We are pleased to announce that videos clips of the 2013 (7th annual) Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the world’s leading sales awards, customer service awards, and contact center awards program are now available to view on YouTube.

Watch the 2013 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service awards presentations here.

More than 360 entrepreneurs, executives, and their guests from around the world attended the business awards banquet on Monday, February 25th at the Paris Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Our 2013 sales award & customer service award video clips showcase business award acceptance speeches made by individuals and organizations from around the world, including:

Ajman Police G.H.Q., Winner of the Bronze Stevie Award for Customer Service Department of the Year
Traveling from the United Arab Emirates, Ajman Police Brigadier thanks the judges and the Stevie Awards. 

Alice Sesay, Winner of the Gold Stevie Award for Contact Center Leader of the Year
Alice graciously accepts her Gold Stevie Award and thanks her leadership team. Alice also accepted the Gold Stevie Award for Capital One Bank for Customer Service Team of the Year.

FreshBooks, Winner of the Gold Stevie Award for Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year
FreshBook's enthusiastic team accepts the Gold Stevie Award, keeping the awards show lively and the audience entertained.

Livius Gonzalez, Winner of the Gold Stevie Award for Front-Line Customer Service Professional of the Year
Livius humbly accepts his award, thanking his company, managers, colleagues, and teammates.

Time Warner Cable, Winner of the Gold Stevie Award for Back Office Customer Service Team of the Year
TWC's Eric Burton accepts the award on behalf of his company, highlighting the success of his team and his team leader.

Want to see more from the sales and customer service awards celebration? Download the awards gala program, view photos from the event, and watch all acceptance speeches.

Cisco of San Jose, California, won a Stevie® Award for Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year, in the company awards categories of The 2011 American Business Awards, the premier business awards program in the U.S.A. (Final judging is now underway for the 2012 ABAs. 2012 winners will be announced at one of our two awards banquets: June 18th at the Marriott Marquis in New York City or September 17th at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco. Click here to order tickets.) Here we profile the company’s award-winning efforts in 2010, and how Cisco’s tremendously successful CSR programs continued to expand in 2011.

Cisco’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs are designed to provide long-term benefits not just to its employees, customers, shareholders, and partners, but also to individuals in communities around the world. In 2010, Cisco focused on three main areas: its employees, the environment, and social investments.  In 2010, Cisco’s corporate awards-winning CSR programs covered:

Employees

• A record 85% of employees completed Cisco's annual Pulse employee survey, up 5 percentage points from fiscal year 2009.
• Talent Connection and CareerPath initiatives were piloted to facilitate career-development opportunities for Cisco employees.
• Telecommuting and flextime opportunities have been long-standing and are used by 95% of Cisco employees.

The Environment

• Nearly 20,000 Cisco employees used Cisco Virtual Office to extend Cisco's own network into their homes, permitting high-speed access to voice, video, and data applications and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by telecommuting one or more days each week.
• To reduce air travel, Cisco installed over 800 Cisco TelePresence® units in conference rooms, customer briefing centers, and individual management offices in over 200 cities in almost 60 countries worldwide. Cisco used WebEx desktop conferencing more than 19 million people-hours in fiscal year 2010.

Society

• Cisco provided $138.7 million in corporate and foundation cash and in-kind contributions to nonprofit organizations worldwide in 2010.
• Cisco employees volunteered 148,355 hours of service with nonprofits around the world.
• The company supported the installation of networking equipment at 83 schools, hospitals, and clinics as part of Cisco's Connecting Sichuan Initiative.
• As part of its Clinton Global Initiative commitment, Cisco helped establish more than 23 Community Knowledge Centers in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Cisco Networking Academy®, Cisco's flagship CSR initiative, offered information and communications technology education to more than 900,000 students in 165 countries.

Continuing Commitment in 2011
Cisco continuing commitment to CRS is underscored in its 2011 Cisco® Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report, which provides details of how the company applied its expertise, technology, and partnership strategies to address environmental, social, and governance issues in 2011—and lays out the company's 2012 objectives.

The report, published earlier this year, outlines Cisco's efforts in five areas: governance and ethics; value chain; Cisco employees; society; and the environment.  Commented John Chambers: "In a time of rapid transition for both Cisco and the communities we serve, Cisco remains deeply committed to acting responsibly, operating sustainably, and contributing to the communities in which we work and live. At Cisco, we know that an intelligent network is not only a powerful tool for doing business, but also for transforming lives, building communities, and protecting the environment. Through the network and strategic partnerships, we can increase the capacity for all of us to succeed." 
Highlights of Cisco’s 2011 CSR program included:

• The company provided $295 million in corporate and foundation cash and in-kind contributions worldwide, including to its flagship Cisco Networking Academy® program;
• The Networking Academy offered information and communications technology education to more than 1 million students enrolled in Networking Academy courses at approximately 10,000 academies in 165 countries;
• Cisco employees volunteered 166,445 hours and donated more than $6.3 million to Cisco CRS programs, generating more than $5.7 million in matching funds from the Cisco Foundation;
• Cisco installed ICT infrastructure, including Cisco HealthPresence®, in 66 healthcare facilities as part of its Connecting Sichuan initiative. More than 7,000 healthcare practitioners use these facilities, which support approximately 15,000 inpatients and 280,000 outpatients per month.

