Stevie-Winner Prevents Distracted Driving

Posted by Maggie Gallagher on Wed, Jan 26, 2022 @ 09:12 PM

Did you know that 80% of all accidents occur when you take your eyes off the road for three seconds or less? At highway speeds, a look away can have you traveling half a football field blind. 

Stevie Award winner Drop Stop is the Original and Patented Vehicle Seat Gap Filler and one of ABC’s Shark Tank's most successful and popular selling products in the show's history! Shark Tank investor Lori Greiner offered Drop Stop a deal when its co-founders appeared on Shark Tank in 2013. Since then, Drop Stop has been in retailers across the country and in millions of vehicles, helping to keep people safer on the roads.

drop stop
Drop Stop prevents items (cell phones, french fries, etc.) from being dropped into that annoying, yet ever so dangerous gap between the seat and center console in your vehicle.

Drop Stop's automotive safety device was created to 'Stop the Drop' and keep your eyes on the road, not in your gap.

Drop Stop's mission is to save lives and put an end to the leading killer on the roads, distracted driving. Due to the product's success, Drop Stop has been able to protect millions of lives across the United States with more than 5 million Drop Stops installed in vehicles and more than $50 million in sales.

Drop Stop has been featured on 11 episodes of Shark Tank, Good Morning America, CNBC, Oprah.com, Howard Stern, The View, The Queen Latifah Show, and more.Drop stop 2

As Drop Stop continues to strive to save lives, they have been able to outfit the entire Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) fleet of more than 3,500 police cruisers with Drop Stops.

In one year after those LAPD vehicles had traveled over 42,000,000 miles with Drop Stops installed, their collision rate with injuries to Officers dropped by 43% and Drop Stop was the only equipment change.

Driver distraction is the number one cause of death for officers on duty; being able to significantly reduce these accidents due to Drop Stop's auto safety device truly ensures that Drop Stop is achieving its mission to save lives by reducing distracted driving.

More of Drop Stop's milestones in 2021 include: 

- Sold over 5 million Drop Stops with over $50 million in sales.
- Drop Stops have become one of the top-selling and most popular products in ABC’s Shark Tank’s show’s history.
- Drop Stops are now sold nationwide in Walmart, The Container Store, soon-to-be Target, thousands of car washes and dealerships, hundreds of grocery and convenience stores, and many more outlets.
- Achieved over 30,000 Amazon reviews with a rating of 4.6+ stars.
- Completed over 200 sold-out appearances on QVC.

Drop Stop won the Gold Stevie Award for Company of the Year - Automotive & Transport Equipment in The 2021 International Business Awards®.

Interested in Entering the 2022 International Business Awards?

Request Your Entry Kit

Topics: International business awards, new product awards, entrepreneur awards, safe driving tools

Final Entry Deadline Extended in the 2022 Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service

Posted by Maggie Gallagher on Thu, Jan 13, 2022 @ 09:00 AM

Entrants Can Submit Nominations in the Top Sales and Customer Service Awards Through February 2

By popular demand, the Stevie® Awards have extended the final entry deadline in the 16th annual Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service to Wednesday, February 2. The original entry deadline was January 12. These are the world’s premier awards for sales and customer service professionals, teams, and organizations.

Entry kits and complete details on the competition are available at http://www.StevieAwards.com/Sales.

Request Your 2022 Entry Kit

SASCS22 Extended

Eligible nominees include departments, teams, and professionals from around the world who work in customer service, contact centers, business development, and sales. New products and services and solution providers used by those professionals are also eligible. The 2022 awards will recognize achievements since July 1, 2019.

Winners will be announced on February 28, 2022. Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners will be celebrated at a virtual awards ceremony on May 11.

The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service feature more than 150 sales awards, customer service awards, business development awards, new product awards, and solution provider awards categories. Entrants may submit any number of nominations to any number of categories.

New this year, for all categories the submission requirements have been extended to allow nominations to include accomplishments for the past two years instead of one.

There are many new categories for 2022 including Sales Engineer of the Year, Sales Support Professional of the Year, Virtual and Pre-Sales Professional of the Year, Remote Sales Innovation of the Year, Sales Employer of the Year, and an entirely new section of categories to recognize Thought Leadership achievements in business development, customer service, and sales.  Explore all of the categories here.

