Stevie^® Award-winner Limitless is combining crowdsourcing and AI to help global businesses address their biggest customer service challenges with Gig Customer Service (GigCX). GigCX is the term they use for deploying a gig-based crowd of people to provide customer service and sales. Housed within the Limitless’ SmartCrowd™ platform, customers can connect with their most engaged customers and reward them for providing on-demand customer service.

Using this technology, organizations route enquiries through the Limitless platform, which distributes them to knowledgeable GigCX experts who are paid per task for resolving questions. Brands like Microsoft, Unilever, eBay and L’Oreal are using Limitless GigCX to connect with their most engaged customers, providing on-demand customer service that can flex in line with demand.

Limitless conducts annual research studies and reports to understand how GigCX is impacting the workforce and areas for improvement. Since receiving their Gold Stevie award, they have released new research that shows that 72% of customer service managers have added or plan to add gig talent to customer service or sales operations within the next 2 years.

Their findings also show that, although people are interested in flexibility and the freedom to earn money on their own terms, GigCX has another added benefit to other gig models. Experts are genuinely interested in helping people using their own knowledge for brands they love.

Limitless has also been featured in Forbes in the article “Meet the Startup Turning Customers into Next-Gen Customer Service for Brands They Love.” In the piece, Forbes references a study that shows there are “nearly 60 million gig workers in the U.S., representing about $1.2 trillion of U.S. GDP, [and] it’s estimated that by 2030, nearly 50% of the workforce will be engaged in the gig economy in some way.”

Limitless co-founders Megan Neale and Roger Beadle have over 20 years of experience in the customer support world. In a comment to Forbes, Ms. Neale says she believes “gig work will be a mix of primary full-time workers, GigCX workers, and AI bots working in harmony to produce the most efficient and best possible customer experience….once AI does its job to the capacity it's able to, handing that customer over to a real customer support agent with the skills to help quickly.

Limitless won the Gold Stevie Award for Sales or Customer Service Solutions Technology Partner of the Year.

Submit your nomination for the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Family-owned and operated Ace Office Furniture Houston is a Stevie®-winning top-rated furniture company based in Texas. They serve as a one-stop shop for many business owners in the area who rely on them, not only for quality office furniture, but also for their customer service offerings including highly skilled staff, onsite consultations, fast delivery, commercial office staging, and furniture repairs.Their business has a long track record of excellence in the region, drawing initial recognition in only 2 years from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), gaining an A+ Rating with the BBB for four years, and receiving the BBB Award for Excellence in 2019 and 2020.

Ace Office Furniture Houston strives to provide the best support to their customers for all of their business needs, and their expert consultants work closely with them to provide advice and guidance through the process of conceptualizing, designing, selecting, delivering, and installing their furnishings.

Since receiving their Bronze Stevie Award for Best in Sales Ethics, owner Kevin Astala, has been honored with inclusion in the Who’s Who in America. Mr Astala attributes his success to hard work and learning new skills and trades, he said in a press release. In addition to teaching himself internet webpage design, he has learned the intricacies of marketing and social media. Mr. Astala has also been featured in Millennium Magazine for his entrepreneurial skills and dedication to self-education.

In light of their continued success, Ace Office Furniture Houston has announced the expansion of their services to new areas in Texas.

Ace Office Furniture Houston won the Bronze Stevie Award for Ethics in Sales.

Submit nominations for the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Founded in 1993 by Jay Bruber, Stevie^®-winner Persolvent specializes in payment processing technologies for markets including education, professional service organizations, internet, government, before and after school programs, and enrichment programs.Persolvent views their customer relationships as true partnerships. They offer industry-leading technology and have a large customer base, but they are intentionally focused and small enough to be able to respond to customer needs with lightning-fast agility. 

Persolvent services and personnel were recognized in three different Stevie Awards categories: 

• AJ Kurkowski won the Gold Stevie Award for Customer Service Training Professional of the Year;
• Marit Faster won the Silver Stevie Award for Customer Service Leader of the Year; and
• Eleyo Customer Experience Strategy won the Bronze Stevie Award for Best Customer Feedback Strategy.

