Company: Sprout Social, Chicago, IL
Company Description: Sprout Social is a social media management and intelligence tool for brands and agencies of all sizes to manage conversations and surface the actionable insights that drive real business impact. Our fully integrated platform provides solutions for superior social marketing, customer service, data analysis, social listening and employee advocacy. Sprout is used by over 30,000 brands globally.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year – Computer Software - 100 or More Employees
 Nomination Title: Sprout Social
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the achievements since July 1, 2021 of the nominated department, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions for this category, provide them in the spaces below.
- Briefly describe the nominated department: its history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 199 words used.
Sprout Social is a social media management and analytics tool used by over 30,000 brands globally. Our Customer Support Team provides dedicated assistance over chat, email, phone, and social to customers across all industries (like tech, marketing agencies, etc.) and timezones. Since Sprout’s founding in 2010, exceptional Support has been a key element of our brand, and the department has scaled alongside the rapid growth of the company.
When we were last awarded the Bronze Stevie Award for Customer Service Department of the Year (Computer Software) in 2018, our Support Team was a small but mighty team of five customer-facing agents. We now have 54 frontline agents across 4 continents, along with expanded Engineering, Management, Operations, and Enablement functions within Support. In addition to expanding our team, we’ve focused on making Sprout a career destination for customer support professionals: in 2023, 45% of our team experienced personal growth through promotions.
Sprout Customer Support has consistently targeted industry-leading KPIs for customer satisfaction, response time, and resolution time, and our team far exceeds our aggressive goal-setting. As our team has scaled, we have remained committed to meeting our customers with solutions and empathy, and reaching those customers in industry-leading times.
- Outline the department's achievements since July 1 2021 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 238 words used.
- In 2023, we increased our already industry-leading CSAT score to 98.8% (compared to a software industry benchmark of 83.26%).
- We decreased ticket first reply time by 66%, achieving our 2 hour goal for the year (compared to a software industry benchmark of 6 hours and 19 minutes), and attained a 1 minute chat wait time.
- We decreased our ticket resolution time by an incredible 61%, resulting in a 10.7 hour resolution time for the year (compared to a software industry benchmark of almost 40 hours).
- We achieved these outstanding metrics during a 10% increase in ticket volume compared to 2022 (our team handled 82,000 tickets, along with 51,000 live chats and 4,800 phone calls).
- Partnering with our Social Team at the start of 2023, our Support Team drove an initiative to decrease our response time on social channels during global support hours. Using our own software’s tools and reporting insights, we decreased our average time to action by 55% in targeted windows.
- In addition to these metrics, our frontline team of Product Specialists resolve over 90% of our customer’s inquiries, demonstrating their in-depth product knowledge and troubleshooting expertise.
- In February 2024, Sprout was named the #1 Best Software Product by G2, marking our eighth consecutive year on the annual awards list and the first time a social media management software earned the top ranking. Criteria for this award includes quality of support.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 240 words used.
- Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the department's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 248 words used.
Since our last Stevie Award in 2018, our company has surpassed 30,000 customers and 1,000 employees, gone public, launched numerous integrations and features, and been named the #1 Best Software Product by G2. Throughout this progress, our Support Team has risen to the occasion, serving a larger and more sophisticated customer base and mastering an ever-evolving product. Yet our team hasn’t simply reacted to change: we’ve been a key driver of this advancement by constantly raising the bar on our performance metrics and quality of service.
Sprout’s customers now include brands like KraftHeinz, Doordash, and Subaru, and we hold ourselves to the highest standards when supporting customers of all sizes. Since July 2021, we’ve supported the growth of Sprout through initiatives like introducing our Premier Team for our Premier Success customers to match growing sophistication and demand in the market. In 2022 alone, our team took on two major integrations: Salesforce Service Cloud and TikTok. In 2023, Sprout acquired Repustate and Tagger Media, adding new exciting products and expanding the scope of Customer Service. During this time, we have also increased the sophistication of our internal tools, expanding our use of Sprout for customer care, and implementing a new Workforce Management system.
As we’ve innovated our strategy and technology to meet increasing demand for our product, we’ve remained focused on why we do what we do: providing our customers with the best service in the industry so they can make better, faster business decisions with social.
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