Stevie-winner Trupanion is a leading medical insurance provider for cats and dogs in North America. With over 1,200 global employees, they help pet parents budget and care for their pet’s veterinary bills when they face unexpected sickness or injury.

Trupanion stands out for its simple, customizable plans, offering up to 90% reimbursement on eligible veterinary expenses and no annual or lifetime payout limits, making it a preferred choice for many pet owners.

In contrast to competitors, they feature a per-condition deductible rather than an annual one, meaning once a customer meets the deductible for a particular condition, they won’t have to pay it again for that condition's treatment during their pet's lifetime. Another key feature is the Vet Direct Pay system, which allows Trupanion to pay participating veterinarians directly at the time of treatment, minimizing the upfront costs for pet owners. This system is supported by their proprietary software, Trupanion Express, which streamlines the claims process and ensures fast payment.

Tactics for Telesales and Call Center Teams
With only 3% of cats and dogs having insurance in North America, they have consistently needed to scale their Telesales team to support Trupanion’s reach.

Pet parents are not required to insure their cats and dogs and often don’t realize that there are insurance options to help cover the cost of their veterinary bills. With that in mind, they have built a team of sales representatives who can explain how covering pets with Trupanion’s insurance is so impactful in extending the time families can have with their furry family members.

Trupanion has been operating since 1999, but the telesales team established itself within Trupanion’s contact center in 2011 due to the rapid growth of its member base. In 2021 the team was around 30 sales agents and has doubled in size to 60 agents.

Unique to other telesales teams, Trupanion’s only focus on warm leads. Converting leads to members in the discovery phase also ensures that members are enrolling their pets before any medical emergencies arise, contributing to the best experience they can have with any pet insurance product. 

Since 2021, Trupanion’s Inbound Sales team has been handling approximately 17,000 inbound leads per month with a consistent conversion rate of 45%. Year over year, Trupanion grows by at least 20% net new pets and the Inbound Sales team brings in over 90k of those new pets each year.

Their product covers Canada, the United States, Puerto Rico, and Australia, with a 150-person customer service team providing 24/7/365 support for global members and over 937,000 pets.

Some may consider the call center at Trupanion as untraditional in that they don’t use scripts or have handle time goals. They believe that team members shine the best on every call without rigid guidelines and that they need the time and flexibility to take care of the customer in a manner that feels authentic to them.

Since the pandemic, their contact center has evolved to be a remote-first environment, with team members working from home across the United Stastes and Canada. If team members prefer to have an office experience, the Seattle headquarters is open to all, including team members’ cats and dogs.

Trupanion won two Silver Stevie^® Awards and a Bronze Stevie for Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year - Financial Services Industries; Contact Center of the Year (Over 100 Seats) - Financial Services Industries; and Inside or Telesales Team of the Year, respectively, in the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2025 awards program?

Stevie-winner Simply Contact is a customer support outsourcing company, originally founded in Dnipro, Ukraine, in 2013.

Over the past decade, the company has grown significantly, expanding its operations across Ukraine with offices in Kyiv, Lviv, and Poltava, as well as establishing a presence in Warsaw, Poland. With a team of over 600 employees, Simply Contact provides multilingual and multichannel customer support services to clients worldwide, handling operations in more than 18 languages.

The company's client roster includes a diverse array of organizations, from established brands like Wizz Air and government entities such as the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Ministry of Digital Transformation to innovative startups like Bolt, Wheelshare, and Ditto Music. Simply Contact’s ability to serve such a broad range of clients is a testament to its versatility and commitment to delivering high-quality customer service solutions.

One of the key strengths of Simply Contact lies in its ability to adapt and scale its services efficiently, especially during periods of fluctuating demand. The company has implemented a blended support model, which allows for dynamic agent allocation based on immediate needs. This approach has proven particularly effective in reducing call center abandon rates and improving response times. For instance, on the Wizz Air project, Simply Contact managed to reduce the average handling time by 30%, while ensuring that 80% of calls are answered within 35 seconds and all emails are addressed within five days. This level of efficiency not only enhances customer satisfaction but also optimizes operational costs, saving clients up to 10% in total cost of ownership.

Another notable achievement is the improvement in customer satisfaction (CSAT) for Bolt, one of Simply Contact's key clients. By retraining agents, developing a dynamic monitoring system, and implementing targeted strategies for specific scenarios, Simply Contact was able to elevate Bolt’s CSAT from 64% to over 80%, surpassing the industry standard. This significant improvement is indicative of the company’s systematic and thoughtful approach to customer service, which continues to drive positive results for its clients.

Simply Contact's ability to adapt to client needs and improve operational efficiency has made it a strong contender in the customer service outsourcing industry. Through innovative practices like the blended support model and a focus on reducing handling times and increasing customer satisfaction, the company has consistently delivered cost-effective solutions. These strategies have proven successful in enhancing the customer experience for clients across various sectors, from established brands to emerging startups.

As the company continues to evolve, it remains focused on delivering tailored, high-quality services that address the unique challenges of each client, reinforcing its position as a leader in multilingual and multichannel customer service.

Simply Contact won a Bronze Stevie^® Award for Contact Center or Customer Service Outsourcing Provider of the Year in the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2025 awards program?

Stevie-winner Accela provides a unified suite of cloud solutions trusted by governments across the globe to accelerate their digital transformation, deliver vital services, and build stronger communities. 

The company offers agile, purpose-built solutions and the power of a platform that provides users with a consumer-like experience, shares data across departments, and ensures world-class security. With over 600 jurisdictions worldwide, Accela’s products manage critical tasks efficiently and effectively.

