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.

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?

For many employees in the corporate world, checking email is the most time-consuming activity of each workday. Despite this, innovation in email has been, arguably, lacking as compared to other forms of productivity software.

That’s where the app Front comes into the picture. The company offers a tool that lets workers combine their multitude of communication platforms, from internal messaging to email, into a single interface.

“By working on the most critical tool people use to get work done, we felt we could improve things on a large scale,” says Front spokeswoman Heather MacKinnon.

The firm, which is based in San Francisco, California, United States, believes it can help users save time by allowing them to access multiple communication channels—including social, SMS, chat, and calls—in a single app. Want quick feedback from your coworkers? By using mentions and comments instead of email, you can reach teammates instantly.

“There are very few knowledge workers who only communicate internally,” MacKinnon says. “From customers to partners, candidates to vendors, external parties have significant sway over what we work on and when.

“Yet these communications today, which largely take place via email, remain in a silo. They’re cut off from the rest of your team, as well as the other tools you use to do your job,” she says. “It’s part of the reason why email is the universal communication tool for work that is also universally hated.”

While apps geared toward internal communication are getting some buzz—the increasingly popular Slack is a prominent example—MacKinnon notes that workers largely rely on tools that have been around for a long time when they want to reach people outside their companies.

“Email hasn’t been significantly updated since Gmail introduced threading in 2004,” she adds. “Despite being the universal communication tool for work, email has only been incrementally improved over the last 15 years and has never been re-architected for the way people work as a team. Front is changing that.”

One of the ways the company is trying to revolutionize communication is by integrating other data sources, whether it’s CRM tools, such as Salesforce, or project management software, such as Asana and Trello.

All-Hands Approach to Customer Service

The roots of Front go back to Paris, France, where founders Mathilde Collin and Laurent Perrin started the business in 2013. The following year, the start-up made its way into Silicon Valley’s famed Y Combinator.

Packed into a home in the Bay Area of California, United States, the initial team of five employees lived and breathed the product for several months. It was a grueling experience, but one the company’s leadership still views as an integral part of the company’s development. The accelerator not only tested the company’s concept but exposed it to business prospects it wouldn’t have otherwise had. In just six months, Front amassed a staggering 3,000 beta testers.

This momentum hasn’t slowed. In 2016, the company was able to secure $10 million from its initial round of funding, and two years later, it gained $66 million of investments from a team led by Sequoia Capital.

Today, more than 5,000 businesses around the world use Front. MacKinnon suggests it’s not just the features of the app attracting those clients. The company also focuses on providing superior customer support in order to ensure users get the most out of their experiences.

Naturally they’re using their own tool to help do that. The team, now more than 100 strong, has shared inboxes in Front for its customer surveys, feedback emails, and support inquiries. All staff members have access to the inboxes, so they’re able to keep apprised of how users feel about the product.

MacKinnon says the company, which was recently named a StevieⓇ Awards winner for Customer Service Department of the Year, also emphasizes a “low-ego” ethos, which encourages workers to keep striving toward excellence. During its regular all-hands meeting, for example, staffers are encouraged to share their “Stumbles of the Week.”

“By encouraging employees of all levels—even our CEO and other leaders—to openly discuss their mistakes, we create a culture of humility and continuous improvement,” says MacKinnon.

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.

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 13^th annual Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

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

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

MTC, the transit planning entity for the area around San Francisco, California, United States, is responsible for ensuring residents of the bustling California community get to work and back home again efficiently. Until recently, though, “efficient” wasn’t exactly the way to describe the agency’s process for managing vendors.

All submissions were still done on paper, making it hard for the MTC staff to score and to aggregate proposals in a timely manner. As a result, it took around two to three months to complete a typical request for proposal (RFP).

That all changed when the commission turned to the Canadian software firm Bonfire Interactive, which was founded in 2012 and specializes in streamlining the procurement process for public sector clients. By converting its antiquated process to Bonfire, MTC was able to reduce the RFP time to around thirty days while improving its reporting capabilities.

MTC certainly isn’t the only public entity hampered by wasteful and inefficient internal processes, but the roughly ninety-employee team at Bonfire is trying to turn that around.