The Stevie Awards is also pleased to present the Ethics in Sales Award, sponsored by Sales Partnerships. This category has no entry fee. This award recognizes organizations for best practices and achievements in demonstrating the highest ethical standards in the sales industry. Entrants can submit specific examples, case studies, practices, etc. that illustrate why the organization being nominated should be considered an excellent example of best practices in sales. This award is based on activities in 2021. 

Stevie Awards President Maggie Miller states “Every year our judges grow more and more impressed with the submissions in the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. We encourage any organization who wants to be recognized for their achievements since July 2019 to request an entry kit to see which categories would best highlight those successes.

Winners of the 2021 edition of the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service included American Red Cross, Blackbaud, Inc., Carbonite, Cisco Systems Inc., ClassicCars.com, DHL Express, ElectronicArts, GoDaddy, IBM, John Hancock Financial Solutions, Land O’Lakes, Mailchimp, Modern Campus, Nasdaq Governance Solutions, Nutrisystem, Paylocity, SoftPro, Travelzoo, ValueSelling Associates, VIZIO, Inc., Vodafone Turkey, and more.

The 2022 competition will be judged by more than 150 professionals around the world.

Topics: customer service awards, new product awards, sales awards, business development awards, Steve Awards for Sales and Customer Service

Turnitin Helps Students Uphold Academic Integrity

Posted by Hailey Roos on Wed, Dec 01, 2021 @ 09:47 PM
  • Turnitin is dedicated to ensuring the integrity of education and research with products used by students and educators
  • The company’s Feedback Studio with Draft Coach allows students to directly improve their research and writing skills in real-time while drafting essays 
  • Turnitin’s comprehensive database helps students do proper research, cite sources effectively, and deliver high-quality academic writing 

About Turnitin

Turnitin is a global company dedicated to ensuring the integrity of education and research and meaningfully improving learning outcomes. Turnitin partners with educational institutions to promote honesty, consistency, and fairness across all subject areas and assessment types. Turnitin’s products are used by students and professionals to do their best, original work.

Turnitin is well known as a company that upholds academic integrity, streamlines assessment, and encourages students to do their own work. Turnitin’s most recent offering, Turnitin Feedback Studio with Draft Coach, gives students the power to directly improve their original thinking skills while drafting assignments. Students learn by making mistakes, but learning is much more effective when those mistakes are made - and able to be corrected - before they turn in an assignment. When students can write, iterate, and revise their work, tremendous gains are made in their writing ability. Feedback Studio with Draft Coach is exactly the product to allow that interactive process to occur in Google Docs, where most students are composing essays for their courses. 

Draft Coach’s features and benefits include: 

  • Students run a similarity check directly within Google Docs to ensure proper research and understand where to revise their writing prior to final submission
  • Students give credit where credit is due by using Draft Coach to find any missing references and citations 
  • In-app guidance helps students think critically about their similarities and citation checks
  • Students tend to spend more time writing and revising before submitting their final essay, meaning that they are learning more with each iteration and also turning in better essays 
  • Teachers save time because students can apply the formative feedback to correct errors and submit their own best and original work 

Turnitin Feedback Studio with Draft Coach helps students improve their academic writing and research skills by providing access to Similarity Reports and citation feedback as they draft in Google Docs. Draft Coach serves as an integrity coach that lives where students work and supports them in doing proper research, citing sources effectively, and delivering high-quality academic writing. By providing students with formative feedback on citations and matches with Turnitin’s comprehensive database of internet, student papers, and academic content, Draft Coach helps educators cultivate more independent learners and confident writers. 

Turnitin won the Gold Stevie Award for New Product & Service Categories - Education - Learning Capacity-Building Solution in The 2021 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2022 American Business Awards? 

Request the entry kit

Topics: American business awards, product of the year, new product awards, new product of the year, best new product or service, consumer product awards

Stevie® Winners Announced in 18th American Business Awards®

Posted by Maggie Gallagher on Mon, May 18, 2020 @ 11:00 AM

The Stevie® Awards, organizers of the world’s premier business awards programs, today announced the Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie winners in The 18th Annual American Business Awards®.

All organizations operating in the U.S.A. – large and small, public and private, for-profit and non-profit - are eligible to submit nominations to the ABAs in a wide range of categories, honoring achievement in every aspect of work life, from customer service and management to public relations and product development. More than 3,600 nominations were reviewed in the judging process this year by 230 professionals worldwide, whose average scores determined the winners.

