Amanda Del Signore

Amanda Del Signore

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BB Imaging's Telesonography® Solution for Remote High-Risk Obstetrical Care

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Fri, Nov 03, 2023 @ 10:49 AM

22 spotlight Square-21Stevie-winner BB Imaging is a large independent provider of high-risk obstetrical ultrasound.

BB Imaging was founded in 2005 to bring high-quality, compassionate, and complete ultrasound care to patients across a spectrum of needs. Through the development of working relationships with healthcare providers, BB Imaging services patients in a variety of settings and circumstances, including rural locations across Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Florida, Washington, Virginia, and Texas.

BB Imaging’s mission is to improve health outcomes by making high-quality ultrasound services accessible to all women regardless of their zip code or economic status. To do this, they partner with physicians, clinics, and hospitals to provide full-service, turnkey ultrasound departments that provide the highest level of ultrasound care and diagnostic accuracy.

They also developed TeleScan®, a SaaS offering that brings expert sonography care to even the remotest of locations. Teleultrasound, or telesonography, refers to the use of telemedicine technology to perform and analyze ultrasounds remotely. A healthcare professional in one location performs the exam, and a telesonographer in another location provides diagnostics and a preliminary report. The report will be passed to a provider, who relays results to the patient.

TeleScan is focused on high-risk obstetrical care. While remote ultrasound solutions exist for cardiovascular care, the complexity of scanning a "body inside of a body" has garnered few competitors. Even fewer competitors have solved for the complexity of maternal-fetal ultrasound, the sonographer shortage, and the accessibility of equipment.

Both these care models connect underserved or understaffed areas with expert sonographers, flex to meet patient demand, and improve patient outcomes through early detection. Both models also rely on partnerships with physicians, clinics, and hospitals.

Seventeen years ago, their journey began with a single obstetrician. Starting services in Austin, Texas, in 2006, they have since expanded. In 2013, they ventured into the Indian Health System in Oklahoma, later adding Kansas and Missouri in 2019. Recently, New Mexico joined the list, and they then expanded into four new states: Florida, Washington, Oregon, and Virginia.

In July 2022, Sonoquick, a cardiac ultrasound service provider, partnered with BB Imaging. They have since added expert cardiac sonographers to the Texas team. This exponential growth positions BB Imaging as a prominent independent provider of high-risk obstetrical ultrasound services on a national scale.

BB Imaging won a Silver Stevie® Award for Minority-Owned Business of the Year in The 2023 American Business Awards®.

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Topics: American business awards

5WPR: DELIVERING PR Excellence with Innovation, Inclusion, and Leadership

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Fri, Nov 03, 2023 @ 10:37 AM

Stevie-winner 5W Public Relations (5WPR), based in New York City, is a full-service public relations (PR) agency renowned for its comprehensive and results-driven approach.

Specializing in strategic communications, the agency covers a wide spectrum of industries, including consumer goods, technology, healthcare, beauty, lifestyle, and more. With a commitment to delivering impactful campaigns, 5WPR leverages its expertise in media relations, influencer marketing, digital strategy, and event planning to craft compelling narratives that resonate with target audiences.

22 spotlight Square-19-1The agency prides itself on its ability to navigate the ever-evolving media landscape, securing placements in top-tier outlets and effectively managing crisis communications when needed.

Boasting a client-centric philosophy, 5WPR tailors its strategies to meet the unique needs and goals of each client, ensuring a customized and dynamic approach to PR that drives brand visibility, enhances reputation, and ultimately contributes to business success.

As an employer, 5W believes in the power of giving back to the communities in which we live and work. They encourage and support employees in their philanthropic efforts by providing PTO specifically to volunteer, as well as matching monetary donations to a variety of charities.

Through their 5W University training program, they also strive to ensure employees are always learning and growing, from enhancing PR skills to leadership development. Senior leaders guide employees at all levels through a range of training sessions.

Nurturing Tomorrow's Leaders
5WPR Co-CEO Matthew Caiola has been a driving force since joining the agency—especially since 2021—transforming 5WPR, alongside Co-CEO Dara Busch, into a company built for the future with significant strides in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) in workplace culture, employee benefits, and career support.

Matthew quickly moved through the ranks, and after 13 years, was promoted to Co-CEO in February 2022, making him the youngest CEO of a Top 10 PR agency in the United States. Matthew has been a key leader of teams responsible for the reputation of some of the most sophisticated companies and visible public figures in the world, along with emerging brands and technologies.

A hallmark of Matthew’s career has been leading and scaling teams. As he progressed quickly through the staff ranks into leadership, Matt took over 5WPR’s emerging technology practice, leading that team to 50%+ growth each year, for three years. As a result, 5W attracted marquee brands like Amazon, Samsung, and VIZIO.

