CareerArc - Customer Service Department of the Year
Company: CareerArc, Burbank CA
Entry Submitted By: BAM Communications
Company Description: CareerArc offers technology-based social recruiting and outplacement solutions to help HR leaders recruit and transition employees.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year – Computer Services
Nomination Title: CareerArc
Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, explaining the achievement since July 1, 2018 of the nominated customer service organization, OR a written essay of up to 650 words describing the same? (Choose one): An essay/case study of up to 650 words
Employers today face a tough challenge: Competing for talent in an extremely tight hiring market. This is the battleground where CareerArc, with its next-gen social recruiting tools, connects employers with 21st-century job seekers. Our Client Success Managers (CSMs) play an invaluable role in this effort, delivering fast, personalized, white-glove service to customers.
For CareerArc’s 10th year in business, we went a big step further—and transformed our entire customer service strategy. We innovated a new client success model, turning our CSMs into our clients’ strategic partners who not only provide support, but also help catalyze new successes. The results have been astounding: higher customer engagement, faster problem-solving, and glowing client feedback and testimonials.
Below is how we transformed our customer service model to optimize our clients’ opportunities:
A forward-thinking team
In 2019, CareerArc added a new Senior Vice President of Client Success and two Senior Client Success Managers to bring expertise and out-of-the-box thinking to the department and offer additional support to our customers, who were growing in number, size, and ambitions. We also embarked on an ambitious journey of upskilling the team, aligning our core goals for client success and engaging in continuous learning with internal and external experts.
A revamped onboarding journey
Next, we completely reinvented the onboarding journey for our clients, front-loading the process with business objectives and alignment both for immediate and long-term goals. Our CSMs accelerated customer training and set multiple time- and goals-based metrics to help track time-to-value, a key measurement of onboarding success.
A collaborative strategy
We also established a Retention Task Force that scoured our entire customer infrastructure and service to identify core areas for improvement and optimization. We established Collaborative Renewal War Rooms to internally brainstorm ways to elevate clients’ return on investment.
We then journey-mapped the end-to-end customer experience to arrive at our unique “I”erarchy of Needs,” allowing us to carefully understand where our customers were and apply systematic plans to move them up the “I”erarchy.
This allowed us to build and implement Mutual Success Plans with our customers to collaboratively align on key milestones and accountability to maximize ROI of all purchased products and services.
A focus on key metrics
Building on the many metrics we were already collecting, we unified our data sources across multiple systems to provide more accurate, holistic, and timely client outlooks. There is always a story behind the numbers, so our goal was to spot new opportunities and risks—with time enough to pivot strategies for our clients’ benefit.
A groundbreaking customer conference
In 2019, we also launched the EMBARC HR Innovators Summit, our first-ever customer conference, to further partner with our customers through in-person relationship-building, continued learning, and product focus groups to create a stronger, more defined feedback loop. The summit provided a forum for our clients to share and discuss trends, best practices, and disruption in employer branding, talent acquisition, and career transition with top HR tech industry luminaries and practitioners.
Results
-Faster issue resolution rate: We resolved client requests within 24 hours, compared to 48 in 2018.
-Higher NPS score: Our NPS score rose to 46, from 27 in 2018.
-Increased daily active usage: 1 in 3 users accessed CareerArc’s solution daily, resulting in a 10% increase in daily active usage between the first and second halves of 2019. (Source: Pendo)
-Increased CSM engagement: Phone, email, and in-person interactions between clients and CSMs increased by 35% this year. (Source: Gainsight)
-Reduced churn: Between Q4 2018 and Q4 2019, we reduced customer churn by 21%.
-Positive client feedback and testimonials: Our CSMs’ efforts garnered enthusiastic customer feedback, including video testimonials from CVS Health and US Bank. (see link)
Our client success team is transforming customer service in the B2B SaaS industry. Through our collaborative partnership approach, our CSMs investigate client needs, provide insights, and help fast-track talent initiatives—fulfilling the promise of CareerArc’s social recruiting solution.