ABA spring day 5-1

Winners of three or more Gold Stevie Awards include:

Cisco Systems (San Jose, CA), CitizenNet & Magnitude Digital (New York, NY), Comcast Business (Philadelphia, PA), Crocs (Niwot, CO), Fazoli's Italian Restaurants (Lexington, KY), George P Johnson Experiential Marketing (Auburn Hills, MI), Harman International (Stamford, CT), Hearts & Science (New York, NY), Hilton Grand Vacations (Orlando, FL), Humana (Louisville, KY), Jeunesse Global (Orlando, FL), John Hancock (Boston, MA), London Computer System (Cincinnati, OH), Mastercard (Purchase, NY), National Association of REALTORS® (Chicago, IL), Newberry Tanks and Equipment (West Memphis, AR), Nexxt Gen Corporation (Irving, TX), POWERHOME (Mooresville, NC), Red Hat (Raleigh, NC),  State Farm (Bloomington, IL), Toft Group (San Francisco, CA), and United Imaging (Houston, TX).

Among other winners, organizations with five or more Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stevie wins include:

Bank of America (Charlotte, NC), BMO Financial Group (Chicago, IL), Curion (Deerfield, IL), Fannie Mae (Washington, DC), LifeVantage (Sandy UT), Medical Marijuana, Inc. (San Diego, CA), Merkle (Columbia, MD), Metro Development Group (Tampa, FL), MONAT Global (Miami, FL), Pareto Intelligence (Chicago, IL), Passageways (Lafayette, IN), SoftPro (Raleigh, NC), TBI (Chicago, IL), Tek Leaders Inc (Plano, TX), Tinuiti (New York, NY), United Imaging (Houston, TX), and Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. (New York, NY).

For a complete list of the Stevie Award winners announced today, visit www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

2020 Stevie winners will be celebrated and presented their awards during a virtual awards ceremony on Wednesday, August 5 at 2pm ET. Details of the event are available on the website.

The categories that recognize outstanding new products and services introduced in the USA are among the most heavily subscribed in the ABAs, and every new product or service nominated in The 2020 American Business Awards is included in voting for the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products, a worldwide public vote. Voting opened today at http://peopleschoice.stevieawards.com and will conclude on July 15. People’s Choice Stevie winners will be announced the week of July 20 and will be honored during the August 5 virtual presentations.


“Despite the toughest business conditions in memory, American organizations continue to demonstrate their commitment to innovation, creativity, and bottom-line results,” said Stevie Awards President Maggie Gallagher.  “This year’s Stevie-winning nominations are full of inspiring stories of persistence, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and compassion.  We celebrate all of their stories and look forward to showcasing them during our virtual awards ceremony on August 5.”

Topics: app awards, American business awards, new product awards, tech awards

Take Care of Your Payment Blues with BluePay

Posted by Maggie Gallagher on Wed, Jul 10, 2019 @ 10:31 AM

The payment environment is becoming more diverse as many vendors are able to offer different methods for payment solutions. BluePay, a provider of technology-enabled payment processing for merchants and suppliers of any size, offers fast and secure payment processing solutions to fit every business’s needs. The leading single-source payment technology from BluePay has been helping businesses for over 15 years by streamlining functions, reducing operating costs, and increasing revenue. This is why they’ve won the Gold Stevie in the Best Product or Service of the Year category, a Silver Stevie for Company of the Year, and a Bronze Stevie in the Customer Service Team of the Year category.

Pleasant Paying

Being a payments technology company means staying ahead of the curve by developing solutions for new ways to pay like Apple Pay, PayPal, and wearable technology to purchase goods and services with ease. Jennifer Seebock, Marketing Coordinator at BluePay, says their merchants grow their businesses by offering the services they need to attract new customers.

"Through point-of-sale, online, mobile, and software integration, we proudly serve over 47,000 merchants and process $14 billion in transactions annually.” BluePay is headquartered in Naperville, Illinois, with offices in Chicago, Maryland, New York, and Toronto.

bluepay

Recognition

Receiving payments online can be risky business as technology advances and electronic theft becomes more complex. Seebock relays why BluePay takes this seriously and considers winning awards as a way to celebrate hard work and genuine innovation.

"Winning Stevie Awards benefits our entire organization and provides opportunities to tell the world BluePay is a great company and offers leading products and services."

She goes on to say prospects are more inclined to choose their company for payment processing knowing they are recipients of such prestigious awards. The awards provide a sense of confidence for their merchants, partners, and financial institutions.  They also increase brand awareness.