Matt has spearheaded numerous initiatives to enhance 5W's commitment to DE&I. These efforts include forging recruiting partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities, establishing a DE&I staff committee to assess 5W's performance, revamping the approved-vendor list to include minority and women-owned businesses, elevating the charitable donation match for DE&I-focused causes, and introducing a new leadership role within the company for Head of People & Culture to drive further transformation.

5WPR won a Gold and Bronze Stevie Awards for Best Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Marketing – Consumer Products; Public Relations Agency of the Year; and 5WPR's Matthew Caiola won a Silver Stevie Award for Best Communications, Investor Relations, or PR Executive of the Year in The 2023 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2024 American Business Awards®?

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Topics: American business awards

LivePerson's Conversational Cloud Makes AI the Digital "Front Door"

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Thu, Oct 05, 2023 @ 09:56 AM

Headquartered in New York, NY, Stevie Award-winner LivePerson is a global technology company that develops conversational commerce and AI software. Their software enables businesses to engage with their customers in real time through various channels such as messaging, chat, and voice. Customers can easily reach out to companies through these channels, and businesses can respond to them in real time.

live person workingLivePerson’s Conversational Cloud helps brands of all kinds make Conversational AI the digital “front door”: their first point of contact with customers, setting the tone for their entire relationship. Essentially replacing in-store greeters, these virtual assistants and automation not only welcome and start customers down the path to what they need but often solve problems outright or even convince them to purchase more. And just as the best salespeople know when to go to managers, they seamlessly escalate to human counterparts as needed.

LivePerson makes life easier for people and brands everywhere through this Conversational AI. Its products empower consumers to stop wasting time on hold or on websites and, instead, message their favorite brands just as they do with friends and family. LivePerson has 1,200 employees globally and serves over 18,000 customers, including leading brands like HSBC, Orange, and The Home Depot.

Making AI More Than a Buzzword
In 1995, the company invented online chat for brands, disrupting communication by removing the need for 1-800 numbers, hold times, and endlessly scanning websites. Later, the company made it easy for consumers to connect with brands on their own time on their favorite messaging platforms, then introduced Conversational AI to automate these conversations, making massive scale possible while still providing outstanding experiences.

Enterprise brands across the globe now use LivePerson’s AI-powered customer engagement solutions to have conversations with millions of consumers as personally as they would with one. With LivePerson, brands have reduced customer care costs by up to 50% and increased annual sales by hundreds of millions of dollars.

2-Oct-05-2023-01-52-21-3965-PM2022 was a year of massive AI hype and customer experience (CX) failures. Consumers saw both the chaos that ensues when brands don’t keep up (e.g., Southwest Airlines’ holiday debacle) and the promise of AI to make better experiences (e.g., ChatGPT’s mind-blowing text generation). But between the CX fails and overblown prognostications about AI taking over, LivePerson delivered actual business outcomes that improved real life for brands, agents, and customers.

To keep on the bleeding edge, LivePerson’s team pioneered new AI capabilities that deliver and automate even more meaningful, natural-feeling conversations. These innovations drive the state-of-the-art in Conversational AI forward by improving bot and agent performance, boosting customer engagement, and accelerating time to value — all while cutting costs.

For example, Repeat Intent Rate better measures modern ways of delivering CX, replacing outdated metrics built around human-to-human interactions on legacy channels. This is a leap forward in measuring how brands use AI, like the leap from measuring a newspaper's print circulation to measuring digital performance.

Significant 2022 enhancements and integrations making their platform more potent than ever included:

  • AI Search: immediately answers questions without escalating to humans, right out of the box
  • On-Demand Recommendations: helps human agents quickly find better answers and bots
  • "Small Talk": brings more human feeling to automated conversations
  • Repeat Intent Rate: analyzes customer inquiries to identify opportunities for automation and optimization
  • Integration Hub: a central place to discover, activate, and optimize thousands of LivePerson integrations through a self-service, no-code interface
  • Sales Attribution: credits cross-channel sales to agents or bots who participated in conversations
  • Integrations with Afiniti, Cisco, and Celonis to better match agents to customers, extend LivePerson’s CRM integrations into new channels, and combine process and conversational data.

Generating these business results is only possible with deep partnerships with brands, proper integration into their back-end systems, and the data and expertise underpinning outcomes-oriented AI.

Unlike simple chatbot providers that handle superficial cases and language generators like ChatGPT, which pull information from the public internet, LivePerson’s AI is laser-focused on improving conversations between brands and consumers. It is built upon a historical record of billions of CX conversations, with an additional ~1 billion conversational interactions added monthly.

