Date: October 28, 2016 5:28 PM EDT
Ultimate Software (Nasdaq: ULTI), a leading provider of human capital management (HCM) solutions in the cloud, announced today that it won the 2016 Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) STAR Award for Innovation in the Transformation of Support Services at the SMB Level. TSIA is the world’s leading organization dedicated to advancing the business of technology and services. Now in its 26th year, the STAR Awards have become one of the highest honors in the technology services industry. The “Transformation of Support Services” award recognizes the organization that has designed and implemented the most transformational strategies in the areas of customer experience, customer engagement, support modernization, and technology adoption.
Ultimate was selected for the award as a result of its successful conversion to a collaborative support model (sometimes called “tierless” support) in 2015. Traditional software support has typically been delivered in a “tiered” structure, where the customer calls in with a support question that is handled by a “Tier 1” support representative who typically can answer common support questions, but must escalate any more complex questions to “Tier 2” support, and so on. The downside to the traditional tiered approach to customer support is that customers might be required to explain their issue several times to multiple support representatives, be placed on hold as the issue is escalated, or be placed into a “Tier 2” support queue to be called back. Traditional tiered support, while a logical organizational structure, can require a high level of time and effort for a customer support question to get resolved.
In contrast, a collaborative support model means that when a customer submits a support question, it immediately goes to a team of specialists and multiple subject-matter experts who can then “swarm” the issue and collaborate to determine a faster resolution for the customer, with less customer time and effort required. In 2015, Ultimate adopted a collaborative support model to “swarm” each customer inquiry to ensure that a subject-matter expert reviews and resolves the question quickly. This approach improves the speed of resolution and provides the customer with one central point of contact. As a result of implementing the new model, total time for Ultimate to resolve all customer support inquiries decreased by 60 percent between May 2015 and June 2016.
“Our collaborative support model exemplifies Ultimate’s ‘People First’ philosophy and, ultimately, supports our goal to provide excellence in customer satisfaction and maintain our industry-leading customer retention rate,” said Julie Dodd, chief services officer, Ultimate Software. “Ultimate’s ‘People First’ approach is the foundation of our business, especially the partnerships built with our customers. Every relationship with customers is treated as a lifelong partnership, providing them with a wide range of services that goes beyond traditional support and activation, with a focus on constantly improving the experience for our customers.”
Ultimate offers a comprehensive set of services at no extra charge, including a dedicated account manager, 24-7 phone and online support, and unlimited training.
“We are honored to have received this award, and to be recognized by our peers as being among the best in the business,” said Dodd. “It validates why so many businesses turn to Ultimate not just for UltiPro’s HR product and cloud technology leadership, but also for Ultimate’s equal emphasis on customer service and long-term partnership.”
TSIA STAR Award winners are selected by TSIA’s service discipline advisory board members. Some of this year’s winners in other categories included Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Cisco Systems, and Salesforce. For more information, or to view the full list of STAR Award winners, visit www.tsia.com/services-excellence/star-awards.html.
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