To hear the management team at Bonfire talk about it, the company’s mission isn’t merely about gaining market share but doing good for society in the process.

“The people behind Bonfire aren't just building purchasing software solutions; they're enabling organizations to turn the purchasing function into a powerful lever that can improve the world,” says Meghan Hennessey, the company’s marketing communications manager.

Ultimately, she believes, when public entities get more out of every dollar they spend, the public is better served.

“Increased fiscal efficiency means patients in hospitals can benefit from better equipment and receive better care. Municipal citizens can experience safer means of transportation, and schools can have proper resources for a more enriched learning landscape,” says Hennessey.

There Must Be a Better Way

Born out of an incubator in Silicon Valley, a region in San Francisco, California, United States, Bonfire, which is based in southwest Ontario, Canada, has developed an impressive client list that includes the Chicago Board of Education, the University of Massachusetts, and the city of Dallas, Texas, United States. In the process, its revenue has grown an impressive 225 percent annually.

“Through various experiences in my career, I witnessed the time, energy, and frustration that went into thousands of RFPs,” says Corry Flatt, the cofounder and CEO of Bonfire. “Every time I thought, There must be a better way, it turns out there wasn’t. Eventually, in order to address that problem, Bonfire was born.”

By initially focusing on governments, the company bucked a trend within the tech industry, which often tailors products to private businesses. According to Hennessey, however, that’s why it made sense to move in the other direction.

“There’s an entire blue ocean of opportunity when you step away from the commercial sector,” she says.

Through it all, the Bonfire management team emphasizes client satisfaction, helping the company become a Silver Stevie-winner for Customer Service Department of the Year in the Computer Software category at this year’s Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Today, the company’s software as a service (SaaS) solution handles more than $20 billion of procurement activities, and Bonfire expanded its portfolio to include private-sector users, such as the global accounting firm BDO.

In 2018, US-headquartered GTY Technology Holdings purchased Bonfire for $108 million. In an effort to provide a full cadre of services to public-sector organizations, including everything from budgeting and permitting to grants management and procurement, GTY Technology Holdings also acquired five other firms in the government technology field.

“Legally, what’s happening is an acquisition and a merger, but it’s more like they’ve assembled a team of stallions, and they’re letting them all run,” Flatt said in a statement after the deal. “For us, our employees, and our clients, it’s just a really good news story.”

The purchase will ultimately allow the firm to boost its marketing efforts to both public and commercial clients and to develop additional product capabilities, including predictive analytics. It also expects to substantially increase hiring at its offices, which are about a mile west of Toronto, Canada.

For Hennessey, the deal means the ability for organizations to make better use of their financial resources, which she reaffirms is most rewarding part.

“To paraphrase a famous quote, the smartest minds of our generation have spent the last decade figuring out how to get you to click on ads,” she says. “Today, though, that's not good enough. People want their creativity and energy poured into something that matters.”

It’s a conference room typically reserved for regimented business meetings, but on this winter day, the space transformed into a playground for a small group of sales associates. Each carefully bends and conjoins pipe cleaners in order to build a menagerie of animal figures and trees.

The undertaking isn’t simply an opportunity for distraction, however. In this case, the participants, who are taking part in a workshop by the sales training firm PJ Nisbet & Associates, are getting a lesson in kinesthetic learning. The idea is to help sellers use tactile experiences in future presentations with would-be buyers.

Welcome to the world of sales performance improvement, where clients look for whatever edge they can get in order to gain an advantage over the competition. For the consultancy, which is based in Cambridge, England, United Kingdom, raising top-line numbers is mission number one.

That companies are looking to give their sales teams a leg up is, perhaps, no big surprise. The ability to generate leads and to convince customers to buy a product or service is the lifeblood of most businesses.

“It doesn’t matter how good the rest of the organization is. If the sales team is not functional, you are not generating revenue, so the rest is irrelevant,” says Nisbet, who founded the company more than a decade ago.

Often, the heart of the sales process is an interpersonal relationship between seller and potential buyer. Through workshops and e-learning modules, Nisbet’s firm tries to help professionals understand how to identify their best prospects and to get those individuals to buy into their offerings.