Among the Global Fortune 500, LivePerson now counts 55% of telcos, 25% of retailers, 50% of airlines, 31% of banks, and 40% of technology companies as customers. While Gartner predicts chatbots will become the primary customer service for ~25% of organizations by 2027, LivePerson clients are well ahead, with many already running 40%+ of contact center volume through its platform. This puts LivePerson at Tier 1 partner status.

Since its inception, pioneering the invention of web chat for brands, LivePerson has continually pushed the limits of human and computer connection. Its AI innovations have been recognized by the world's leading awards and recognition programs for customer care, sales, marketing, and technology.

LivePerson won two Gold Stevie Awards for Sales or Customer Service Solutions Technology Partner of the Year and Best New Version of a Contact Center Solution in the 2023 Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2024 Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service

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Topics: Steve Awards for Sales and Customer Service

Legal Resources' Development Strategy to Empower Partners, Clients, and Employees

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Thu, Oct 05, 2023 @ 09:43 AM

22 spotlight Square-9-Oct-05-2023-01-41-09-5587-PMStevie-winner Legal Resources is a legal services provider in the employee benefits space. Legal Resources offers an exclusive network of local primary care law firms to assist employees with all life's legal matters. Legal Resources has been the leading provider and administrator of group legal services for almost 30 years.

Their Business Development team is comprised of Executives, Sales, and Marketing leaders. As a joint effort, these team members collaborate, develop, and deploy strategies that are essential to continual growth in the market. Since the legal services industry remains a niche in nature, unique and effective approaches to product and service creation and marketing are a must; therefore, their marketing and sales strategies are generated in-house.

The Business Development team targets partners like employee benefits consultants, and plan administrators (typically Human Resources professionals) at mid- to large-sized organizations. For growth, the Business Development team markets to multiple channels: benefit consultants to recommend them to their clients, Human Resource professionals to offer their benefit to their workforce, and, eventually, employees to enroll in the plan via payroll deduction.

Increased Growth and Rates of Retention
In response to COVID-19, the Legal Resources Business Development team created and deployed multiple strategies that yielded incredibly favorable growth and retention results. For example, in June 2020 Legal Resources created and launched a Guidance and Assistance program that was open to all of their clients’ employee populations, not just members.

This program offered unlimited guidance and assistance with their Certified Paralegals regarding lifestyle matters; for example, dealing with identity theft, how to file a consumer complaint with the Attorney General’s office, getting in touch with a law firm to get essential documents executed, etc.

Additional projects deployed were centered on education to provide a value add for all growth channels. For example, they created mini seminars that were held virtually and touched on COVID-19-related challenges and how to address them; like consumer issues, COVID-19 scams (like vaccine and employment scams), and information on essential legal documents (like medical directives and power of attorneys).

The Business Development team also executed valuable forecasting on COVID-19 impacts and compiled those forecasts in a COVID-19 Impact newsletter that was sent out to broker partners and clients to be deployed to their workforces. For instance, their team forecasted that the courts being shut down for a period would result in a tremendous backlog in non-emergency hearings and would significantly delay resolutions for open family law cases.

Results
Through collaboration, research, and strategizing as a team, the Legal Resources Business Development team was able to position its products and services strategically; that is, in lieu of being viewed as an expense during an uncertain time, Legal Resources instead positioned itself as a necessary tool that provided peace of mind. The approach was well received.

Providing broker partners and clients with invaluable resources during the thick of the pandemic not only reinforced Legal Resources’ value as an existing partner and vendor but also yielded an 8.6% increase in net membership, which was double the increase from the prior year.

Brokers were happy to be able to forward forecasting information to their clients, helping them reinforce their value and perception of being plugged in. The increase in proposal requests from broker partners soared compared to years prior, validating that their business development efforts were successful with existing and prospective broker partners. Another benefit to their business development response to COVID-19 was clients’ renewed interest in educating their workforces about Legal Resources' plans and services.

Legal Resources won a Gold Stevie Award for Most Valuable Response by a Business Development Team in the 2023 Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2024 Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service

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Topics: Steve Awards for Sales and Customer Service

Pronto Marketing: Accelerating Online Success for Ambitious Businesses

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Thu, Oct 05, 2023 @ 09:18 AM

22 spotlight Square-9-Oct-05-2023-01-10-47-2242-PMStevie-winner Pronto Marketing is a WordPress management agency for ambitious businesses around the world. From WordPress builds, maintenance, and support, to SEO and Google Ads services, Pronto offers a full-service approach to getting clients' websites and online marketing presence into high gear.

Founded in 2008, American-owned, and based in Thailand and the Philippines, they have a team of over 100 developers, designers, copywriters, SEO, advertising, and customer support specialists.