Since gaining this recognition, Persolvent has continued in its goal to better serve their customers. In Q1 2022, Eleyo’s Customer Experience Strategy saw a Net Promoter Score of 69, which is 33 points above the industry average and also the highest score that has been received since the pandemic in 2020.

In the time since receiving their awards, AJ Kurkowski has implemented a new team called the Enterprise Team, which will help implement the Eleyo software for the largest childcare and community education programs in the United States. Marit Fastner has joined the leadership team for a new 2022 Persolvent product. She is focused on building out the process for customer success from training to support for product launch.

Interested in submitting nominations for the
2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service?

In 2020, Stevie Award-winner Rona Jobe founded LVL-Up Strategies, a minority- and woman-owned small business based in Arlington, Virginia. She now serves as the CEO, working to propel small businesses to grow their potential by offering clients strategic advisement, operations design and implementation, marketing plans and execution, and business development guidance.

Jobe’s vision for LVL-Up Strategies is to help small businesses break the generic mold of how to grow their business. Instead of following a pattern from another business or figuring it out as the business grows, Jobe works to analyze each of her client's goals and current structure to define long-term strategies and customized next steps for success.

In addition, Jobe has a passion for supporting the careers of military and Department of State spouses. LVL-Up only employs military and Department of State spouses, so that they have the opportunity to grow their careers in an often unpredictable and stagnant work environment. This symbiotic connection of talented and driven individuals is critical to the company’s success.

LVL-Up Strategies already embraced a fully remote workforce prior to the pandemic. They have continued this success by creating and implementing a remote onboarding and training program for incoming staff, which has led to growth in staff, revenue, and client base in just one year.

Since earning the Bronze Stevie Award for Most Innovative Woman of the Year - Business Services, LVL-Up Strategies has developed the LVL-Up Five Step Process for working with small businesses; the LVL-Up CEO Entrepreneur Roadmap, which guides individuals from “solopreneurs” to full-time CEOs; and the LVL-Up Remote Staff Onboarding Process. These tools have been the foundation to developing customized client tools and programs, and have ultimately led to further growth for the young company.

Rona Jobe won Bronze Stevie Award for Most Innovative Woman of the Year - Business Services.

Interested in submitting a nomination for the 2022 (19th Annual) Stevie Awards for Women in Business?

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 2022 (19^th Annual) International Business Awards®, the world’s leading business awards competition.

Nominees in the 2022 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 15 August. They and the winners of the Grand Stevies announced today will be recognized during an awards gala in London, England on 15 October.

Winners of the 2022 Grand Stevie Awards are:

HIGHEST-RATED COVID-19 RESPONSE NOMINATION

With an average score from the judges of 9.0/10, the Grand Stevie goes to UNICEF Cambodia, Communications Department, Phnom Penh, for their nomination “Using Communications To Protect And Inspire Cambodian Children During COVID-19,” which also won a Gold Stevie in the category Most Valuable Non-Profit Response.  This is the first Grand Stevie Award presented to Cambodia.

HIGHEST-RATED NEW PRODUCT OR SERVICE NOMINATION OF THE YEAR

Scalefocus, of Sofia, Bulgaria won the Gold Stevie Award for Best Healthcare Technology Solution for their nomination of SoundVision, and with an average score of 9.11/10 they also win the Grand Stevie for the highest-rated new product or service nomination.  This is the first Grand Stevie won by Bulgaria.

HIGHEST-RATED NOMINATION OF THE YEAR

With a remarkable average score of 9.8/10, the highest-rated nomination in the 19^th IBAs was submitted by The Veterans of Foreign Wars, Kansas City, Missouri USA.  “VFW #StillServing” also won the Gold Stevie for Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Non-Profit / Charity.