"We have a goal to increase our brand awareness through award recognition, and the Stevies were on top of our list."

Charitable Culture

BluePay believes one of their differentiators is their company culture. They recently raised funds for U.S. servicemen and women through the Wounded Warrior Project. The president of the Canadian division is doing the Race Across America (RAM) with Team True Patriot Love to raise funds for the Canadian Armed Forces. Seebock details how they donate time and efforts to important causes.

"We recently implemented a program for charitable time off and corporate donation matching to encourage our team to give more to their communities. For over eight years, we have contributed a percentage of our profits to the Chicagoland Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation and have "pink" parties in October."

Frictionless Service

BluePay also engages in fun activities like Blackhawks games, Bulls games, golf outings, summer picnics, and off-site meetings to encourage creativity. With a common goal to be the leader in payments technology, all their teams work closely with "Voice of the Customer" surveys and formulate teams to address concerns or bridge the gaps in their processes to make working with BluePay frictionless.

"We’re proud to have a high-performing workforce delivering outstanding services and solutions."

_________________________________________________________________

Interested in winning a Stevie Award for Best New Product or Service? Or maybe for Customer Service?

Request the entry kit here.

Topics: customer service awards, new product awards, stevie awards for sales and customer service

Entertainment Chain GameWorks Goes “All In” with Esports Investment

Posted by Maggie Gallagher on Thu, Jun 13, 2019 @ 11:14 AM

GameWorks, a complete entertainment destination with seven venues nationwide, is a key influencer in the reshaping of the Family Entertainment Center (FEC) industry. The FECs of yesterday were mainly comprised of large arcades, anchored by pinball and the beloved Pac Man machines, and they became the place to be for families, friends and teens.

Today, expansive, brightly lit entertainment centers dominate this landscape, and GameWorks, the specialty entertainment chain based in San Francisco, California, United States, feels poised to grow its share of the market, particularly with its natural evolution and rapid progression into the esports realm. Esports is taking the entertainment sector by storm.

GW_Esports3

That’s the chain’s secret weapon - Esports lounges. Located in each venue, these lounges cater to fans of competitive gaming, including both players and spectators. Each of the rooms is equipped with 20-40 PCs and consoles, along with a library of approximately 100 popular video games, says Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Philip N. Kaplan.

The lounges accommodate about one hundred guests each, all of whom can play against one another in casual competition or participate in one of the roughly two hundred tournaments held at GameWorks locations every month. According to Kaplan, the company is also planning to bring in more players for local and regional tournaments in the coming months.

“GameWorks is recognized nationally for its esports emphasis,” he says. “Esports is growing quickly , and GameWorks is focused on expanding in this area. GameWorks, with its decades of gaming experience, organically segued into esports over the years, and now, has the perfect platform from which to grow.”

Riding the Esports Wave

GameWorks is outwardly optimistic about its foray into esports, due to the rapid growth and broad interest both in the U.S. and globally..

The company was founded in 1996 as a joint venture between Sega, Universal Studios, and DreamWorks SKG, and the bold experiment, which involved taking on more entrenched competitors, such as Dave & Buster’s, didn’t exactly go as planned.

After ramping up its presence around the country, the organization filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and again in 2010, changed ownership several times, and shuttered many of its locations. In 2017, the esports tournament business Oomba bought GameWorks and enacted a plan to make competitive gaming a staple of its new layout.

Last year, however, it changed hands once again. One of its lenders, ExWorks Capital, acquired the chain, and under the leadership of Philip N. Kaplan, the new chairman and CEO, GameWorks is doubling down on its esports strategy. Earlier this year, it added lounges to four additional locations in Virginia, United States; Illinois, United States; Minnesota, United States; and Kentucky, United States.

For Kaplan and his team, this is a way to capitalize on the skyrocketing growth of competitive gaming. The consulting firm Activate predicts esports viewership will reach 84 million by 2021, a bigger audience than that currently watching professional baseball or basketball, and because most of the fans are in the 18 to 34 year-old age bracket, esports also has the potential to bring in a key demographic.

Additionally, the team members who work and operate the esports lounges are competitive gamers in their own right, something Kaplan says brings more excitement to the offering.

“Gaming is on the rise, even in high schools,” says Kaplan. “Companies that have frameworks built and foundations from which to grow will succeed in the esports space. As far as we know, we are the only national entertainment venue that already had a footing in esports, even before the industry took off.”

