Ameritas Earns Eighth Consecutive Center of Excellence Award from BenchmarkPortal

Ameritas Life Insurance Corp.’s group division has been awarded the BenchmarkPortal Center of Excellence award for the eighth consecutive year. Among the top honors in the customer service industry, the award recognizes the company’s commitment to making access to care easy for its dental, vision and hearing care customers.

Click here to view all their latest press release: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-certification/certified-customer-service-center/ameritas

PFI Earns Esteemed Center of Excellence Recognition from BenchmarkPortal for Fourth Consecutive Year

Proctor Financial, Inc. (PFI) is announces the recertification of its call center as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal for 2014. PFI also received this honor in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Call centers certified as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal have surpassed rigorous standards for efficiency and effectiveness. The team at BenchmarkPortal audits and verifies key performance indicators and compares PFI’s data to call center data from other peer organizations. Call centers receive the “Center of Excellence” designation when ranked in the top ten percent of those organizations that are surveyed.

 Click here to read more... http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-certification/certified-customer-service-center/proctor-financial

 

Birch Earns Prestigious “Center of Excellence” Recognition

February 13, 2015 – Birch Communications, Inc., (“Birch”) a leading technology service provider of IP-based communications, broadband, cloud and IT services to small, mid-sized, enterprise and wholesale businesses, has achieved “Center of Excellence” for the third time by BenchmarkPortal for 2014.

Click here to continue reading: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-newsresources/press-release/2015/02/birch-earns-prestigious-center-excellence-recognitio

Synchrony Financial Re-Certified as 2015 Customer Service Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal

February 28, 2015 -- Synchrony Financial (NYSE:SYF), a premier consumer financial services company with 80 years of retail heritage, today announced it has been re-certified as a 2015 Customer Service Center of Excellence from BenchmarkPortal, LLC, a global leader in the contact center industry.

Click here to continue reading this article: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-newsresources/press-release/2015/02/synchrony-financial-re-certified-2015-customer-servi

Church Mutual Service Center Certified Sixth Straight Year

January 20, 2015 -- Church Mutual Insurance Company's National Customer Service Center (NCSC) has been recertified as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal.
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.

Click here to continue reading: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-newsresources/press-release/2015/01/church-mutual-service-center-certified-sixth-straigh

McKesson Specialty Health’s Reimbursement, Access & Safety Services Solution Center Earns Sixth Consecutive prestigious Center of Excellence Certification from BenchmarkPortal

January 2, 2015 -- McKesson Specialty Health today announced that its Reimbursement, Access & Safety Services Solution Center has earned certification by BenchmarkPortal as a Center of Excellence for the sixth consecutive year. One of the most prestigious awards in the customer ser­vice and support industry, the Center of Excellence distinction is based on best-practice metrics drawn from the world’s largest database of objective and quantitative data that is audited and validated by researchers from BenchmarkPortal.
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.

Visit their certification page for more information and to see their full press release: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-certification/certified-call-centers-excellence/mckesson-specialty-health

MAXIMUS Contact Center Operations in Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Vermont Achieve Recognition as Centers of Excellence

The MAXIMUS customer contact centers achieved the Center of Excellence distinction based on best practice metrics drawn from the world’s largest database of objective and quantitative performance data from thousands of contact centers. Performance data collected from all six MAXIMUS contact centers achieved BenchmarkPortal’s objective and quantitative criteria in areas such as operational efficiency, service-level standards, customer satisfaction and employee training. Georgia Health Services for Families and GACAPS have now received certification for five and four consecutive years, respectively. Indiana EBS, Michigan EBS and Vermont Green Mountain Care Member Services have now been certified for three consecutive years. This is the first certification for Illinois Modification and Employer Services.

Click here to continue reading this news release: http://investor.maximus.com/press-release/local-recognition/maximus-contact-center-operations-georgia-illinois-indiana-michigan-

The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (Blue Cross) Retail Sales and Retention team 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.”

Click here to continue reading: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-newsresources/press-release/2014/12/blue-cross-blue-shield-massachusetts-call-center-nam

Canon U.S.A. Earns Center Of Excellence Certification By BenchmarkPortal

December 1, 2014 -- Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, is proud to announce that for the sixth consecutive year it has earned the Center of Excellence certification by BenchmarkPortal, placing its customer support center in the top 10 percent for efficiency and effectiveness in the technical support category. The Center of Excellence is a prestigious recognition based on best-practice metrics drawn from the world's largest database of objective and quantitative data that is audited and validated by researchers from BenchmarkPortal. “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.”

Click here to learn more: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-certification/certified-customer-service-center/canon-usa

Contact Center Economics 101: Nobel Prize for Economics - The Link Between Customer Contact and Economic Growth

By Bruce Belfiore, Senior Research Executive and CEO, BenchmarkPortal

Ok.  Here’s my bid for a Nobel.  One of the macro questions for the customer contact industry is: “Does a robust customer contact industry correlate with higher economic growth?”

The implications of this question are enormous.  If such a relationship can be shown to exist, then governments that want to foster economic growth should actively encourage the growth of the customer contact industry within their borders.

As we grow our database of contact center performance metrics here at BenchmarkPortal, we look forward to the day that we will have enough data to prove a correlation between the state of the contact center industry and GDP growth in countries throughout the world.  However, there are already circumstantial indications that this relationship exists, and governments would do well to consider their policies even now.

I note as well that contact centers represent clean, non-polluting operations that involve “knowledge worker” skills at a variety of levels.  Contact centers are often the first point of entry for workers who later are promoted into other parts of the enterprise - - but hopefully retain their appreciation for customer service and bring their experience with them as they advance professionally.

Estimates regarding the number of people who work in contact centers in advanced economies is astounding. It was estimated that about 3% of the working population in the United Kingdom is employed in contact centers, while the estimated percentage is over 3% in the United States and Canada.  These economies have been among the most resilient over the last 20 years, while advanced, G7 economies like Japan and Italy, which have much less robust customer contact sectors, have languished.

My hypothesis is that consumers the world over are more likely to trust and buy a product or service when:

Click here to continue reading this article: http://www.benchmarkportal.com/call-center-newsresources/news-articles/2014/10/contact-center-economics-101-nobel-prize-economics-l