The company, which recently earned a Bronze Stevie® Award for Sales Training Practice of the Year, offers what it says is an easy-to-use, repeatable sales method. Clients can use this to secure more prospects at the top of the sales funnel, to qualify them in or out, and, ultimately, to close more purchases with higher profit margins.

One of the program’s core objectives is to help participants articulate their organizations’ strengths so they don’t have to put in rock-bottom quotes to seal deals.

“We enable salespeople to sell on value—not price,” says Nisbet.

New Challenges in the Selling Process

A seasoned business executive with a degree in organizational behavior, Nisbet launched the eponymous sales training firm in his native South Africa in 2006. He eventually relocated it to the United Kingdom, but he still does a lot of business back home. Presently, 50 percent of his clients are in the United Kingdom, and 10–15 percent are in Africa, with the remainder spread throughout Europe and the rest of the globe.

The company has taken on some big-name clients over the years, including Dunlop, Deloitte, and the investment giant J.P. Morgan. Instilling a companywide training philosophy at a global business presents certain logistical difficulties, but Nisbet seems to relish the challenge.

“Last year, over a nine-month period, we trained one thousand five hundred salespeople for one company at fifty-three events in twenty countries using materials in fourteen different languages,” the entrepreneur says. “The best part is that the company’s share price was the highest it’s ever been, which they attribute, in large part, to the implementation we spearheaded.”

In an age when most big companies are using one or more software platforms to manage the sales funnel, Nisbet says the flexibility of his company’s approach is a key to its success.

“When we start an engagement, we go through a discovery phase, and we learn about the automation tools our client is using,” he says. “We then methodically adapt our program to make sure we are using a common language.”

His team is also willing to use a shared risk–reward model, which reduces up-front fees in exchange for a share of the client’s future profits.

“Most sales training organizations wouldn’t do this,” Nisbet adds, “but we’re confident in our methods and enjoy having a little skin in the game, so to speak.”

In a couple of important ways, Nisbet suggests the stakes are higher than ever when it comes to training salespeople. For one, more customers are doing preliminary research online. This means they’re more knowledgeable when they first engage with sales reps. Secondly, purchase decisions have become more complex in the wake of the Great Recession, with stakeholders from finance, quality, compliance, and other parts of the organization getting more involved.

For PJ Nisbet & Associates, though, that’s also an opportunity to help those professionals adapt to a different selling climate.

“Today’s salesperson must be more consultative and better informed to guide buyers and influencers through the process and to help them to ask the right questions. It’s no longer about just showing up with a great product and pitching its attributes,” says Nisbet.

Winners in the 13th annual Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service, recognized as the world's top customer service awards and sales awards, were unveiled on Friday night at a gala ceremony in Las Vegas, NV, attended by more than 700 executives from around the world.

The complete list of Stevie Winners by category is available at http://www.StevieAwards.com/Sales.

DP DHL, with Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award wins for activities in Canada, Ecuador, Kenya, the U.S., Vietnam, and other nations, was the most honored organization this year, earning the top Grand Stevie Award trophy for the sixth consecutive year. Other Grand Stevie Award winners, in descending order, include IBM, HomeServe USA, Sales Partnerships, Inc., VIZIO Inc., Delta Vacations, ValueSelling Associates, Dell Technologies, GuideWell Connect, and Cvent.

DP DHL won 11 Gold Stevie Awards, the most in the 2019 competition among Stevie Award winners. Among other winners, winners of three Stevie Awards include: American Airlines, EFG Companies, Teleperformance D.I.B.S, and Holiday Inn Vacations. Winners of two Gold Stevie Awards are: Birevim, Bose, CarrefourSA, Chorus.ai, Comcast, Delta Defense, Employment Background Investigations, Inc., MarketBridge, Nextiva, Qurate Retail Group, RAIN Group, VXI Global Soluations, and WNS (Holdings) Limited.

Leaders among multiple winners of Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevies include: Allianz Global Assistance, Autosoft, Inc, Cross Country Home Services, Delta Defense, Druva, Inc., Electronic Arts, First American Database Solutions, FIS, GoDaddy, iHeartMedia, Inc., John Hancock Financial Services, KT, Liveops, Mailchimp, Michael Kors, MRO Corp, Municipality and Planning Department, Nextiva, Nuance Communications, Offerpad, Overstock.com, Periscope Data, Pushpay, QNB Finansbank, Response, Rimini Street, TCL USA, TTEC, UPMC Health Plan, Visualize, Vivint Solar, VIZIO, VXI Global, Wells Fargo Treasury Management Client Delivery, and Wyndham Destinations.

