American Support
Company: American Support, Chapel Hill, NC
Company Description: American Support provides back office services to over 400 cable, phone and internet franchises in rural markets located in 26 states. American Support services include billing and subscriber management along with 24/7 customer care and technical support.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Contact Center Solution – New
Nomination Title: American Support: Cable Industry contact center solution reduces costs and enables jobs to be brought back to America
Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 500 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and sales to date. You may include hyperlinks to product photos and data sheets. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
In our early days American Support sent more than half of our calls to our
Philippines-based call center. In the first couple years of business our rural
American cable clients and their subscribers made it clear that they wanted to
have American customer service. As a customer service outsourcer our challenge
was finding a way to provide the American customer service they desired at a
price point they could afford.
We are not alone.
The cable industry ranks behind the IRS in regards to customer satisfaction.
Much of that frustration is due to outsourcing responsibilities to off-shore
call centers.
In an effort to empower cable companies to be able to afford 100% American
customer support, we have developed a cable customer care solution with seven
key features:
1. Client offices and Virtual Agent Call Routing: We route calls to our clients’
employees when they are “not busy.” When they unavailable calls are
automatically routed to one of our virtual home customer service
representatives. The result is an increase in productivity for our clients’
employees and a decrease in what the client spends on their “outsourced” services.
2. Automated recruiting tool: Our automated recruiting tool allows us to filter
out 89.3% of our prospects without any human interaction, dramatically reduced
our recruiting costs.
3. Cable Customer Service Guided Call Flows: There are 14 primary call types in
the cable industry. Our guided scripts with embedded policies, procedures and
how-to guides to enable our employees to handle complex calls with 90%+ accuracy
and consistency.
4. Automated Cable Job comments and Customer Interaction Notes: As the customer
service representative works their way through the guided call flows the
comments needed for the work order and customer interaction notes are
automatically created, reducing talk time and increasing accuracy.
5. Customized Policies and Procedures Portals: Embedded into the guided call
flow screens are web portals containing our clients’ 100+ policies organized
them into 9 categories that are consistent from client to client.
6. 100% Virtual Training: 80 hours of interactive learning specifically designed
for the cable industry are now available online, reducing our training costs.
7. Automatic Promised Call Backs: In severe weather and technical outage
situation where call volume spikes, we are able to maintain high customer
satisfaction levels by offering called the option to hold their place in line
and receive an automatic call back when the next available customer service
representative is available.
With these solutions in place we are able to reduce the cost of delivering
on-shore support by over 20%.
For American Support this has enabled us to double our business in the past 12
months.
"Outstanding customer service across our entire organization is critical to our
success. American Support is helping us deliver a first class customer service
experience to our customers." -Phil Spencer, Windjammer Communications CEO.
"American Support and CSG allow our members to continue to retain a competitive
advantage as they better serve their subscribers." - Jeff Abbas, President and
CEO, National Cable Television Cooperative
List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, product reviews, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
https://docs.google.com/a/americansupport.com/present/edit?id=dfwdrck_25c4mhzxg2
http://www.americansupport.com
http://jobs.americansupport.com
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/tbjfast50awards/prweb4760724.htm
http://www.prweb.com/releases/americansupport/windjammercable/prweb4288414.htm
Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:
Matt Zemon, President & CEO
Matt Zemon brings over 20 years of operations, billing and customer service
experience to American Support. American Support was created to help video,
voice and data companies succeed by operating efficiently, consistently and with
excellent customer service, making life better for our clients, employees,
investors and families while supporting our country.
American Support currently supports over 400 cable franchises in 26 states. In
2008 American Support, powered by CSG Systems, was selected as the National
Cable Television Cooperative’s (NCTC) Preferred Customer Care and Billing Provider.
Prior to American Support, Zemon was President of Bulk TV & Internet. Mr. Zemon
holds a B.A. from The Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of
Richmond and serves on the Board of the Raleigh Durham chapter of Entrepreneurs'
Organization (EO).