Pronto Website Support Team
Pronto provides a variety of website and marketing services to small businesses throughout the world, but their core offering is their Website Support service. In this service, clients pay a monthly fee to receive unlimited access to Website Support team of project managers, support specialists, developers, designers, and copywriters.

They currently manage over 1,200 websites and the Support Team handles between 1,500 to 2,000 support requests per month. These requests range from small tasks such as replacing an image on a client's homepage to very large tasks like writing, designing, and developing a new landing page from scratch.

Despite handling such a large volume and variety of requests, the Support Team has historically been able to send a first response to clients in less than eight business hours, and the team and their work is well-liked by customers, with an average ticket satisfaction rating of 98% and an NPS that typically hovers in the mid-40s.

In the summer of 2020, their Support Team was overwhelmed by incoming tickets. Unfortunately, this resulted in their response time to growing exponentially. Clients were sometimes waiting multiple days to get an initial response, which, of course, also led to a decrease in client satisfaction.

Throughout the remainder of 2020 as well as 2021, the Support Team worked through a series of improvements which included restructuring the team, creating new standard operating procedures for common requests, and perhaps most importantly, adding a night shift to handle requests 24x7.

Today, their average first-response time is under five hours, and first-response time for requests marked as "urgent" is typically less than 20 minutes.

There are two aspects to this improvement that make it significant. First is the magnitude of change. Reducing their first-reply time on all tickets by 80% and by 98% on urgent tickets is an absolutely massive improvement. Over the past six months, they have regularly gotten messages from clients on the improvement and how happy they are. 

Second is the consistency of the improvement. This wasn't a one-time project to improve response time during an emergency, but rather an ongoing series of projects to improve the ability to support clients in the long run. Faster response times have been sustained over the past several months.

Pronto Marketing won a Bronze Stevie® Award for Customer Service Team of the Year - Recovery Situation - Business Services Industries in the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service?

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Topics: Steve Awards for Sales and Customer Service

Belkins Agency's Award-Winning Approach to Business Growth

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Fri, Sep 08, 2023 @ 10:20 AM

1080Stevie-winner Belkins Agency was forged on a common idea: predictable and scalable growth achieved through transparency, perseverance, experience, and creativity.

Belkins was founded by Vladyslav Podolyako and Michael Maximoff back in 2017. Shortly before, they worked together at a small product company. They both shared an extensive background in B2B sales that produced a compatible synergy and would later be transformed into an equivocal business partnership.

The start-up humbly began with Michael and Vlad generating leads for small businesses, committing 100% of their time and efforts to their "side hustle." Soon their creativity and passion paid off.

A startup blossomed into a full-scale digital marketing agency producing $10 million ARR and serving 1000 customers worldwide. In just five years, Belkins grew into the #1 ranked leading provider of lead generation and appointment-setting services despite their decision to forgo any outside investments.

Belkins has now helped 400+ clients transform their presales and sales processes. They have worked with clients from 30+ countries in 60+ niches to help them build and transform their sales workflow. The goal was not only to help companies define their ICP (ideal client profile), build a pipeline of qualified leads, and drive sales for the fastest possible ROI but to make it digital, scalable, and as predictable as possible.

Helping Business Scale Quickly
Belkins empowers businesses of any scale to grow fast through cutting-edge technologies and innovative marketing and sales solutions.

Their primary offering is lead generation and appointment-setting, but they offer much more. If they can’t find a worthy solution in the market, they create it. Since 2020 they have launched several products and a new service line. Now their clients can count on 99% inbox deliverability and a 60% increase in their email open rate using Folderly, streamline their cold outreach with Frostbite.ia, and acquire endless qualified leads using the Leadsforce service. Additionally, with Charge for Outlook, clients can seamlessly send bulk outreach, enhancing their email campaigns further. 

Over the last 12 months, their approach generated over $50 million in new sales for 200 of their clients. Furthermore, on average, the amount of new deals is $50,000 USD. From the kick-off meeting to the first email sent, they get the client’s campaign running in six days or less. The number of leads their team has generated by now is close to 5 million, and emails that reached prospects’ inboxes are about 3 million.

The technological products and services they create are tightly interconnected, creating a sort of MarTech ecosystem inside the company. This way, clients can satisfy all their needs in boosting their business growth with digital marketing and sales services from Belkins Group.

Some of the industries Belkins worked with were quite conservative prior to their partnership: solar & renewable energy, food catering, healthcare, agriculture, waste management, janitorial services, etc. As a result of partnering, clients now receive a faster-than-expected ROI, and a vault of best-kept "secrets" to generate leads by means of email outreach, LinkedIn, HubSpot, and by using dozens of data sources combined with their own proprietary software.

They say they are most proud of the cases where they’ve been able to completely transform a customer's sales process and cycle, showing their customers that digital and scalable solutions for business growth can be predictable.