MOST HONORED PUBLIC RELATIONS AGENCY

LLYC, Madrid, Spain wins this honor for the fourth consecutive year with a total of 45.5 award points earned with eight Gold, seven Silver, and five Bronze Stevie wins in public relations, new product, video, and event categories for themselves and a number of their clients.  Each Gold Stevie win counts for three points, each Silver Stevie win for two points, and each Bronze Stevie win for one-and-a-half points.

MOST HONORED MARKETING AGENCY

pH7 Communications, Shanghai, China wins this honor with 20.5 award points earned with five Gold, two Silver, and one Bronze wins in marketing and PR categories on behalf of several of their clients.  This is the first Grand Stevie win for the agency.

ORGANIZATION OF THE YEAR

With 65.5 award points earned through eight Gold, 11 Silver, and 13 Bronze Stevie wins in a variety of categories, the winner of the 2022 Grand Stevie for Organization of the Year goes to HALKBANK, Istanbul, Turkey.  HALKBANK is a leading Turkish bank.

“These six best-of-show Grand Stevie winners embody the breadth and quality of nominations we welcomed to the IBAs in 2022,” said Maggie Miller, president of the Stevie Awards. “As organizations are moving past some of the hurdles COVID-19 brought upon the world, the judges were highly impressed with the innovation, creativity, and tact in which these Stevie winners conducted business the past two years. We look forward to celebrating Grand Stevie Awards winners at the gala in October.”

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 2022 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 3,700 nominations submitted by organizations in 67 nations.

The nomination process for the 2023 IBAs will open in February. For more information about The International Business Awards, including a complete list of all Stevie Award winners in the 2022 competition, visit www.StevieAwards.com/IBA.

IBM Corporation and Skai CEO & Co-Founder Yoav Izhar-Prato Named Top Winners

The Stevie® Awards have announced today the winners of two Grand Stevie Awards in the seventh annual Stevie Awards for Great Employers.

With 56.5 award points, earned through Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie-winning nominations submitted by units in the USA and several other nations, IBM Corporation, headquartered in Armonk, NY USA, earns the Grand Stevie Award for Organization of the Year in the seventh annual Stevie Awards for Great Employers.

Joanne Wright, Vice President Enterprise Operations & Services, IBM shared "This recognition, the Grand Stevie Award for Organization of the Year, confirms IBM’s success navigating the incredible challenges faced by organizations and employees everywhere over the past few years. IBMers are proud to earn this prestigious award, which recognizes the hard work of our professionals worldwide. Thank you!"

A second Grand Stevie Award, for the Highest-Rated Nomination of the Year, goes to Yoav Izhar-Prato, CEO & Co-Founder of Skai, in Tel Aviv, Israel, who won the Gold Stevie for People-Focused CEO of the Year. His nomination received the highest average rating from the judges in the entire competition with an average score of 9.67/10.

The Stevie Awards for Great Employers are an international competition that recognizes the world’s best employers and the human resources professionals, teams, achievements, and HR-related products and suppliers who help to create and drive great places to work.  The Stevie Awards are the organizers of this and seven other national and international business awards programs, including The American Business Awards® and The International Business Awards®.

Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners in the Stevie Awards for Great Employers were announced on August 8. More than 950 nominations from organizations in 26 nations were evaluated in this year’s competition. Winners were determined by the average scores of more than 100 professionals worldwide, acting as judges.

All winners will be celebrated during an awards ceremony on September 17 in Las Vegas.

The Grand Stevie Award for Organization of the Year is determined by a points system in which each Gold Stevie win earns three points, each Silver Stevie win two points, and each Bronze Stevie win one-and-a-half points. IBM’s 56.5 points is top among all participants in this year’s competition.

The Stevie Awards for Great Employers recognize achievement in many facets of the workplace. Categories include:

•    Employer of the Year
•    HR Achievements
•    HR Individual Awards
•    HR Team Categories
•    Solution Provider Awards
•    COVID-19 Response
•    Thought Leadership
•    More than 50 New Product & Service Categories

Entries for the 2022 edition of the Stevie Awards for Great Employers will open in March.