Winners in the People’s Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite Customer Service, as determined by more than 76,000 public votes were also presented at the event.

The presentations were broadcast live via Livestream and are available to watch online.

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

More than 2,700 nominations from organizations in 45 nations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were evaluated in this year’s competition. Winners were determined by the average scores of more than 150 professionals worldwide in seven specialized judging committees. Entries were considered in 93 categories for customer service and contact center achievements, including Contact Center of the Year, Award for Innovation in Customer Service, and Customer Service Department of the Year; 60 categories for sales and business development achievements, ranging from Senior Sales Executive of the Year to Sales Training or Business Development Executive of the Year to Sales Department of the Year; and categories to recognize new products and services and solution providers.

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 Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, 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 www.StevieAwards.com.

Sponsors and supporters of the 13th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service include HCL Financial Services, Sales Partnerships, Inc. and ValueSelling Associates, Inc.

A record gathering of more than 700 business development, customer service, and sales professionals from around the world will convene in Las Vegas, Nevada this Friday, February 22 for the presentation of the 13th annual Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the world's top honors for achievement in those disciplines.  The setting will be the Augustus Ballroom of Caesars Palace.

Tickets for the event are on sale through Wednesday.

More than 2,700 nominations from organizations of all sizes, in virtually every industry, in 45 nations were evaluated in this year’s competition. Finalists. announced last month, were determined by the average scores of more than 150 professionals worldwide in seven specialized judging committees.  The Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award placements from among the Finalists will be revealed during Friday's presentations.

10 Grand Stevie Award (best in show) trophies will also be presented on Friday, as well as the crystal People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Customer Service, whose winners were announced last week.

Learn more about the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service at www.StevieAwards.com/Sales.

Here is the list of organizations that have already reserved their places for Friday's awards gala.