Belkins won two Silvers and a Bronze Stevie® Award including the Sales Ethics Award, Achievement in the Digital Transformation of Sales Operations, and Sales Outsourcing Provider of the Year, respectively, in the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service?

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Topics: Steve Awards for Sales and Customer Service

Quantum Workplace: Empowering HR Excellence for Two Decades and Beyond

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Fri, Sep 08, 2023 @ 10:05 AM

22 spotlight Square-9-Sep-08-2023-01-59-25-0450-PMStevie-winner Quantum Workplace, a human resources technology provider, equips workplaces with the smartest talent solutions so that they can grow and succeed.

Nearly 20 years ago, the company pioneered some of the earliest employee engagement and performance software and has since partnered with thousands of organizations to drive employee, team, and business success.

Today, human resources (HR) departments have more on their plate than ever before. Quantum Workplace aims to be the reliable partner HR needs to solve problems and guide them along the way.

The organization began as Quantum Market Research in 2002, conducting workplace surveys. By 2005, it  was the survey provider behind the Best Places to Work contest. In 2009, it collected its five-millionth survey. The company changed its name to Quantum Workplace in 2010 and transitioned into a software-led employee engagement company. Now the company partners with over 480 organizations to make work better.

Achieving Consistent Customer and Employee Success
Quantum Workplace has a legacy of providing awesome customer service with unmatched, quality support. The Customer Success Team developed a series of checkpoints that new hires complete before they start talking with customers, so each customer receives the best service and guidance.

A team of Insights Analysts helps customers dive deep into what their data says, how to interpret their results, and guide them in responses. The team has a 97% favorability on value provided to the board room.

Quantum Workplace’s NPS and CSAT scores are well above industry averages, and their six-month rolling average NPS score is 62.5, with industry averages around 40. Quantum Workplace’s August 2022 CSAT score was 86, with industry averages around 77.

The Quantum Workplace Customer Support Team is available to over 2 million users, not just admin users, unlike the competition and others in B2B software. This means more users to assist, which might mean more time per ticket. Not the case at Quantum Workplace. The Customer Support Team typically responds within an hour, faster than most SaaS companies and competitors.

Quantum Workplace employees, or "Qwirks," are used to a high-growth environment. They’re able to succeed because the organization practices what it preaches. It believes that employee success leads to business success. Its dedication to employees has led the Customer Facing Team to achieve levels of customer satisfaction few software companies can.

Quantam team Because of its unique culture aimed at engaging employees, Qwirks perform at high levels, outpacing its competition and setting new standards for the software industry.

Although it has been challenging, they have been able to maintain customer satisfaction and the employee experience with 30% employee growth in the past two years. Quantum Workplace’s strategy of concentrating on employee success has shown business success and led to a quality customer experience.

Quantum Workplace believes the workplace can be great when employees are given the opportunity and resources to be successful. Quantum Workplace’s 4.9 Glassdoor rating far exceeds the average company rating of 3.3, and 100% of Glassdoor reviewers reported they would recommend a friend to work for the organization.

Quantum Workplace created a culture that employees want to be a part of by giving them the tools to succeed and a unique work experience they enjoy. The organization is stronger because Qwirks are celebrated team members and united through the core values of Pursue, Team Over Self, Revel in Work, and Be You.

Qwirks are passionate about their work. The Customer Facing Team revels in providing excellent customer service and truly believes what they do matters. That experience helps Quantum Workplace separate itself from not only competitors but other workplaces.

Quantum Workplace won a Silver Stevie® Award for Customer Service Department of the Year - Computer Software - 100 or More Employees, and a Bronze Stevie for Customer Service Employer of the Year in the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service?


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Topics: Steve Awards for Sales and Customer Service

Scaling Success: Zywave's Global Support Transformation With AI and Change Management

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Fri, Sep 08, 2023 @ 09:40 AM

22 spotlight Square-9-Sep-08-2023-01-37-54-9014-PMStevie-winner Zywave provides software and technology solutions for the insurance industry in the United States and internationally. It offers cloud-based sales management, client delivery, content, and analytics solutions.

More than 15,000 carriers, agencies, and brokerages worldwide—including all of the top 100 US insurance brokerages—use Zywave solutions to enhance client services, achieve business growth, and promote greater health, wellness, risk management, and safety.

Zywave’s all-in-one platform provides customizable, user-friendly options that enable insurance professionals to build a unique solution to fit their specific growth goals.

Prioritizing Customer Experience
The company’s support organization of 50 agents handles around 100,000 complex cases per year.

Led by VP of Support, Emre Tekoglu, the support team was looking to transform from a reactive model to a more proactive support experience. Additionally, Emre wanted to shift from a cost center to position support as a strategic element of the overall customer experience. 

