Carbonite (an Opentext Company) - Contact Center Professional of the Year

Company: Carbonite (an Opentext Company) Boston MA
Company Division/Group: Carbonite CustomerCare
Company Description: Carbonite provides a complete Data Protection Platform for businesses and the IT professionals who serve them. From backup and disaster recovery to data migration, high availability and endpoint protection, our flexible solutions can be tailored to meet the data protection needs of any business.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Contact Center Professional of the Year

Nomination Title: Knowledge Centered Service (KCS) Superstar

Carbonite’s Mid-Market support team consists of highly skilled agents who provide 24/7 support for our small/med business product suite world-wide. This Mid-Market support team has been built by integrating two support centers which were acquired over the past several years. Both teams worked independently, had many gaps in alignment, were underperforming in many areas including an underperforming Knowledge-Centered-Service (KCS) program. The Mid-Market support organization faced a challenge of integrating multiple legacy knowledge bases which mostly contained outdated and irrelevant articles which needed to be removed or updated.

Over the last year we have worked to create a world class Knowledge-Centered-Service (KCS) program to empower the support engineers to create knowledge as part of their daily workflow. By implementing KCS at Carbonite it allowed the support engineer to easily access knowledge base articles, suggest edits and create new knowledge base articles easily as part of their workflow.

To get the existing knowledge base ready for the new KCS program, all existing KB articles had to be reviewed, updated, with governance and confidence assigned to the articles which was a major milestone in the project. Craig Becerril’s efforts propelled the program’s success and positively impacted our ability to provide world-class support.

Outline the nominee's achievements since July 1 2019 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):

Craig dedicated much his time to review the legacy knowledge-base and drove improvements through his content creation efforts. Over the course of several months he identified significant opportunities, lead the effort to audit our content and made changes to existing KBs. Craig’s effort was significant by auditing 1597 KB articles which is 95% of the total existing KBs. Craig created the majority of content, creating 393 submissions since the start of December 2019, 108 more than the next highest person. The average agent created 39. Craig exceeds the average by 354 submissions, roughly 10x the average.

Craig dedicated a significant amount of time to improve our KB, but he also maintained his regular responsibilities as a Level 3 engineer and working escalations for our partners and customers. Craig’s outstanding efforts have allowed for an amazing turn-around for our support organization by launching a world-class KCS program. With Craig’s leadership, consistency and dedication, this program had an extremely positive impact on our customer and partner experience.

Our engineers at all levels are now reaping the rewards of the hard work Craig put into updating and creating new KB articles. They can resolve issues quicker, without escalating/asking for help, and can now create content of their own with Craig’s oversight. As a result, our First Call Resolution has increased. Craig stepped up when we needed it most and the rewards are being felt throughout the organization. This level of leadership and dedication propels an organization forward with any endeavor.

Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):

Through the creation and launch of the Knowledge-Centered-Support program and the heavy effort from Craig to update the content we saw several indicators that positively impacted our business and improved the customer experience.

Inbound volume- Decreased over the last several months by providing more Self-help KB articles to consume for customers
Contacts to Resolve – Decreased the number of interactions we have with customers to resolve issues
Active Case backlog- Decreased by enabling our engineers to resolve issues quicker
Escalation Rates- Decreased by providing more KB content available to engineers to resolve issues
Employee SAT- Increased satisfaction by enabling engineers to search relevant KB articles
CSAT- Increased Customer satisfaction by resolving issues quicker and providing more self-help resources
Deflection Rates- Increased deflection through our online self-help and more KB content
First Call Resolution- Increased with more KB content for engineers
Escalation Rates- Decreased escalation rates by providing engineers with more relevant KB content to resolve issues

Attached you will find supporting documentation on the above KPIs and how Craig’s efforts have made a positive impact on our ability to support our partners and customers.

Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the nominee's past performance (up to 250 words):

Implementing a KCS is a world class approach towards achieving high industry performance in issue resolution, self-help, and employee and customer satisfaction. Few organizations have the capabilities to implement a true KCS program, fewer can make it work well and achieve success. Craig’s effort ensured we got there. What makes this particularly special is that this happened while he was achieving high CSAT as an L3 agent, mentoring new hires, backing up our managers and owning the relationship with our largest partners. Craig shows up every day with the goal of winning.

Our customers were calling into support for help because our knowledgebase lacked the content for them to resolve issues on their own, artificially increasing our volume. The lack of knowledgebase articles also led to customer and partner escalations that pulled our managers, SMEs and account managers onto lengthy weekly ticket review calls that are now no longer necessary. Since launching a world class KCS program, we’ve seen material reductions in inbound volume, active case backlog, contacts to resolve, and escalation rates. Our CSAT has gone up, deflection rates have increased, employees are happier, and our sales team is having healthier conversations with customers around renewals, expansion, and general ease of doing business with us. What looked like a minor opportunity to some on the outside has led to a significant shift in the operational hygiene of our business. The focus on KCS and knowledge for our customers and agents to consume has impacted our culture and customer focus.