Tweet

Angela Blevins, Vice President of Customer Care for Bluegreen Corporation in Indianapolis, Indiana and Boca Raton, Florida, USA will chair the final judging committee for the customer service awards and contact center awards for individuals for the 2013 Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service. (Entries for the 2013 edition of the world's top honors for contact center, customer service, business development, and sales professionals, are still being accepted through January 15; get your entry kit here.) Here we caught up with Angela and asked her about customer service excellence.  

What are your top three tips for being a successful customer service or contact center representative?

1. Treat customers the way you would expect to be treated yourself! 
   Have the applied practice and ability to listen carefully to a customer, and to approach an enquiry with the attitude: “I am here to help you, and we will work together on determining a solution.”
   
   
2. Think outside the box! 
   Have the applied practice and ability to come up with creative ideas or solutions on business improvements, increased customer satisfaction, and even employee satisfaction.
   
   
3. Be willing to embrace change.
   The business environment is constantly changing in order to keep up with technology, to obtain and retain new customers, and to develop employee satisfaction and engagement strategies. Customer service operatives have to be flexible in order to keep up with these changes.

What item of news recently caught your eye and why?
I am fascinated with how the term “gamification” can now be applied to the business world. I am learning how to apply gamification strategies to Bluegreen’s daily business life, such as by creating competitive digital dashboards similar to those you see on video games. I am also developing training materials that assimilate a specific event and trigger results based on decisions made throughout the learning event. 

		Read the Rest of This Article...

  Tweet

Marketing 24/7, Inc., of Birmingham, Alabama, USA received a Gold Stevie® Award for Communications or PR Campaign of the Year in the 2012 Stevie Awards for Women in Business. (Entries for the 2013 Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the world's top honors for female entrepreneurs, executives and the organizations they run, will open in May. Request an entry kit for the 2013 awards and it will be emailed to you when entries open.) Here the company's CEO, Ruwena Healy, shares her tips for winning Stevie Awards.

What are your top tips for winning Stevie Awards?
The opportunity to be recognized as a Stevie Award-winner has me thinking about the importance of pursing these kinds of business awards and honors. What does it take to always push yourself to be an award winner in your business? Obviously, it takes a great deal more than just applying for them.

For years, I have employed a variety of good business practices that have helped my company succeed:

1. Keep focused on what’s to come in your business.
   Look forward at least 12 months and have a plan for each of those months and what you want to have accomplished two years from now.
   
   
2. Always execute work with perfection.
   
   
3. Deliver “creative” results for clients or customers.
   Don’t do only what is expected. Focus on the unexpected, what’s unique and how you can make that happen in a successful way.
   
   
4. Give your work 110 percent always and then some.
   100 percent or less doesn’t make one an award winner.

		Read the Rest of This Article...

  Tweet

Once a month in this space we draw your attention to several apps, websites, and blogs that we think will help to make your work day a bit more productive or enjoyable. Here are this month's suggestions.

Asana                   
This free mobile app provides a place to plan, organize, stay in sync, and share task lists with a team. You can download the free app on the iPhone and Android.

Enterasys Isaac
A Gold Stevie® Award-winning application in the 2012 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, Isaac is a social media interface that connects IT networks with social networks.

Expensify                           
Expensify is a free app that helps you keep track of expenses by scanning your receipts from anywhere. The app also features tools to help you integrate QuickBooks and automatically track auto expense and GPS mileage.

KoolSpan TrustCall          
Easy to deploy and use, TrustCall transforms regular smartphones to "secure phones" within any organization. Thanks to the chip inside the smartphone, malicious third-party adversaries can't intercept or eavesdrop on voice calls and SMS messages. Available for the Android and Blackberry (iOS coming soon), you can download the app for $119.

Video clips of the 2012 Stevie Awards for Women in Business presentations are now available on the Stevie Awards' YouTube channel...

Apply to be a preliminary-round judge in the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Sales/Customer Service judging has begun. You'll learn how many of the world's top organizations are achieving success, and you'll receive a certificate of appreciation suitable for framing...

December 12: Second early-bird entry deadline for 2013 American Business Awards

January 15 : Final entry deadline for 2013 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service

January: Entries open for 2013 International Business Awards