Stevie Award-winner SmartHub is a programmatic, white-label RTB solution designed to facilitate ad tech market entry for companies that plan to set up their own branded marketplaces. It is designed for small and medium-sized ad tech businesses, ad networks, SSPs that need to build their own ad tech platforms while saving money and time. Their mission is to maintain the highest standards for marketplace transparency, accountability, and trust.

SmartHub was created in 2018, when a small team of skilled professionals grew their internal programmatic expertise. After this, they started to provide companies with robust technologies based on which enterprises could build their own independent ad marketplaces. With their unique  platform, customers can leverage technology that enables the most rapid market entry and continuing growth. Over the past two years, SmartHub has been able to advance their abilities in order to deploy a programmatic marketplace in just 7 days. Additionally, their company offers uncommon services such as ad tech outstaffing.

The SmartHub team has spent countless hours designing and building AdTech platforms for their clients. Their customers include those that have started and strengthened their ad businesses. They have also created a very responsive customer service team full of well-versed employees in numerous disciplines including tech, advertising, business development, and client relationships.

Since winning the Bronze Stevie for Best Customer Satisfaction Strategy, SmartHub has evolved significantly both in terms of technology and human resources. During 2020, SmartHub survived a global economic crisis and successfully entered a new technologic cycle, during which the business expanded to a new market – Israel - then explored the Asian region (Hong Kong, China), LATAM (Argentina, Uruguay), USA and Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine). Also in 2020, SmartHub technology was adopted by 59 new customers. The net profit during 2020 grew to reach the bar of $47,938.42. Income in 2020 increased in comparison to 2019 which is substantial growth for a young investment project.

Their agile approach, responsiveness to the market's change and attentiveness to the needs of their clients have defined the success of our product. During 2020, the team spent over 2,700 hours designing and building AdTech platforms for their clients. Сlient-centricity is central to their strategy, so during the pandemic, they optimally redistributed the SmartHub team and augmented expertise in technologies that boost the businesses of customers. SmartHub developed a tool that enables setting up an independent ad exchange that makes it possible to easily and quickly deploy and adjust it to the user’s needs. 

SmartHub won the Bronze Stevie for Best Customer Satisfaction Strategy at the 2022 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in submitting nominations in the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service?

High-achieving organizations and executives around the world have been recognized as Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie® Award winners in The 19th Annual International Business Awards®, the world's only international, all-encompassing business awards program.

Winners were selected from more than 3,700 nominations submitted by organizations in 67 nations.

More than 300 executives worldwide participated on 11 juries to determine the Stevie winners.

The top winner of Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards is HALKBANK of Istanbul, Turkey with 32. Other winners of multiple Stevie Awards include IBM Corporation (21), LLYC (20), Deutsche Post DHL (19), Abu Dhabi Ports Group (17), Viettel Group (17), OPET (15), Telkom Indonesia (13), ZER (13), Ayala Land Inc. (12), Ooredoo (12), Globe Telecom (10), PJ Lhuillier, Inc (PJLI) (10), Enerjisa Enerji (9), Wolters Kluwer (9), Strategic Public Relations Group (8), pH7 Communications (8), Tata Consultancy Services Inc. (8), Adfactors PR (8), Jeunesse Global (7), Bank of Montreal, (6), Canadian Tire Corporation (6), HeyMo The Experience Design Company (6), Octopus Energy (6), Sleepm Global Inc. (6), VUMI Group (6), and VNPT VinaPhone Corporation (6).

IBM, a multinational technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, NY USA won nine Gold Stevie Awards, more than any other organization in the competition.

All organizations worldwide are eligible to compete in the IBAs, and may submit nominations in a wide range of categories for achievement in management, marketing, public relations, customer service, human resources, new products and services, technology, web sites, apps, events, and more. 

The awards will be presented during a gala event in London, England on October 15, 2022.