New Leadership, New Culture

The new chief executive sees gaming as a big part of the future of the company, which earned a Silver StevieⓇ Award for Achievement in Management in the hospitality and leisure segment.

“As an established leader in competitive gaming and entertainment, GameWorks is well positioned to capitalize on this burgeoning space,” says Kaplan. “Our strong foothold in esports, including lounges in every location, further strengthens our leadership position and will serve as a springboard for future growth.”

Under his watch, the company is also hoping to cash in on gaming activity outside of its own entertainment centers. Earlier this year, it announced a partnership with SCCG Management, which will bring lounges to casinos around the country. At these locations, visitors can bet on esports competitions. It’s calling the venture “Play by GameWorks.”

The expanded effort within esports isn’t the only part of Kaplan’s turnaround strategy, himself the winner of a Gold Stevie for Maverick of the Year in the consumer services category. The former healthcare IT executive is trying to reshape the organization’s top-down managerial approach in favor of a more collaborative culture. Kaplan has also put in place a “top three” philosophy, where the company focuses its efforts on business units that have the most impact on the bottom line.

Recent corporate changes are giving the organization the foundation and confidence that it won’t repeat setbacks of the past.

“With the right owners and management in place, GameWorks is on a new trajectory toward success,” he says. “The Stevie Awards are proof to our team these efforts truly paid off and made a difference.

Topics: American business awards, new product awards, maverick of the year

Winners Announced in 2019 People's Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite New Products

Posted by Maggie Gallagher on Wed, Jun 05, 2019 @ 10:07 AM

MONAT PET’s Gentle Cleansing Dog Wash received the most votes of any nominee in the 2019 People's Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite New Products, a feature of The American Business Awards®, the U.S.A.’s top business awards program, which are now in their 17th year.

The worldwide public vote was conducted last month, with the highest number of votes deciding the winners in a variety of product categories. More than 43,000 votes were cast.  To win, a category’s leading vote-getter had to have received at least 100 votes. MONAT PET’s Gentle Cleansing Dog Wash collected almost 8,000 votes.

ABA 2-2

The crystal People’s Choice Stevie Awards will be presented to winners at The American Business Awards banquet on Tuesday, June 11 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. There, the winners of peer-adjudicated Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Awards will also be presented their awards. More than 650 executives from across the USA will attend. Watch the ceremony live on June 11 at 7pm ET on LiveStream.

All new products and services nominated in the new product awards categories of this year’s American Business Awards were eligible to be included in voting for the people’s choice awards.

The winners of the 2019 People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products are:

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Solution: Applause for Amazon Alexa
Business-to-Business Product: Fannie Mae - CAS REMIC
Business-to-Business Service: Stay In The Game BPO Services
Big Data Solution: Workiva Wdata
Business Technology – Other: TEKLYNX' 2018 Barcode & RFID Labeling Solutions
Cloud Application/Service: Information Builders Cloud
Cloud Storage / Backup: Quest Software's QoreStor
Collaboration/Social Networking Solution: Passageways' OnSemble Employee Intranet
Consumer Electronics (tie): Carnival Corporation's OceanMedallion and Relay by Republic Wireless
Consumer Product/Service: MONAT PET’s Gentle Cleansing Dog Wash
Content Management Solution: John Hancock Business Communications' Omni
Content Solution: Thomson Reuters Checkpoint Catalyst:  US GAAP Accounting for Income Taxes
Corporate Learning/Workforce Development Solution: Skillsoft Aspire
Digital Process Automation Solution: Datamatics Global Services's TruBot
Education Solution: Pearson K-12 Learning - Project Imagine: U.S. History
Endpoint Security Management Solution: SaltStack SecOps
Financial Service: Bank of America Digital Mortgage Experience
FinTech Solution: Fiserv's Card Risk Office Fraud Warning
Governance/Risk/Compliance Solution: Mentor by eDriving
Healthcare Technology Solution: Lumeon's CPM 4.0
Healthcare or Pharmaceutical Product or Service: Virtrial's Patient Management Program
Human Capital Management Solution: Apex Informatics' Sendtral
Identity & Access Security Solution: EZShield Mobile Defense Suite
Insurance Solution: BenefitMall Client Ready Quote System
Integration Solution: Squelch
Marketing/Public Relations Solution: TapClicks Marketing Operations Platform
Payments Solution: Wisely Pay by ADP
Platform as a Service: Urjanet Utility Interval Data Platform
Software Development Solution: Wind River's Helix Virtualization Platform
Supply Chain Management Solution: UltraShipTMS Spot Quote Solution
Vendor Management Solution: goLance online workforce platform

Topics: American business awards, company awards, new product awards

Stevie Winners Announced in 2019 American Business Awards®

Posted by Maggie Gallagher on Thu, May 02, 2019 @ 11:10 AM

The Stevie® Awards, organizers of the world’s premier business awards programs, today announced the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie winners in The 17th Annual American Business Awards®.