They eventually deployed SupportLogic to predict potential escalations, as well as automate case evaluation and review. SupportLogic generated escalation predictions, provided customer sentiment trend analysis, and surfaced the best cases for managers to review.

SupportLogic helped Zywave quickly become more proactive and predictive by enabling managers and agents to better prioritize focus and customer outreach. Zywave also reduced escalations and kept CSAT metrics strong, achieving 96% satisfaction score for the month of July 2023. They plan to continue to work with SupportLogic to keep escalations low and draw from teachable moments for case reviews.

Not only has Zywave Support made significant technology investments to power improvement of the customer support experience, but also to improve the support reps' experience.

Expanding Global Support Operations
Zywave Support has transitioned from the central Milwaukee location with 28 support representatives into global support operations with over 70 people in various locations, including the Philippines, Boston, Dallas, and other remote locations, by embracing change management over the last two years. 

They have now shifted from reactive to proactive support in everyone's desired state in customer service organizations by prioritizing the right cases using AI/NLP technology. They can effectively predict 70% of escalations before they happen by leveraging their data and insights.

Support is now a destination career path for both internal and external candidates. The changes they made enabled the support team to become the most successful department in the company based on employee retention, even when the whole industry was facing widespread resignations.

Since Winning Their Stevie® Award
Through the convergence of process, technology, and most importantly, their people, Zywave is committed to delivering the optimal customer experience. They recognize this is an ongoing journey that demands a growth mindset and continuous learning.

Since the application period, Zywave has focused on the following:

New process - They launched a new function in support for incidents. By deploying a critical incident response function, they demonstrate their commitment to proactively address and mitigate issues that affect multiple customers, ensuring swift and effective resolutions to preserve their trust and satisfaction.

Focus on support team’s growth - They have introduced a volunteer day off option for employees to prioritize their support team members' personal growth and community engagement, while also cultivating a culture of empathy and social responsibility within the organization.

Further technology investment - By continually reviewing and adopting AI-powered solutions and emerging support trends, including case resolution using robotic process automation, they consistently optimize their ability to reduce time to resolution and elevate customer satisfaction levels, cementing their position as a customer-centric organization.

Zywave won a Silver Stevie Award for Best Use of Technology in Customer Service – Computer Industries, and Bronze in the category of Achievement in the Use of Data & Analytics in Customer Service in the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service?

Request the Entry Kit

Topics: Steve Awards for Sales and Customer Service

SmartBear Honored With Stevie Award for Customer Support Mastery

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Mon, Aug 28, 2023 @ 11:02 AM

22 spotlight Square-10Stevie-winner SmartBear provides a portfolio of trusted tools that give software development teams around the world visibility into end-to-end quality through test management and automation, API development lifecycle, and application stability, ensuring each software release is better than the last. Award-winning tools include SwaggerHub, TestComplete, BugSnag, ReadyAPI, Zephyr, and PactFlow, among others.

The company’s mission is to be the first choice for software development teams of all sizes, giving them the tools to immediately impact the delivery of tomorrow’s applications. The tools they develop are built to streamline clients’ processes while seamlessly working with the products they currently use and will continue to use. 

In the 2023 Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the SmartBear Test Management Team, led by Jeannie Kobert, Director of Customer Care Engineering at SmartBear, won a Bronze Stevie Award for Customer Service Complaints Team of the Year - Technology Industries. 

Integrating Open Source and Openness Altogether
SmartBear’s philosophy is not only to embrace open source, but openness altogether, which includes diversity, equity, and inclusion. With these principles as their foundation, they ensure that their tools are easy to try, easy to buy, and easy to integrate. 

The SmartBear Test Management team, consisting of the Zephyr Enterprise and Zephyr Squad product lines, provides 24/5 technical support to a global set of customers located in AMER, EMEA, and APAC. The team supports both SaaS and On-Premises (server and data center) solutions and provides expertise for all aspects of product usage and configuration, as well as resolving the most difficult technical issues. 

The Test Management team also includes Zephyr Scale products, SaaS, and On-Premises (server and data center) solutions and provides  similar technical services as Zephyr Enterprise and Zephyr Squad.

The Test Management team has consistently received high Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores and tracked at a high level against their published service level agreements (SLAs), keeping their customers happy. In fact, the team has been able to retain an elevated level of customer service consistently when it was particularly challenging during the pandemic and great resignation in 2020 and beyond. This is due to the team’s commitment to customer service by increasing man hours, utilizing development resources, and taking advantage of an innovative cross-training plan the team adopted last year.

Leading by Example
By committing to ethical corporate practices that promote good, SmartBear has pledged to continue building quality businesses in their global communities through integrity.