In keeping with its ongoing commitment to the environment, in 2011 Cisco conserved approximately 16.9 million kWh of energy and avoided 7,400 metric tonnes of CO2e emissions by investing $1.9 million in energy-conservation projects. Twenty-six percent of Cisco's global energy use was from renewable sources.

Evolution
Cisco’s CSR reporting evolves from year to year—as does the environment in which all businesses operate. What meets the needs of certain audiences one year may not satisfy a different group of stakeholders the next year.  In response, Cisco conducts stakeholder engagement sessions to gain feedback about its annual CSR report and to stay up-to-date with emerging reporting trends.

Cisco has sought feedback from a range of stakeholders, including:

• MBA students from Georgetown University
• SustainAbility, a sustainable development think tank and strategy consultancy
• Representatives of the socially responsible investment community including SAM and the Vigeo Group
• Experts in environmental issues including Gartner, Inc.

Cisco stakeholders highlighted the need to focus on materiality and robust performance-related data, as well as the need for the company to make greater use of the web. Cisco has used their feedback as an opportunity to educate employees about the importance of focusing on the most significant issues and to track progress on its key performance indicators.

Looking Ahead
Cisco’s Chairman & CEO John Chambers recently attended the 12th World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he spoke on what transformations the world will see in the coming decade.  He commented that  “solving the worlds problems takes bringing diverse people together…not just physically, but more and more through collaborative platforms.” You can view more of his comments at Cisco’s own blog, The Platform.

About John Chambers:
John T. Chambers is Chairman and CEO of Cisco. He has helped grow the company from $70 million when he joined Cisco in January 1991, to $1.2 billion when he assumed the role of CEO, to its current run rate of $40 billion. In 2006,
Chambers was named Chairman of the Board, in addition to his CEO role. Prior to joining Cisco, he spent eight years at Wang Laboratories (1982-1990) and six
years with IBM (1976-1982). He holds a BS/BA degree in business and a law degree from West Virginia University and an MBA in finance and management from Indiana University.

About Cisco:
Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate, and collaborate, this year celebrates 25 years of technology innovation, operational excellence and corporate social responsibility. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com.

The Stevie® Awards is pleased to announce that videos clips of the 6th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the world’s leading sales awards, customer service awards, and contact center awards program are now available to view on YouTube.

Watch the 2012 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service awards presentations here.

More than 350 professionals attended the business awards banquet which took place on Monday, February 27th at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Our 2012 sales award & customer service award video clips showcase business award acceptance speeches made by individuals and organizations from around the world, including:

Rob Jeppsen of Zions Bank, Winner of the Gold Stevie Award for Sales Director of the Year
Rob's speech started the night off by recognizing the team effort behind all individual awards.

MarketBridge, Winner of the Gold Stevie Award for Sales Training or Coaching Program of the Year
MarketBridge's enthusiastic team accepts the Gold Stevie Award and expresses their gratitude for their strong partnerships.

Joey Romaine of Groupon, Winner of the Gold Stevie Award for Young Customer Service Professional of the Year
Honored for his efforts as a young professional, Joey Romaine keeps the awards show lively and the audience entertained.

Vodafone Turkey, Winner of the Gold Stevie Award for Sales Department of the Year, Telecommunications
Traveling from Istanbul, Turkey, Vodafone Turkey's humble speech brought to light the importance business awards have globally.

International Checkout Inc., Winner of the Gold Stevie Award for Telesales Team of the Year
Jackson Strobel, VP of Sales & Operations at International Checkout, and his "lean machine" sales team show the audience that size doesn't matter.

The 6th annual corporate awards banquet was the first to showcase our three levels of distinction: gold, silver and bronze as part of our 10th anniversary celebration. Previously, only overall category winners have received Gold Stevie Awards.

Want more sales and customer service awards celebration? Watch all acceptance speeches, listen to the live recording and view photos from the event.