All organizations operating in the U.S.A. – large and small, public and private, for-profit and non-profit - are eligible to submit nominations to the ABAs in a wide range of categories, honoring achievement in every aspect of work life, from customer service and management to public relations and product development. More than 3,800 nominations were reviewed in the judging process this year by more than 200 professionals, whose average scores determined the winners.

2019 Stevie winners will be celebrated and presented their awards during a gala event on Tuesday, June 11 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York. Tickets are now on sale. The presentations will be broadcast via Livestream.

ABA 2-1

Publicis Sapient (Miami, FL) with eight Gold and four Bronze Stevies, and The XD Agency (Atlanta, GA) with seven Gold and one Silver, are leaders among the Gold Stevie Winners with wins in a wide range of categories. They are sure to be among the winners of the Grand Stevie Award trophies, the top overall winners in this year’s ABAs, who will be announced next week.

Among the organizations with the most Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award wins are ADP (Roseland, NJ), ARIIX (Bountiful, UT),  Comcast Business (Philadelphia, PA), Cvent (McLean, VA), Darktrace (San Francisco, CA), Jeunesse Global (Orlando, FL), LABOV Marketing Communications and Training (Fort Wayne, IN), Lycored (Orange, NJ), Merkle (Columbia, MD), PAN Communications (Boston, MA), Reltio (Redwood Shores, CA), Rimini Street (Las Vegas, NV), and SoftPro (Raleigh, NC).

For a complete list of the Stevie Award winners announced today, visit http://www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

Every new product or service nominated in The 2019 American Business Awards is included in voting for the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products, a worldwide public vote. Voting is now open at http://peopleschoice.stevieawards.com and will conclude on May 31. People’s Choice Stevie winners will be announced the week of June 3 and will be honored during the June 11 presentations.

“The nominations submitted for The 2019 American Business Awards were outstanding.  The judges found the competition to be intense, and those recognized as Stevie Award winners should be immensely proud of this accomplishment,” said Michael Gallagher, president and founder of the Stevie Awards.

About the Stevie Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in seven programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.

Topics: marketing awards, American business awards, new product awards, entrepreneur awards

Use Fun Surveys to Gather Valuable Customer Feedback

Posted by Maggie Gallagher on Tue, Apr 30, 2019 @ 12:21 PM

We all get them from time to time: emails from places we’ve shopped promising “quick” surveys in order to assess the buying experience. Most customers, however, soon learn the process is rarely as swift as advertised.

While it’s not hard to see why response rates to these survey requests tend to be abysmally low—often less than 10 percent of consumers to whom they’re sent respond—British entrepreneur Lindsay Willott is trying hard to increase that number.

Her solution is an email survey individuals can complete with just a single click. Rather than making customers navigate a series of questions about various aspects of the business encounter, she’s selling clients on the idea that simple is better.

customer thermometer

When consumers get a survey from her eight-year-old company, Customer Thermometer, they have just four options: gold (very satisfied), green (happy), yellow (mildly concerned), or red (dissatisfied).

Because of the survey’s concise nature, clients can choose any number of delivery options, including emailing the survey to subscribers or embedding the quick poll into their help desks or marketing automation apps. Companies can even place them into the email signatures of their employees, allowing businesses to track how each team member is performing.

A New Level of Response

Prior to launching Customer Thermometer, which is based in Oxford, England, United Kingdom, Willott ran a marketing agency that sent out annual customer satisfaction surveys. She says the firm never had an effective way to link that feedback to a specific customer experience, which limited the value of the response.

“Customers were leaving without warning and often for reasons that could have been fixed, had we known about them in advance,” she says.

Willott came to the realization that a dramatically stripped-down approach to surveys was not only a lot quicker but had the potential for much better response rates. Nine months pregnant with her son, she sold the agency in 2010 and began working on her new customer feedback venture.