They are committed to taking the journey toward becoming a leader in corporate social responsibility as they grow. To that end, they have a group of senior leaders who meet regularly as a working group to focus on the areas of Community, Sustainability, Governance, and Diversity.

SmartBear is trusted by over 16 million developers, testers, and software engineers at 32,000+ organizations—including innovators like Adobe, JetBlue, FedEx, and Microsoft.

The SmartBear Test Management Team won a Bronze Stevie Award for Customer Service Complaints Team of the Year - Technology Industries in the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service? 

Request the Entry Kit

Topics: Steve Awards for Sales and Customer Service

​Highlights From the 2023 Women|Future Conference

Posted by Amanda Del Signore on Fri, Aug 04, 2023 @ 02:23 PM

2023 WFC Media Kit (1080 × 1920 px)-3-1The sixth annual Women|Future Conference, held virtually from August 1-2, brought together over 650 ambitious, forward-thinking women across industries and career stages to connect and discuss key issues that impact their industries, careers, and lives.

A professional development, learning, and networking event, the Women|Future Conference brings together a community of women small business owners, executives, entrepreneurs, and professionals interested in starting a business. Attendees tuned in from cities across the United States, Canada, Australia, Asia, and Europe.

The 2023 conference agenda featured two days of panels, workshops, and breakout sessions hosted by over 30 world-class speakers, including CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and small business consultants from The Audacious Agency, MENTOR New York, Jennings Social Media & MarTech, and others. 

Speakers also included seasoned leaders from global organizations like Microsoft's Corporate Vice President - Global Industry Marketing; SAP's Chief Marketing & Solutions Officer; and the Founder and CEO of Fempire, the #1 global coaching brand for women business owners.

Top Attended Sessions From #WomenFuture23
Throughout the two-day conference, attendees participated in sessions about business networking, work-life balance, wealth attraction, overcoming adversity, mentorship, and more. Below are the top conference sessions attended:

  • Turning Passion Into Profit as an Entrepreneur
  • From Wages to Wealth: Making the Shift from Employee to Entrepreneur
  • Taking the Leap: How to Transfer Your Skills from One Role to the Next
  • Should I Enter the Stevie Awards? Learn How Leaders Leverage Awards to Boost their Business and build Credibility

On Day 1 of #WomenFuture 23 in the session “Funding Female Futures: Navigating the Investment Landscape and Bootstrapping Success” two female entrepreneur and funding experts, Marnie LeFevre, Founder & CEO of Fempire, and Mez Gallifuoco, Founder & CEO of The Mad Ones, delved into the realities of the investment landscape for women and shared valuable insights on identifying the right investors and business opportunities. 
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With her international coaching brand Fempire, Marnie has made it her mission to inspire women to step up and lead with courage, confidence, and from the feminine. Mez is an award-winning technology entrepreneur and strategist for some of the world’s most innovative companies including QBE, AMEX, Virgin Australia, and several startups in Sydney and New York.

Early in the discussion, Mez relayed that men in business are often asked, “What will you do with success?” while women are more likely to be asked, “How will you overcome all these challenges?” Women are sometimes viewed as already disadvantaged in the business space, in some sectors more than others. Even if you have a brilliant idea and are fully committed to making it work, it can be quite intimidating when it comes to getting your vision off the ground, she said,  especially when it comes to learning about and gaining funding, and then growing it.

Before trying to go directly to investors and trying to push a business plan at them, both Mez and Marnie recommend aiming for casual and helpful conversations with investors first. Instead of calling to abruptly ask someone to review your data and plan, just ask them for coffee. Have a conversation about what you’re trying to achieve, what insights they may have, and try to create a connection. 

“Start asking questions—gain advice. Use them as a mentor, and even if they're not prepared to invest in your business, at least you can gain a whole lot of insight. It's about building a relationship before sticking out your hand,” noted Mez.

She emphasized that who the founders are and who your team members are (and how adept or skilled they are) is even more important than your business plan or statistics. When it comes to finally making the pitch for funding, Mez related her own challenges of walking into very intense and critical business meetings. “They barely look at the idea, to be honest. They only really look at, what is the team? do they know what they’re doing….and we’re interested in the founder.” 

Both Mez and Marne agreed that having a well-connected founder—or, even better, multiple founders—who have similar business values can go a long way in securing the relationship and funding. Marne commented: “We're looking for whether we can get along with you, whether we believe in you, whether we think you've got what it takes, whether you have the grit that it takes.”

Day 2 of the conference opened with an instructional session on “How to Write a Winning Stevie Award Nomination given by Denise O’Leary, MBE. Denise is a 21-time Stevie Award winner and relayed her extensive experience on how she has repeatedly created winning Stevie Award entries. Her company, Purpol Marketing, specializes in marketing strategy development and bid management for public sector contracts across various industries. 