Donlen of Northbrook, Illinois, USA, received a Stevie® Award for Corporate Environmental Responsibility Program of the Year—Up to 2,500 Employees in the company awards categories of The 2011 American Business Awards. (The American Business Awards are now accepting entries. Download your entry kit here and submit your 2012 ABA entries by the March 28 deadline.) Here we take a closer look at what steps fleet financer and management provider, Donlen is taking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

As a global provider of fleet management solutions, the corporate awards winner was concerned with the following facts:

• Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are the leading cause of climate change;

• The commercial fleet industry currently manages nearly 3,000,000 vehicles, and one-third of GHG emissions in the United States come from the transportation sector; and

• The average fleet produces nearly 9,000 metric tons of GHG annually, which is equivalent to the GHG emissions produced by burning 1,012,373 gallons of gasoline.

In 2010, Donlen stepped forward as an industry leader and became a member of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), collaborating with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in a CGI Commitment to Action titled “Commercial Fleet 20% GHG Emissions Reduction,” and launching Fleets for Change, a fully independent website and robust reporting database.

Utilizing significant Donlen resources, Fleets for Change works with companies to help transform the environmental impact of the U.S. commercial fleet industry. This five-year commitment will help to reduce fleet emission levels by 20%, generating a reduction of more than 500,000 metric tonnes of greenhouse gases.

Pledging Reductions
Any company that is committed to working to track and reduce GHG is welcome to join Fleets for Change. After joining, participants pledge reduction levels then upload their fuel usage and MPG data into a secure database. There, they can not only track their progress against their own goals, but anonymously benchmark against similar fleets with regard to vehicle type and/or class, industry, fleet size, and other criteria. (No company names or identifiers are ever disclosed to other participants.) Access to this cross-industry and fleet data is unprecedented in the fleet management industry.

Creating Change
The organization awards winner's commitment to creating meaningful industry change is easily recognizable through their Fleets for Change initiative:

• This is an industry-wide initiative open to any fleet that wishes to participate, whether or not they are a Donlen customer. Fleets for Change is a fully secure, independent site.

• There is no cost for a company to participate in Fleets for Change. Donlen is underwriting all associated costs of the site, database, reporting, and analysis.
  
  
• Donlen is committed to protecting the security of participant information: no individual data is identified or used for any purpose other than confidential reporting by Fleets for Change to the Clinton Global Initiative.

Best Practices
For companies needing assistance to identify their reduction goals and strategies, business award winner, Donlen offers best practices based on extensive experience helping their customers to develop and implement sustainability initiatives. For their customers, Donlen consultants provide performance metrics, benchmarking data, analytical support, facilitating discussions around lifecycle costs and cost reduction. These effective strategies, some of which are shared with Fleets for Change participants, help to measure and reduce fleet GHG.

Corporate award winner and CEO Gary Rappeport spearheads Donlen’s innovation and unparalleled success in the fleet industry. His focus on employee and customer satisfaction, corporate social responsibility, and environmental consciousness has put Donlen in the forefront of workplace excellence, and allowed Donlen to experience unprecedented growth under his leadership.

“The transportation industry is responsible for 28% of the overall greenhouse gas emissions in the United States,” stated Rappeport.“As a leader in the fleet management industry, it’s important that Donlen takes the initiative to help reduce commercial fleet GHG on a broader scale. The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) offers us the ideal venue to address this critically important issue, and we're proud to collaborate with EDF to be part of the larger work of CGI.”

About Gary Rappeport:
Chief Executive Officer Gary Rappeport joined Donlen in 1986 and held a variety of roles prior to taking the leadership position in 1996. Named Executive of the Year-Services in The 2009 American Business Awards, Gary is committed to both employee and customer satisfaction, and developed the Donlen Service Success Chain in which annual goals are set and achievements benchmarked. Gary received a Bachelor's degree in Finance at the University of Florida and an MBA in Finance and Information Systems at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a member of the Chicago Chapter of the World Presidents’ Organization, and serves as chairman of the American Automotive Leasing Association. Gary is on the Dean's Advisory Board of the University of Wisconsin Business School. He is an active member of The Sierra Club and is diligently involved with Children's Oncology Services, Inc. Prior to joining Donlen, he held sales and management positions at NCR and HP.

About Donlen:
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Hertz Corporation (NYSE:HTZ), Donlen (www.donlen.com), with headquarters in Northbrook, Illinois, is a global provider of fleet financing and management solutions. Since 1965, Donlen has offered its clients highly personalized and responsive customer service, and their workplace excellence has been recognized as one of Crain's Chicago Business "List of 20 Best Places to Work in Chicago" each year from 2009-2011, a Leader on "The Global Outsourcing 100®" list by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) for five of the last six years, a National Association for Business Resources "101 Best and Brightest Places to Work For in Chicago" each year from 2007-2011, the 2012 Gold Stevie® Award winner for Business Intelligence, and the 2012 Silver Stevie Award winner for Front Line Customer Service Team of the Year in the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

The entry deadline for The 10th Annual American Business Awards, the premier business awards program in the U.S.A., is quickly approaching – it’s Wednesday, March 28, 2012. You can start submitting your entries today here.