Access One Inc, Chicago, IL
Achievers, Toronto, ON, Canada
ActiveCampaign, Chicago, IL
Adaptiva, Kirkland, WA
AINS, Inc., Gaithersburg, MD
Air Canada, Montreal, QC, Canada
AkSigorta, Istanbul, Turkey
AllClear ID, Austin, TX
Alliance Data, Columbus, OH
Allianz Global Assistance, Richmond, VA
Allianz Services India, Kerala
Altus Group / ARGUS Software, Houston, TX
American Airlines, Ft. Worth, TX
Arizona Public Service, Phoenix, AZ
ArmadaCare, Hunt Valley, MD
AWeber - Email Marketing, Chalfont, PA
Bank of America, Charlotte, NC
BankMobile, New Haven, CT
Barclays, Henderson, NV
BenefitMall, Dallas, TX
BerniePortal, Nashville, TN
BMC Software, Houston, TX
BNY Mellon's Albridge, Pennington, NJ
Bose, Framingham, MA
C3i Solutions, Horsham, PA
CGS, New York, NY
Chorus.ai, San Francisco, CA
Cisco Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA
CivicPlus, Manhattan KS
CLEAResult, Tempe, AZ
Cloudistics, Reston, VA
Comcast, Philadelphia PA
Comm100, Lewes, DE
Con Edison, New York, NY
Concentrix, Fremont, CA
ConnectiCare, Farmington, CT
Constant Contact, Waltham, MA
Cricket Wireless, Atlanta, GA
Cross Country Home Services, Fort Lauderdale, FL
CubeSmart Self Storage, Malvern, PA
Curriculum Associates, North Billerica, MA
Darlings of Chelsea, London, United Kingdom
DataCore Software, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Dataprise, Rockville, MD
Dell Technologies, Round Rock, TX
Delta Air Lines, Atlanta, Georgia
Delta Defense, West Bend, WI
Delta Vacations, Minot, ND
DHL Express US, Tempe, AZ
DHL Global Forwarding, Miami, FL
Diligent Corporation, New York, NY
Druva Inc., Sunnyvale, CA
Dubai Airport Freezone, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
EFG Companies, Irving, TX
Electronic Arts, Austin, TX
Employment Background Investigations Inc., Owings Mills, MD
Etech Global Services, Nacogdoches, TX
ExakTime, Calabasas, CA
ezCater, Boston, MA
Firmex, Toronto, ON, Canada
First Advantage, Atlanta, GA
First American Database Solutions, Santa Ana, CA
FIS, Jacksonville, FL
Florida Blue, Jacksonville, Florida
Forrest Performance Group, Fort Worth, TX
FreshBooks, Toronto, ON, Canada
Further, Eagan, MN
Future Generali India Insurance Company Ltd., Mumbai, India
Genpact, New York, NY
GES, Las Vegas, NV
GoDaddy, Scottsdale, AZ
Hanzo, New York, NY & Leeds, United Kingdom
Hetzner, Cape Town, South Africa
Highspot, Seattle, WA
Holiday Inn Club Vacations, Orlando, FL
HomeServe USA, Norwalk, CT
IBM, Armonk, NY
InsureMyTrip, Warwick, RI
Intellis, New York, NY
Intuit Inc., Mississauga, ON, Canada
iQor, St. Petersburg, FL
ISN, Dallas, TX
Janek Performance Group, Las Vegas, NV
Johannesbad Hotels Bad Füssing GmbH, Bad Fuessing, Germany
Kronos Incorporated, Lowell, MA
KT, Seoul, South Korea
Learning Tribes, Miami, FL
Lexmark International, Lexington, KY
Linode, Philadelphia, PA
ListenFirst, New York, NY
Logical Position, Portland, OR
Mailchimp, Atlanta, GA
Malouf, Logan, UT
Marketo, Denver, CO
MediaRadar, Inc., New York, NY
MEDIATEL DATA SRL, Bucharest, Romania
MentorcliQ, Columbus, OH
Merrill Corporation, St Paul, MN
MetTel, New York, NY
Michael Kors, New York, NY
Migros Ticaret A.S., Istanbul, Turkey
Mixpanel, San Francisco, CA
MTM, Lake St. Louis, MO
Nationwide Title Clearing, Inc., Palm Harbor, FL
Network Alliance, Reston, VA
Nextech, Tampa, FL
NICE Systems, Paramus, NJ
NuCO2, Stuart, FL
Nutrisystem, Fort Washington, PA
Offerpad, Gilbert, AZ
Oi, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
OneCause, Indianapolis, IN
OneWest Bank, Pasadena, CA
OnTarget Partners LLC, Frisco, TX
Optum, Eden Prairie, MN
OptumCare, Phoenix, AZ
Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, Raritan, NJ
Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, Rochester, NY
Outdoor Voices, Austin, TX
Overstock.com, Midvale, UT
Panera Bread, St. Louis, MO
Paycor, Cincinnati, OH
PayLease, San Diego, CA
Periscope Data, San Francisco, CA
PipelineDeals, Seattle, Washington
PJ Nisbet & Associates Ltd., Cambridge, United Kingdom
PlanGrid, San Francisco, CA
PlumChoice, Lowell, MA
Purchasing Power, LLC, Atlanta, GA
Pushpay, Redmond, WA
ReSourcePro, New York, NY
Response, Lindon, UT
Revenue Storm Corporation, Schaumburg, IL
Riva CRM Integration, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Rycor, Chandler, AZ
Safelite Solutions, Columbus, OH
Salary.com, Waltham, MA
Sales Partnerships, Broomfield, CO
SAP, Newtown Square, PA
SCAN Healthplan, Long Beach, CA
ServiceNow, Santa Clara, CA
ShopKeep Inc., New York, NY
Sitel Group, Miami, FL
SmartLinx Solutions, Edison, NJ
SolarWinds MSP, Durham, NC
SolarWinds, Austin, TX
Southwest Airlines, Dallas, TX
Sparkcentral, San Francisco, CA
Spinnaker Support, Greenwood Village, CO
Standard For Success, Cloverdale, IN
SurePayroll, Glenview, IL
Tata Communications (UK) Limited, London, United Kingdom
TCL USA, Corona, CA
Teleperformance D.I.B.S., Mumbai , India
The Western & Southern Life Insurance Company, Cincinnati, OH
TTEC, Englewood, CO
UniFirst Corporation, Wilmington, MA
Unisys, Blue Bell, PA
UPMC Health Plan, Pittsburgh, PA
USAA, San Antonio, TX
UserTesting, Mountain View, CA
ValueSelling Associates, Rancho Santa Fe, CA
Vengreso, San Francisco, CA
Verified Volunteers, a Sterling Company, Fort Collins, CO
VIPRE Security, Clearwater, FL
Visualize, Inc., Birmingham, MI
Vivint Solar, Lehi, UT
VIZIO Inc., Irvine, CA
VPay, Plano TX
VXI Global Solutions, Los Angeles, CA
WekaIO, San Jose, CA
Wells Fargo Treasury Management Client Delivery, San Francisco, CA
West's Health Advocate Solutions, Plymouth Meeting, PA
Wheels, Inc., Des Plaines, IL
WinWire, Santa Clara, CA
Wolters Kluwer's ELM Solutions, Houston, TX
Wolverine Worldwide Contact Center, Richmond, IN
WP Engine, Austin, TX
Xvoyant, West Jordan, UT
Zee Entertainment Enterprises, Mumbai, India

