BenchmarkPortal Announces: Panasonic’s North American Customer Call Center Achieves its Fourth Certification as a BenchmarkPortal Center of Excellence

Panasonic Corporation of North America has been certified as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal, a leading contact center research and consulting organization. “Only the top 10 percent of those benchmarked annually achieve this distinction,” said BenchmarkPortal CEO Bruce Belfiore. “Achieving Center of Excellence certification is an acknowledgement of strong management and leadership in the call center industry.”    

“The quality of Panasonic products is a top priority for us as a company, but an equally important priority is the manner in which we engage with customers and solve their problems,” said Don Szczepaniak, Vice President, Panasonic Customer Experience Group. “The Center of Excellence Certification is validation for us that Panasonic is doing it’s job to reduce customer effort, and further enhance peace of mind with the purchase of Panasonic products.”

To achieve certification as a Center of Excellence, a company must undergo a rigorous benchmarking process, which compares the organization’s operational metrics to those of its peers, using the world's largest database of contact center metrics. During this process, BenchmarkPortal experts audit and verify key data from the contact center applying for certification.

Factors (called key performance indicators) such as first call resolution, cost per call, call waiting time,customer satisfaction, agent satisfaction and utilization of human resources are taken into account. BenchmarkPortal is able to scientifically gauge how the contact center being studied compares to other centers in the same industry, and if the performance of the contact center is superior. Customer satisfaction, which relates to customer loyalty and business growth, is the goal, balanced by financial metrics which show that the center is being operated efficiently.

“Center of Excellence certification indicates that the contact center delivers superior customer service within a responsible cost structure,” said Belfiore. "A great contact center operation reflects its management's passion for balancing the demands of high quality and low costs. Panasonic has shown its ability to achieve that balance through its objective performance metrics. We have validated its metrics and have certified that Panasonic is, indeed, among the very best in its industry. I congratulate Panasonic on a job well done.”

“Contact centers that achieve certification are remarkable in their ability to balance a commitment to service excellence with cost effective service strategies,” added Belfiore, who has been with the company since 2000.

This marks the fourth year in a row that Panasonic’s Customer Call Center has received recognition as a Certified Customer Call Center from BenchmarkPortal. The company strives to provide consumers with a world-class customer service experience, focusing on a “Customer First” approach to ensure issues are handled with quality and care.