How the submission process works:

1. Request your entry kit. 
   Once emailed to you, the kit will be your guide on everything you'll need to know about how to prepare and submit your entries.
2. Review the 2012 ABA categories.
   Pick who you would like to recognize and why they should be recognized. We have categories highlighting organizations, teams, departments, and individuals, as well as:

• App Awards
• Company / Organization Awards
• Customer Service Awards
• HR Awards 
• IT Awards
• Management Awards
• Marketing Awards
• New Product Awards
• PR Awards
• Web Site Awards

3. Submit your entries.
   Select your categories, write your submissions according to the instructions, and submit your entries.

Benefits of submitting a business award entry:

1. More chances to win
   All Finalists in the Best New Product or Service categories will automatically be included in the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products, a public vote that will commence in July. The People's Choice Winners will be honored at the new tech awards ceremony in San Francisco on September 17. Finalists in the Best New Product or Service categories will have an opportunity to win two awards: a Stevie® Award, as voted by your peers, and a crystal People's Choice Stevie Award, as voted by your customers.
2. New award distinctions
   The American Business Awards banquets will showcase our three levels of award distinction: Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Awards. You can learn more about the new awards here.
3. Multiple awards banquets
   The 10th Annual corporate awards will have two awards ceremonies. We will hold our traditional banquet at the Marriott Marquis in New York City on June 18th and have a second ceremony in San Francisco at the Julia Morgan Ballroom on September 17th where we will announce our tech award winners.

Helpful resources to make your submission process easier:

1. Step-by-step video on how to submit entries
   Watch our helpful video tutorial on how to successfully enter submissions.
2. Review past winners' entries here.
   They're great models for how you should write your entries.
3. 7 tips on submitting winning entries
   Read our tips on how to submit winning entries.

If you have any questions regarding your ABA submissions, call us at + 1 703-547-8389 or email us at help@stevieawards.com and we'll get back to you right away.

Not going to make the March 28th deadline? Don't worry, you can still submit entries through April 25 with a $35.00 late fee.   Click here to see the ABA's calendar.  

The Stevie® Awards is pleased to show you the first photo of the real Silver and Bronze Stevie Awards trophies which have been introduced as part of our 10th anniversary celebration of the start of the Stevie Awards movement. The new awards are manufactured by R.S. Owens in Chicago, the longtime manufacturer of the Stevie and other major awards including the Oscars and the Emmys. 

The Silver and Bronze Stevie Awards will be introduced at the 6th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, which recognize the achievements of call center, customer service, and sales professionals worldwide, on February 27 at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.  The business awards banquet, which will confer sales awards and customer service awards, will be the first Stevie Awards program in which Silver and Bronze winners will be named. (Tickets are still available; support your organization's good customer service and sales excellence by reserving a table today.) Henceforth, all honorees in Stevie Awards programs will be Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stevie Award winners. 

Finalists that receive the top scoring qualifying entry in each category will receive a Gold Stevie Award. Finalists that receive a final average score of at least 8.0 out of a possible 10 will be named Silver Stevie Award winners. All other Finalists will be designated as Bronze Stevie Award winners.

Gold Stevie winners will automatically receive a Gold Stevie trophy.  Silver and Bronze Stevie winners will automatically receive a Silver or Bronze medal and will have the option to purchase their Stevie trophy. With the introduction of our new corporate awards distinctions, there will no longer be Finalist certificates.

Leave us a comment and let us know what you think about the new Silver and Bronze Stevie Award trophies!

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the start of the Stevie® Awards, we will introduce Silver and Bronze Stevie Awards at our 6th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service banquet. Henceforth, all honorees in Stevie Awards programs will be Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stevie Award winners. (Entries for our 2012 sales and customer service awards, which honor good customer service and sales excellence, are still being accepted. The last day to submit entries is this Wednesday, January 18; download your entry kit here.)

Finalists that receive the top scoring qualifying entry in each category will receive a Gold Stevie Award.  Finalists that receive a final average score of at least 8.0 out of a possible 10 will be named Silver Stevie Award winners. All other Finalists will be designated as Bronze Stevie Award winners.

Gold Stevie winners will automatically receive a Gold Stevie trophy.  Silver and Bronze Stevie winners will automatically receive a Silver or Bronze medal and will have the option to purchase their Stevie trophy. With the introduction of our new business awards distinctions, there will no longer be Finalist certificates.

Finalists at The 2012 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service banquet will be the first to receive our new corporate awards distinctions. The annual banquet will be held on February 27 at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

How will your organization strive to win a Gold Stevie Award?