Reward Gateway - Contact Center of the Year

Company: Reward Gateway
Company Description: Reward Gateway helps more than 1,800 of the world’s leading companies, in 23 countries, to attract, engage, and retain their best people with an employee engagement platform that brings strategic recognition, communications, employee benefits, discounts, and surveys into one uniquely-branded unified hub.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Contact Center of the Year (Up to 100 Seats) - Other Service Industries

Nomination Title: RG Employee Support: One team, Many stories

Reward Gateway is all about making the world a better place to work. To achieve this, it was important to have an efficient and scalable support team focused on delivering amazing service for their end-users. The core of our customer service practices is based on the company values we have:

Delight your customers, Work Hard, Think Global, Love your Job, Be Human, Speak Up, Own It and Push The Boundaries

The Employee Support team in Plovdiv was created back in 2014 when the Bulgarian office opened for the first time. Since then the team has grown to have 60 dedicated and well-trained team members who provide 24/7/365 support and help more than 450,000 customers annually. The team members have received training and certifications from the Institute of Customer Service UK (https://www.instituteofcustomerservice.com/) in addition to the internal training received. Apart from delivering fantastic customer service, the Employee Support team’s SLAs agreed with our clients are:

90% accepted calls within 60 seconds
90% accepted chats within 60 seconds
Tickets first response time within 2 working days

The team is seen as the best place to learn about RG. There are people who started in Employee Support in every RG department across Bulgaria.

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

Since July 2019, we have integrated our internal CRM system with Zendesk which boosted the team’s efficiency when solving issues for our users.

The team also managed to reach and exceed our SLAs on Black Friday 2019. This is the busiest day of every year, as we see a 50% increase in the contact volumes and our users depend on the team to successfully shop and engage with our products.

On Black Friday we have achieved 93% accepted calls in 42s and 9 second-line support agents responded to 3251 tickets just on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, compared to the normal ~1500 tickets.

RG introduced a wide range of new flexible products as part of the launch of one of our biggest clients. We successfully adapted the team to support their users. We introduced a VIP queue for this client and a special IVR that allows our users to navigate efficiently in order to receive support. With more than 130 000 employees and many bespoke products, we’ve continued to manage and keep to our SLAs, with a response time on calls at 49s.

Over the past year, the TrustPilot rating of Reward Gateway improved from 2.5 to 4.2. Our support team played a key part in this, as customers felt that they could rely on the team to assist with any concerns and queries in a timely manner. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.rewardgateway.com

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

Zendesk

Prior to Zendesk we used 3 different systems for our Chat, calls, and tickets. With Zendesk, we’ve managed to unify them all under 1 system that made our workflow more efficient. The integration ofZendesk improved the team’s overall performance and productivity. We’ve consistently improved average call times since 2017 and from 2019 to 2020, went from 43s to 27s while increasing monthly enquiries per specialist.

Black Friday

Our success during Black Friday was due to preparation and teamwork. Our Front-Line members had more people on shift that focused on answering calls & chats as fast as possible while Second-Line members prioritized tickets on the day so we could respond as quickly as possible to the most important tickets. Our managers looked after the queues, coordinating and jumping in to assist with complex issues users are experiencing. The team received 1311 good ratings and over 430 positive comments.

SLAs

We over-achieved our SLAs which was a great success as we were also moving offices during the year. We had to move the team in different phases and also change hardware. This could have resulted in a dip in our service but we managed to onboard the team with zero interruption to the service. We’ve actually improved upon our SLAS while increasing calls. In July 2019, we answered 6119 calls - 90% accepted in 36 seconds while in July 2020, we answered 11,017 calls - 91% accepted in 37 seconds.

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):

We share User Rating Videos internally within RG every month –
July 2019https://youtu.be/Vh4dGJOuJ60
July 2020https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6N8G1nww8I
And a bonus one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83Npi7XVkVY

Efficiency increase since we introduced Zendesk

Trust Pilot: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.rewardgateway.com The improved TrustPilot score was significant because we do not actively promote TrustPilot to our contacts. These scores and comments highlight all the team’s hard work and dedication to improving the customer experience.

OurNPSessentially measures whether or not our Clients would recommend Reward Gateway to others. We’ve maintained a high NPS, starting July 2019 with 55 and improving to 72, reflecting our client's positive views on our products and our people. The feedback we get from our clients informs us of what’s working and what doesn’t. These scores and comments prove that the team has continued to do an exceptional job and know what weaknesses they can work on. Some of the comments include, “Amazing platform and constant support from the Reward Gateway team. Always happy to help, even with the silly questions.” and “if we have any problems with discounts we can just contact the helpdesk and they're prompt in responding.”

Our Customer Care Commitmentsare an important part of the team. It sets the standard immediately, reminding our team of our values, especially Delighting Our Customers. These care commitments remind the team to go back to the basics and what Reward Gateway was created for - making the world a better place to work.