Winners of the 2019 People's Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite Customer Service, a worldwide public vote, were announced today.  Voting was conducted from January 17 through February 8, with the highest number of votes deciding the winners in 12 industry categories. More than 76,000 votes were cast this year.

All organizations honored in the Customer Service Department of the Year categories of this year’s Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service were eligible to be included in voting for the people’s choice awards.  The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, now in their 13^th year, are the world’s top honors for customer service, contact center, business development, and sales professionals.

More than 2,700 nominations from organizations of all sizes, in virtually every industry, in 45 nations were evaluated in this year’s competition. Finalists were determined by the average scores of more than 150 professionals worldwide in seven specialized judging committees and were announced last month.

This year’s people’s choice winners, who will each receive the coveted crystal People’s Choice Stevie Award, are:

• Computer Hardware: Dell Technologies | APJ Consumer - Premium Tech Support
• Computer Services: Linode
• Consumer Products/Services: Birevim
• Distribution & Transportation: DHL Express Bangladesh
• Financial Services: ReSource Pro
• Healthcare & Pharma: TSI Healthcare
• Other Industries: CubeSmart
• Public Services & Education: Curriculum Associates
• Retail: Qurate Retail Group
• Software < 100 Employees: Bonfire
• Software 100+ Employees: Periscope Data
• Telecommunications: Comcast
  
  Nicknamed the Stevie® for the Greek word “crowned,” the awards will be presented to winners at the 13^th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service awards banquet on Friday, February 22 at Caesar’s Palace Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Tickets for the event are now on sale. More than 600 executives from around the world are expected to attend.  The presentations will be broadcast live via Livestream

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 Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business 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 www.StevieAwards.com.

Sponsors of the 13th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service include Sales Partnerships, Inc. and ValueSelling Associates, Inc.

The nomination window for the 2019 (13^th annual) Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service has closed, but one special category sponsored by Sales Partnerships will continue to accept nominations through February 1.

The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service are recognized as the world’s top honors for business development, customer service, and sales professionals.  Sales Partnerships, Inc., which provides turnkey, outsourced selling solutions and is a sponsor of the awards for the fourth consecutive year, is sponsoring a category called the Sales Partnerships Award for Ethics in Sales. 

There is no entry fee for nominations to this category, which will be accepted through February 1.  The category 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 over the past five years (since July 2013). 

Sales Partnerships’ founder and CEO Fred Kessler says, “The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service has grown to be the premier honor for sales professionals worldwide, and it’s proven to be an outstanding platform on which Sales Partnerships can interact with sales leaders in a wide variety of industries.  When we were approached about sponsoring an award for ethics in sales – we immediately accepted. The Sales Partnerships’ Award for Ethics in Sales recognizes companies which, like us, understand that being the best performing sales force also means having an uncompromising focus on selling ethically.”

