EMKAY
Company: EMKAY, 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 industries only privately held, employee-owned company, our unique ownership enables a special personal pride in servicing our customers.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Back-Office Customer Service Team of the Year
Nomination Title: EMKAY Service Is Simple - Better - Different
Tell the story about what this nominated team achieved since the beginning of July 2011 (up to 500 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 business-to-business North American finance and fleet management service solutions provider. EMKAY’s customer service focus is to review opportunities then provide value-added cost savings for soft and hard dollar expense reduction. The end result is a customer experience that is simple-better-different than the alternatives in our industry. Our back office customer service department delivers proven strategies and best practices that dramatically lower our customer’s fleet expenses. The last three consecutive years, our customer service departments have accomplished milestone achievements from our customer survey resulting in 100% customer satisfaction rating.
EMKAY has implemented meaningful KPI’s to benchmark our performance versus our peers/the industry. This translates to not just “saying” we outperform, but actually share proof that we do. Our success starts with two platforms: training and expertise. As a service provider, some of our key differentiators are our ‘people-process-products’. One example: EMKAY helps customers maintain their vehicles through a maintenance plan that is carefully managed by customer service maintenance specialists. On average, our maintenance specialists have 9 A.S.E. certifications each. When compared to industry averages EMKAY triples the norm. In addition, the customer service department has earned the A.S.E. BlueSeal of Excellence Award for seven consecutive years.
EMKAY has put forth great care in creating unique point-of-purchase controls to save our customers $560+ annually per vehicle in maintenance expenses versus no program, and $430+ versus lifecycle industry benchmark. EMKAY accomplishes this by consulting on every repair visit, tracking negotiated labor times/rates, and auditing every repair purchase order for any unnecessary repairs with a systemized approach of 4000 lines of detail versus the competition who short cut at 400. The results are dramatic and shared in a cost containment report prepared for each client.
Customer Service also assists with remarketing off-lease vehicles. We achieved numerous milestones. A third party, Adessa Analytical, audited our yearly statistics, which resulted 3.9% better than peers. One way this was achieved is by personally representing each vehicle sold through our web-platform. EMKAY’s unique method enables service personnel to pay close attention to the details involved in each transaction. EMKAY is also the only North American vehicle consignor to communicate electronically maintenance history on every sold vehicle. The result is a great value to our customers equaling a cost savings on average of $322/vehicle.
Lastly, we believe customer service department results should be completely transparent. EMKAY has created a unique 360° view for customers that share our specific results, accomplishments, KPIs, metrics, and strategic initiatives specific to only them. Within EMKAY’s custom-built “Fleet Object Report” we share not just our KPIs, but how each customer performed versus customized targets and industry benchmarks. Customer Service then includes hand prepared recommendations for improvement and cost savings quarterly.
This past year the service department achieved the following cost savings for our clients:
• $22,000,000+ in soft/hard dollar customer savings through value-added proactive consulting
• $3,300,000+ in maintenance expenses through cost containment initiatives
• $1,600,000+ in accident expenses through cost containment initiatives
• $2,200,000+ in used vehicle remarketing expenses
• Corporate-wide 10 second average speed of answer
Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated team:
Chris Tepas currently serves as Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President for EMKAY Inc. Tepas joined EMKAY in 1999 after completing his degree from Arizona State University and professional design training from the Art Institute of California – San Francisco. Tepas was promoted to Vice President of Sales in 2003, executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing in 2006, Executive Vice President of Client Services and Marketing in 2009.