Modern Campus - Customer Service Department of the Year

Company: Modern Campus (formerly OmniUpdate + Destiny Solutions), Camarillo, CA
Company Description: OmniUpdate is the leading provider of content management solutions designed to streamline content administration and solve the digital marketing and communication challenges of higher education.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year - Public Services & Education

Nomination Title: Modern Campus (formerly OmniUpdate + Destiny Solutions)

In 2019, OmniUpdate, the leading web content management system (CMS) for higher education and Destiny Solutions, the leading student lifecycle management solution (SLM) for non-traditional higher education, merged into a combined company representing the most innovative and comprehensive suite of digital marketing solutions in the higher education market.

Together, we’ve continued to have a laser focus on nurturing strong customer relationships, providing stellar service, and going above and beyond to drive our customers’ success. In 2020, OmniUpdate increased its overall rNPS score to 35 (+7 points from 2019). According to our customers...

"I am impressed with support, they are always so accommodating...always feel like a VIP, thank you."
"Fabulous product and even more fabulous customer support."

Destiny Solutions also exhibits strong customer ratings, with 93% of customers surveyed volunteering as sales references—a testament to our amazing customer service. According to our customers...

"Very responsive and down to earth... I feel connected...on a personal level and feel that they really do care about our teamand want to always help... "
"Exceptionally good client service.Very responsive to any issues.Excellent client relationship building."
"Customer service team is excellent, responsive, and appreciated."

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

Our combined philosophy of servant leadership has given our new company a strong foundation for continued customer service excellence. We partner with our customers, working together to help them achieve their goals through engaged product support, deep knowledge abouthigher ed best practices, and continual product enhancements to improve the customer experience. As such, we’ve structured our combined customer service team around our institutional assets of people, process, and platform.

Unlike competitors that focus solely on their product offerings, we promote a great digital engagement platform backed by exceptional customer support. People are our greatest asset and so our first initiative was to educate them on our combined product offerings. To ensure that we’re providing the very best in customer service, we next evaluated the processes that each individual team uses to serve customers. This multi-month, in-depth study of customer on-boarding, customer training, support ticket workflows, support team escalation processes, and KPI targets helped us identify the most successful processes in each company and then build out and incorporate those processes as the cornerstones of our combined workflow. Finally, unifying our platforms streamlines our workflow, eliminates duplication, and enhances our ability to provide singular service to all customers.

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):

Challenging ourselves internally, combining two customer service departments into one, and working through complicated internal processes has eliminated duplication, inefficiency, and bottlenecks—giving us better processes, a breadth of knowledge about technical implementations, and a unified approach so that we can focus on what we do best: serving our customers. From the beginning, exceptional customer service was the driving force for our project, and it will continue to be a foundational touchstone for all future endeavors. Despite winning the Gold Stevie Award in 2018, the Silver in 2019, and the People's Choice Award in 2020, we refuse to rest on our accolades and have worked harder and smarter than ever to be worthy of consideration for the Customer Service Department of the Year award.

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 department's past performance (up to 250 words):

PEOPLE
Our customer service technicians, trained using the Spiral Learning methodology, develop deep product knowledge during cross-training. We began with an overview demonstration of product offerings from each company division followed by in-depth bootcamp training sessions for each product. Upon completion, we implemented intensive, hands-on staff training in a sandbox environment to delve into workflow processes our customers encounter daily. We also reviewed common customer questions and pitfalls. This Spiral Learning approach provides multiple opportunities for staff to review content incrementally increasing the depth, which promotes deeper learning, greater retention, and true mastery of the product offerings.

PROCESS
These included the adoption of Zendesk macros to streamline our customer communication, and consolidation of KPI targets to align both teams on departmental goals. We have also laid the groundwork for integrating our community networks so that customers can engage in self-service support. This integration process is more than simply mirroring each others' best practices—it’s designing a joint workflow for maximum efficiency and agility.

PLATFORM
Originally, we had our own software platforms to address customer questions, log customer communications, manage bug reports and improvement requests, and capture customer feedback. Fortunately, we had duplication in some areas, so we worked first to consolidate them. Next, we focused on documenting workflows within the various platforms to identify commonalities, clarify discrepancies, and workto merge the two platform instances into one. To date, we’ve successfully merged our Microsoft365 Suite and Salesforce applications, with plans to merge Zendesk and Confluence applications within the next year.