Denise answered many common questions she gets from clients across industries on finding and applying for awards, including:

  • Why should you enter awards?
  • Where do you find awards to enter?
  • How to find the right awards for your business
  • What data do you need to consider? 

Denise explained that, based on your specific industry or field, you should build an award target list and track when your targeted awards are open for nominations and what they will require. For example, even the Stevie Awards has eight distinct programs, and, depending on your field, one or a variety of them will get you a different level of exposure to a specific audience, geographic region, or market. Note the deadlines you need to hit and the networking or marketing opportunities they offer. 
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She detailed the full Stevie application journey and even provided hints on what judges really want to see. “Play to your individual strengths in your nomination,” she emphasized. “How do you offer better value? How can you explain what you’re doing and make your strengths clear? Prove what you do with tangible evidence.” She covered how to examine your own organization and objectives and then how to tell your personal and business story as well as what types of data should be included with your entry. 

Regarding gathering evidence before writing your Stevie Awards nomination, Denise said, “It’s really important to gather evidence about your business success before writing your nomination. 

  • Read all instructions to make sure you’re eligible.” She also advised doing the following: 
  • If you’re doing a video, review their specific rules on formatting, length, language, etc.
  • Include key performance indicators (KPIs) or other materials in the supporting materials section of the entry submission, like customer testimonials, photos, case studies, etc.
  • Include a folder of press coverage to share, if available. 

“Think about what the judges would like to see. Think about their process,” she noted. “If you need to proofread your nomination more than once a day to make sure it’s perfect, you should. Explain in simple terms what your business does so it’s clear to any judge why you should win a Stevie Award.”

She said you will want to keep track of progress, store, and revisit old nominations you’ve written. In addition, after entering Stevie Awards competitions, all entrants can access the judge’s comments. This feedback can serve as an invaluable asset for guidance on areas the judges were impressed with and how entry nominations can be improved in the future.

In an educational panel discussion, "Make Your Mark: How to Build a Network with Trusted Mentors" that took place on Day 2, speakers explored how to build social capital and a network you can count on.10

Brenda Jimenez, CEO of MENTOR New York, led this panel, and other speakers included Alana Beard, four-time WNBA Champion and President of the 318 Foundation and Founder of Transition Play; Dr. Elizabeth Santiago, author, educator, designer, and leader; and Cicy George, Senior, Organizational Capability at Macy’s. These panelists have made their marks in different industries with an interesting story of how they’ve each become supporters of each other in ways that led to career successes.

Panelists initiated the conversation by examining the concept of social capital—the connections built and nurtured over time that may have beneficial professional implications—and how women specifically can work toward building this capital. For women especially, they agreed, it can be hard simply to ask for help and be vulnerable with a mentor. 

Alana commented: "I encourage [those she mentors] to be to be as vulnerable as possible in these moments because there's no way for people to really understand who you are and what you're going through and what your desires are if you don't speak about them.”

Elizabeth added another perspective, noting that getting comfortable relaying your needs and challenges not only helps you find the help and support you need but also enables you to validate and encourage others with your own experiences once you come out on the other side:

“For me, this is where storytelling comes in. As I look back at my life and my career and all the things that have happened and led me to where I am….there are so many people involved, so many stories, so many ways that I've asked for help over the years that I often share those experiences or share an anecdote about something and usually that helps someone else.”

They explained that self-reflection and conscious awareness of your strengths and, even more so, your weaknesses will help to solidify a sense of confidence and self-worth. The sooner you do the inner work and get past the common feeling of imposter syndrome, the faster you and others will see your potential. In a perfect example of how to be authentic and vulnerable with your peers, Cicy shared part of her personal journey with self-worth and acceptance:

“I've only recently gotten more comfortable with feeling like I am enough, and I feel like I have a hidden greatness that I have yet to unleash. That's just a realization I feel I've come into just now in my early 40s. It's taken me a long time to get here — even just to admit in a global forum that I'm in my early 40s—and I'm just learning some of these lessons now that I wish I had learned earlier on in my life and my career.” 

Special Thanks to Our 2023 Sponsors and Partners​
We are proud to partner with publications, media outlets, and organizations that share our mission of supporting women in business:

  • Enterprising Women Magazine
  • ImageShield
  • Investably LLC
  • MBE Magazine
  • Professional Woman’s Magazine
  • Trust Relations 


If you are interested in sponsorship opportunities for the 2024 Women|Future Conference, sign up here to get notified of the 2023 prospectus release.

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Topics: stevie awards for women in business, Women Future Conference, WomenFuture Conference