Stevie Award-winner Fleetio provides an alternative to spreadsheets and outdated fleet software, designed to help automate fleet operations and keep vehicles running smoothly. The company builds simple, collaborative software that helps fleets of all sizes track, analyze and improve operations. With a focus on automating the fleet operations process through telematics devices, maintenance shops and fuel cards, Fleetio’s web and mobile based technology gives access to fleet data in real-time. 

Fleetio’s Customer Experience Team serves a worldwide customer base and is always looking to improve, while aiming to reach goals that are beyond the industry standard. The customer is considered first priority and their Customer Experience Team works to ensure customers get the most out of their product. Fleetio’s team has a high sense of ownership of their offerings and they have contributed heavily to the product roadmap, strategy, and customer journey. This has resulted in creating an incredible fleet management tool that keeps customers happy and returning.

During the pandemic, their Customer Experience team has rallied to customers' side and created unique strategies on a case-by-case basis. The Fleetio Customer Experience Team understands the importance of continually learning and growing to improve oneself under difficult circumstances. While other SaaS companies operate with large Customer Experience Teams, Fleetio believes in quality over quantity. The team historically runs very lean, with 4 main specialists for 3,000 accounts, equating to 35,000+ users. Even with a smaller team, they consistently hit service goals and continue to receive positive reviews across various platforms. 

To provide customers with another outlet for problem solving, they offer an online Help Center, which includes over 360 in-depth articles that can all be found with a quick search. For those that prefer to speak to a Support Specialist, or need additional assistance, the Customer Experience Team consistently surpasses goals, with response times under the 30-minute industry average.

Since winning the Silver Stevie Award for Customer Service Department of the Year - Computer Software, Fleetio has continued to provide excellent customer service to their clients. The Customer Support Team has successfully transitioned over to Salesforce Service Cloud, hired and trained a new team of 6 new Support Specialists, and maintained an extremely low missed call percent average. Fleetio’s customer service team continues to receive constant praise, in contrast to many other fleet management providers.

Fleetio won the Silver Stevie Award for Customer Service Department of the Year - Computer Software in the 2022 Stevie® Awards for Sales and Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2023 competition? 

Winners in the 2022 (seventh annual) Stevie® Awards for Great Employers, an international competition, were announced today. The awards recognize the world’s best employers and the human resources professionals, teams, achievements, and HR-related products and suppliers who help to create and drive great places to work.    

Among the organizations with the most Stevie-winning nominations are IBM, worldwide (27 Gold, Silver, and Bronze wins), Tata Consultancy Services, worldwide (23), Enerjisa Enerji, Turkey (21), Bank of America, USA (18), Cathay United Bank, Taiwan (10), Globe Telecom, Inc., Philippines (10), MİGROS, Turkey (10), Abu Dhabi Customs, United Arab Emirates (8), DHL Global Forwarding, Germany (8), Sabanci Holding, Turkey (8), İGA (İstanbul Grand Airport), Turkey (7), Megaphone, Australia (7), and NEQSOL HOLDING, Azerbaijan (7).

Next week two Grand (“best of show”) Stevie Award winners will be announced. One will go to the nomination that received the highest average score from the judges. The other, for Organization of the Year, will go to the entrant with the most award points earned in the competition.

The Grand, Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners will be celebrated during an awards banquet on September 17 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Tickets for the event are now on sale.

More than 950 nominations from organizations in 26 nations were evaluated in this year’s competition. Winners were determined by the average scores of more than 100 professionals worldwide, acting as judges. Winners in the Employer of the Year categories, sponsored by HiBob, were determined by a unique blending of the average scores of the professional judges and more than 80,000 votes by the general public.

The Stevie Awards for Great Employers recognize achievement in many facets of the workplace. Categories include:

•    Employer of the Year
•    HR Achievements
•    HR Individual Awards
•    HR Team Categories
•    Solution Provider Awards
•    COVID-19 Response
•    More than 50 New Product & Service Categories
•    Thought Leadership

The awards are presented by the Stevie Awards, which organizes eight of the world’s leading business awards programs including the prestigious International Business Awards® and American Business Awards®.