The Challenge
Accela implemented a Salesforce-powered community where members sought fast, relevant information. However, there were some challenges. Customers and support representatives had to juggle between multiple content repositories to find all available information. At times, they ended up with irrelevant or missing results due to the many content silos. The team knew gaps existed in their published knowledge repositories but had no way to identify all of them or understand which ones were having the biggest impact on their customers. Consequently, their support team was flooded with customer support requests. The management team wanted to reduce the load by improving the self-service experience.

All things considered, Accela was looking for an overarching solution that could not only enable users to self-serve but also provide access to all documented information from a single search point.

The Solution
Enter SearchUnify, a unified cognitive search platform. Its out-of-the-box support for 60+ enterprise platforms helped Accela index all its disparate content repositories and integrate them seamlessly with its customer community. This created a unified discovery experience for their customers within the online community.

As a result, when customers searched for help, the engine scoured all of Accela's documented knowledge to find and return every relevant answer. Support reps received the same experience in their agent console. This eliminated the need to switch tabs or login to separate systems to access the right content.

SearchUnify's ML-fueled algorithms significantly improved search relevance in the online customer community. It factored in customer data such as their activity across all touchpoints and engagement patterns. This ensured every customer only saw content relevant to their profile. Its insights engine empowered knowledge teams to immediately identify and close content gaps, which further helped improve customer satisfaction scores while reducing the load on customer support teams.

Furthermore, SearchUnify’s platform bridged the gap between multiple systems to provide a real-time, end-to-end view of the customer's self-help journey. Accela teams could now follow individual customer paths starting with search terms, to search results, content clicks, and answers read to cases submitted. This provided powerful and actionable insights that allowed Accela to dramatically improve its customers’ experiences.

Accela won a Gold Stevie^® Award for Best Use of Technology in Customer Service - Computer Industries in the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2025 awards program?

The Stevie® Awards, organizers of the world’s premier business awards programs, have announced the winners of six Grand (“best in show”) Stevie Award trophies in The 2024 (21^st Annual) International Business Awards®, the world’s leading business awards competition.

Nominees in the 2024 IBAs were not able to apply for Grand Stevie Awards directly. Winners were determined by a points system based on the total number of awards won in the IBAs with a Gold Stevie win counting for three points, a Silver Stevie win for two points, and a Bronze Stevie win for 1.5 points, as well as having the highest average score in selected categories.

This year’s Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners in The International Business Awards were announced on 14 August. They and the winners of the Grand Stevies announced today will be recognized during an awards gala in Istanbul, Türkiye, on 11 October.

Winners of the 2024 Grand Stevie Awards are:

Organization of the Year
With 55 award points earned by Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie wins by multiple units under its umbrella, Ayala Land, a subsidiary of Ayala Corporation of the Philippines, is the most honored organization in The 2024 International Business Awards®.

Most Honored Marketing Agency
Lounge Group, one of the biggest full-service communications agencies in Hungary, earned 20 award points with four Gold and four Silver Stevie wins on behalf of clients Budapest Airport and MVM Group. This is the first-ever Grand Stevie win for Hungary.

Most Honored Public Relations Agency
Weber Shandwick’s office in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, wins with 34 award points earned on behalf of a single client, Miral Destinations, a leading creator of immersive destinations and experiences. This marks the seventh Grand Stevie Award won by Weber Shandwick over the years, and the first since 2017.

Highest-rated Nomination of the Year
There is a tie for this Grand Stevie prize this year, with both nominations receiving average scores from the judges of 9.86 out of a possible 10.

• LLYC, Llorente y Cuenca, founded in Madrid, Spain, and now with 16 offices in 13 countries, earns a Grand for its nomination “StepbyWater,” winner of the Gold Stevie Award for Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Digital Creativity, on behalf of client StepbyWater. This marks 13 Grand Stevie wins for LLYC in the past 11 years.
• UNICEF Thailand, Bangkok’s Gold Stevie-winning nomination for Best Annual Report - Non-Profit Organizations, “A Tale Of Two Thailands - UNICEF Thailand Impact Report 2023” earns a Grand Stevie. This marks the second Grand Stevie win for UNICEF, with their Cambodian chapter having won in the 2022 IBAs, and the third Grand win for Thailand.

Highest-rated New Product or Service Nomination of the Year
With an average score of 9/10, Azul, of Sunnyvale, California, USA, provider of “the Java platform for the modern cloud enterprise,” wins their first Grand Stevie Award for their nomination of Azul Platform Prime, Gold Stevie-winner for Best New Cloud Application or Service.

Maggie Miller, President of the Stevie Awards, remarked, “The six Grand Stevie Award winners exemplify the exceptional range and caliber of entries we received at the IBAs in 2024. Top organizations continue to adapt and thrive in a world of constant change, and our judges were truly impressed by the outstanding creativity, resourcefulness, and skill demonstrated by these winners in propelling their organizations forward over the past two years. We eagerly anticipate honoring these Grand Stevie Award recipients at the upcoming gala in Istanbul.”

The International Business Awards feature a wide variety of categories to recognize achievement in every facet of work life, including management awards, new product awards, marketing awards, PR awards, customer service awards, website awards, and more.

Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award placements in the 2024 IBAs were determined by the average scores of more than 300 professionals worldwide in the three-month judging process. Winners were selected from more than 3,600 nominations submitted by organizations in 62 nations and territories.

The nomination process for the 2025 IBAs will open in February. For more information about The International Business Awards, including a complete list of all Stevie Award winners in the 2024 competition, visit www.StevieAwards.com/IBA.