It was a bold move—and not simply because she soon had a baby to care for. For one, Willott admits she did not have much in the way of technical experience, a significant hurdle for any software-based business. After extensive research and planning, she partnered with local developers to get her idea off the ground. Four months later, the app was ready for launch.

“Early on, we focused on the UK market. We signed up a few customers, including [the telecom firm] BT Group, which was our chance to really understand how people wanted to use the product,” says Willott.

Eventually, several foreign companies heard about the service and signed on.

“It wasn’t until four years ago we really realized the potential of the overseas market and made a concerted effort to grow our international business,” she says.

Customer Thermometer managed to amass a litany of big-name enterprises to its client list, including Dollar Shave Club, Sonos, and the job-searching website Indeed.com. In total, the company now has nearly 2,000 customers in more than 60 countries.

Companies aren’t left with troves of data for analysis, but they do get a sense of what their customers’ overall experiences are like. Some of Willott’s clients now enjoy survey response rates of 80 percent or higher—a number that is far beyond the norm in the marketing research field.

“Our vision is to create surveys that customers actually love responding to because they use such a light touch and are fun,” says Willott.

It’s not just about having a sound idea, though. Willott says her small team of eight employees also makes sure customers get a high level of service to ensure positive relationships. Recently, Willott and her team became finalists for Customer Service Department of the Year in the Computer Software category at the upcoming 13th annual Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service?

Request the entry kit

“Our core values are caring about each other, accountability, and a genuine belief that amazing customer service feels like magic,” the executive adds.

Topics: customer service awards, new product awards, stevie awards for sales and customer service

How Employee Performance Metrics Can Help Improve a Company’s Bottom Line

Posted by Maggie Gallagher on Wed, Apr 10, 2019 @ 01:54 PM

As technology and artificial intelligence play increasingly large roles in the economy and as the global population increases, the question of how to manage people effectively becomes more critical. Companies evaluate their assets, refine their budgets, and audit their ROIs. Many implement premier software to manage accounting, product systems processes, customer relations, and even human resources needs. But what about managing the productivity of the greatest (and most expensive) cost of doing business—human capital?

Human capital management (HCM) is becoming more prominent as companies seek to manage assets and to allocate resources better, and business software companies, such as Asure Software, are going beyond time card tracking to do so. Through HCM, master employee records can be kept in one place. With all the data logged, managers can better allocate their workplace talent in a cost-effective way. A company can even break down the overhead cost of each employee, down to how much electricity every office uses. When streamlining systems, this kind of detail makes efficient business sense.

asure software 1asure software 2

Eric Garton, a Harvard Business Review contributor, discussed HCM in his 2017 article “What If Companies Managed People as Carefully as They Manage Money?”, which used talent productivity statistics to demonstrate how and why companies should manage people better. According to the article, only 15 percent of employees make a tangible difference in their workplaces. It also noted inspired employees are three times more productive than dissatisfied employees, but only one out of eight employees is inspired. Garton argues businesses should measure, invest in, monitor, and reward employees in order to improve each employee’s contribution. Essentially, Garton is lobbying for a metrics aspect to every annual review.

Asure Software offers a cloud-based system that does this. The software helps organizations measure, monitor, and analyze employee interactions and performances, providing the information necessary for managers to make strong, evidence-based decisions about everything from promotions to raises. When applicable, the software can even track compliance with government regulations (e.g., required job training). Asure Software offers expansive insights and tools in the following areas: asset and move management, benefits administration, full-service meeting room scheduling, hoteling and mobile workforce management, human capital management, payroll and tax management, talent management, time and attendance management, and workplace usage and occupancy sensors.

Asure Software won a Bronze Stevie® Award for Best New Product or Service of the Year in the Human Capital Management category of The American Business Awards®. Asure Software also took the People’s Choice Stevie Award for Favorite New Products.

The analytics provided by companies like Asure Software do more than just track time, though. By measuring employee productivity and seeing where different team members excel, a company can capitalize on strengths and improve areas that need more attention. This streamlines employee deliverables and product lines. It can even provide opportunities to improve customer relations and to reduce costly time spent in meetings.

When managers can identify star talent, that star talent can be rewarded. This motivates standout employees and, ideally, inspires other team members to achieve that status. It fosters a rewarding cycle that can resonate positively throughout the business culture.

The bottom line is this: HCM affects every organization’s bottom line. It makes practical, financial, and system-based sense to get real metrics and to manage people well because the organization and individual employees both benefit.

Topics: American business awards, new product awards, human capital awards