American Support
Company: American Support, Chapel Hill, NC
Company Description: American Support is the nation’s only complete provider of back-office services to the cable industry. The company provides billing services, technical and customer support, provisioning and monitoring, field support , dispatch and inbound and outbound telesales to more than 400 cable franchises.
Nomination Category: Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Executive – Service Businesses – up to 2,500 Employees
Nomination Title: Mary Celle, Senior Vice President
Describe for the judges the activities and accomplishments of the nominated executive during the eligibility period (up to 500 words):
Mary Celle is American Support’s woman behind the curtain. As Senior Vice President of Operations, she has been a major force in the growth of the company. As a provider of support services to the cable industry, American Support is now a $25 million-a-year company with more than 500 employees.
Over the past 12 months, Mary has overseen a plan that more than doubled American Support’s employee count and moved the company from a bricks-and-mortar call center operation to a virtual one, with employees in nearly 30 states.
She instituted new policies and procedures for operating that made American Support an efficient and effective back-office solution for any cable company. Mary also opened a new operations headquarters in Phoenix. And she has done all this while raising two young children.
Mary influenced American Support to adopt the virtual call center model. Much of the company’s call center work was in the Philippines, but that arrangement did not provide the quality of service American Support promised its clients.
So the company moved its call center operations back to the U.S. using a virtual operation business model. This enabled American Support to bring ‘home-based’ jobs back to the U.S. as well as to provide a U.S.-based call center to our customers.
Additionally, by moving to a virtual call center, American Support has improved the quality of its hires. Since customer service representatives work from home, the company is able to hire the best candidates across the nation and is not limited to those within 30 minutes of a physical call center.
Mary streamlined the hiring process by implementing a 10-part automated hiring system that evaluates the qualities of each candidate. Roughly 10 percent of those who start the application process make it through, and the people who do are among the best candidates available. The system also reduced American Support’s hiring costs.
As American Support grows, Mary makes sure that those who contribute to its success are given the opportunity to grow as well. People who started as customer service representatives now make up the following percentages of these teams:
* 66 % of Success Management
* 50 % of Work Force Management
* 33 % of Operations
* 25 % American Technical Support employed by American Support
She is proud to have played a role in bringing the company back to the U.S. and creating jobs here at home. Talk to her about this and see her passion. You’ll get a charge from the energy she applies to it every day. She is the first to tell you:
* Making it virtual means, every employee eliminates an average of one hour of commuting every day, so they enjoy an extra hour and the planet gets an hour less CO2 emissions.
*As a busy American mother, Mary knows how great it is to experience really good customer service. As a customer herself, she loves providing American Support client’s customers with ‘home town friendly service’.
List the URLs (web addresses) of any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that you would like the judges to see that support your entry. IMPORTANT: List each URL on a separate line, begin each URL with http://, and enclose each URL in square brackets. For example, [http://www.yourcompany.com/pressrelease.html]:
http://www.americansupport.com/about-us/news/american-support-wins-2011-stevie-award
http://www.americansupport.com/about-us/news/windjammer-cable-expands-contract-with-american-support
http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2011/02/04/american-support-to-create-30-more-new.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2011/01/20/american-support-to-hire-40-employees.html
Provide a brief biography of the nominated executive (up to 100 words):
Mary Celle brings more than a decade’s worth of operational and training experience to American Support. As senior vice president, she is responsible for overseeing the billing, customer service and operations for more than 400 cable franchises nationwide.
Prior to joining American Support, Celle held managerial positions with Royal Caribbean International and Oasis Water Park and taught in the Tempe Public School system in Arizona.
Celle holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing Western Kentucky University and a master’s degree in education, curriculum and instruction from Arizona State University.