Olark - Woman of the Year in Customer Service
Company: Olark, San Francisco, CA
Company Division/Group: Habla Inc. (dba Olark)
Company Description: Olark is a leading provider of web-based live chat software. Olark was founded in 2009 by Ben Congleton, Matt Pizzimenti, Roland Osborne, and Zach Steindler. Olark is a bootstrapped, profitable, fully remote 40-person company with employees across the US, Canada, UK, and Brazil.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Woman of the Year in Customer Service
Nomination Title: Sarah Betts, Front Line Support at Olark - Woman of the Year in Customer Service
Tell the story about what this nominee achieved since the beginning of July 2017 (up to 650 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:
The Olark Customer Service team is thrilled to submit our colleague Sarah Betts for consideration as Woman of the Year in Customer Service. Hiring Sarah was, hands-down, one of the best decisions we've ever made. Sarah is an absolute powerhouse on frontline support, but she doesn't stop there! She also lends her enthusiasm and expertise to a wide variety of cross-functional customer-facing projects, and is an outspoken evangelist for customers and customer service professionals in every industry.
For the past year, Sarah has maintained a CSAT score of 97%, and an initial live chat response time of seven seconds — all while handling nearly 10,000 chats in the period measured for this award. But what really sets Sarah apart is the empathy, warmth, and personal attention that she brings to every conversation. Her chat and email responses are frequently featured as outstanding examples in our monthly Customer Service newsletter, and her calm, patient demeanor diffuses even the most tense support interactions.
When she’s not rocking frontline support, Sarah is taking the lead on proactive initiatives to uplift and delight Olark customers. This year, for example, she completely revamped one of our trickiest help articles, breaking the complexities of Targeted Chat into a series of simple tutorials.
She also manages "Team Humanity", Olark's social media and brand development team. In this role, she's shared her seemingly endless customer service and remote work wisdom on our blog, grown our following on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and pioneered new outreach efforts like Sweet Support to celebrate the accomplishments of other support teams.
Sarah’s passion for providing good support extends beyond her role at Olark. She's been active in the Support Driven community since its inception — in fact, her photo is displayed prominently on the front page of the Support Driven website, among those of other regular contributors to the community. She's also shared her knowledge, creativity, and passion by presenting at multiple conferences on topics like exploring gender in support and nonviolent communication for support professionals.
We can’t speak highly enough of Sarah...but that doesn't mean we can't try! Here's what a few of her teammates had to say about working with her:
"Sarah is empathetic, creative, and a total powerhouse for team humanity and CS! I'm in awe of how much she's able to accomplish."
"Sarah always looks for the why in what our customers need. She is amazing at wording things in a way that lets the customer down easy, and can get a point across without over complicating it."
"Sarah is one of the best advocates I know for the customer point of view."
"Sarah is unfailingly supportive of her coworkers, has a great sense of humor, and is always advocating for her teammates to take care of themselves. She's the ultimate supportive teammate in support."
To sum up — Olark would be lost without Sarah. She’s already Woman of the Year to us, and we hope you’ll agree!