tracks multiple aspects of every interaction with customers. By tracking specifics such as email response time, average speed of phone answer, value-add, cost savings, first-touch resolution, and quality we can review our results and work to perform even better for our customers.

PEOPLE RESULTS: By tracking our customer service interactions, we have had paramount results. Average answer time reduced by 12%, value-added for every customer interaction increased 8%, customer cost savings increased by $26/inquiry (over $21,000,000), first-touch resolution increased by 3%, and rep quality scores increased by 11%. All results are prepared department-wide and reps view their performance versus expectations and peers. The team leads then work with the service teams individually to find ways to constantly evolve while improving performance.

PEOPLE: EMKAY helps customers maintain their vehicles through a maintenance plan that’s carefully managed by our customer service maintenance specialists.
 
PEOPLE RESULTS: On average, our specialists have 9 A.S.E. Certifications each versus industry averages of only 3. Maintenance service team also earned the A.S.E. Blue Seal of Excellence Award six consecutive years.

PROCESS: EMKAY’s processes help assist with remarketing off-lease vehicles.

PROCESS RESULTS: Results are impactful by our customer service team’s process. The team personally represents each vehicle sold via our virtual system. EMKAY’s unique methodology enables service personnel to pay close attention to details involved in each transaction. EMKAY is also the ONLY North American consignor to communicate electronically maintenance history on every vehicle via an exclusive mobile app. These processes resulted in an average of 3.1% better than peers or $310 per vehicle savings last year ($4,850,000 total).

PRODUCT RESULTS: By putting forth personal touch in unique point-of-purchase controls, customers saved $560+ (over $5,800,000) last year per vehicle in maintenance expenses versus no program, and $430+ versus lifecycle benchmarks. EMKAY accomplishes this by consulting each repair, tracking negotiated labor times/rates, and auditing for unnecessary repairs. The results are shared with customers in our dynamic cost containment report.

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

Christopher Tepas joined EMKAY in 1999. Chris earned his degree from Arizona State University and professional design training at Art Institute California-San Francisco. Tepas was promoted to VP Sales in 2003, EVP Sales and Marketing in 2006, and EVP Client Services & Marketing in 2009. Tepas has helped spearhead EMKAY’s team to earn several awards such as Stevies Front-Line Customer Service Team-of-the-Year, Customer Service Institute Top Small Company, Info500 “Top IT Companies U.S.”, and Winner Stevies Customer Service Department-of-the-Year.