Submission requirements for nominations to this category include a written essay of up to 650 words, plus any number of supporting materials to provide additional information to the judges.  To submit nominations to this category, nominees should first create an entry-submission account on the awards website, then email their nominations to help@stevieawards.com.

Nominations in the category will be judged the week of February 4 by members of the awards’ Sales Individual & Sales Team jury, and its Finalists announced the week of February 11.

Finalists in all other categories in the program were announced on January 17.

Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Award placements from among the Finalists in all categories will be revealed at the program’s 13^th annual awards gala on Friday, February 22 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Finalists are not required to attend in order to win.

Sponsors of the 13th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service include Sales Partnerships, Inc. and ValueSelling Associates, Inc.

Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie® Winners to Be Announced in Las Vegas on February 22

Finalists in the 13th Annual Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service, an international competition recognizing excellence in disciplines that are crucial to business success, were announced today.    

A diverse group of organizations and individuals around the world are among those recognized in the customer service awards, contact center awards, business development awards, and sales awards categories. Organizations with five or more Finalist nominations include Allianz Global Assistance (Richmond, VA USA), Birevim (Istanbul, Turkey), Chorus.ai (San Francisco, CA USA), Comcast (Philadelphia, PA USA), Cross Country Home Services (Fort Lauderdale, FL USA), Cvent Inc (McLean, VA USA), Dell Technologies (Roundrock, TX USA), Delta Vacations (Minot, ND USA), DHL Express Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) DHL Express Bangladesh (Dhaka, Bangladesh), DHL Express South Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa), DHL Express Kenya (Nairobi, Kenya), Druva Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA USA), EFG Companies (Irving, TX USA), Electronic Arts (Austin, TX USA), FIS (Jacksonville, FL USA), GoDaddy (Scottsdale, AZ USA), GuideWell Connect (Jacksonville, FL), Holiday Inn Club Vacations (Orlando, FL USA), HomeServe USA (Norwalk, CT USA), IBM (Armonk, NY USA), John Hancock Financial Services (Boston, MA USA), Offerpad (Gilbert, AZ USA), Response (Lindon, UT USA), Rimini Street, Inc. (Las Vegas, NV USA), Sales Partnerships, Inc. (Broomfield, CO USA), TCL USA (Corona, CA USA), TTEC (Englewood, CO USA), UPMC Health Plan (Pittsburgh, PA USA), ValueSelling Associates (Rancho Santa Fe, CA USA), Vivint Solar (Lehi, UT USA), VIZIO Inc. (Irvine, CA USA) Wells Fargo Merchant Services - Account Management (Concord, CA USA), WNS (Holdings) Limited (Mumbai, India), and Wyndham Destinations (Orlando, FL USA).

Visit www.StevieAwards.com/Sales for a full list of Finalists by category.

Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Award placements from among the Finalists will be revealed during a gala banquet on Friday, February 22 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Tickets are now on sale.

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

More than 2,700 nominations from organizations of all sizes, in virtually every industry, in 45 nations were evaluated in this year’s competition. Finalists were determined by the average scores of more than 150 professionals worldwide in seven specialized judging committees.

Entries were considered in 93 categories for customer service and contact center achievements, including Contact Center of the Year, Award for Innovation in Customer Service, and Customer Service Department of the Year; 60 categories for sales and business development achievements, ranging from Senior Sales Executive of the Year to Sales Training or Business Development Executive of the Year to Sales Department of the Year; and categories to recognize new products and services and solution providers.

Beginning today through February 8, the general public may vote for their favorite providers of customer service in the People’s Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite Customer Service. Voting is open at http://peopleschoice.stevieawards.com. Winners of the People’s Choice Stevie Awards in multiple industries will be determined in mid-February and honored at the awards gala in Las Vegas on February 22.

One category in the awards will continue to accept entries through February 1.  It’s called the Sales Partnerships Award for Ethics in Sales, and it will recognize organizations for best practices and achievements in demonstrating the highest ethical standards in the sales industry.  Entry requirements for this category are outlined at https://stevieawards.com/sales/categories-1#SalesAchievement.  Nominations in this category will be reviewed the week of February 4, and its Finalists announce the week of February 11.

Sponsors of the 13th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service include Sales Partnerships, Inc. and ValueSelling Associates, Inc.