Company: Dice Holdings, Inc., New York, New York
Company Description: Dice Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: DHX) is a leading provider of specialized career websites for professional communities, including technology and engineering, capital markets and financial services, accounting and finance, and security clearance. Today, we serve multiple markets primarily in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year - All Other Industries

Nomination Title: Dice Holding's Inc. Customer Service Department

1. Tell the story about what this nominated department achieved since the beginning of July last year (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Our flagship service, Dice.com, added recruitment package customers and
increased revenues 17% in the year ended June 30, 2008, while our customer
support headcount stayed flat. We were able to service these additional
customers without impacting our satisfaction ratings with Dice (80% on average)
through a restructuring of the department which drove personalization, quality
and efficiency.

The first step was to assign customer support representatives' responsibility
for individual accounts and require each conversation incorporate three tasks:
personalize the interaction, offer additional assistance, and demonstrate
customer appreciation. Over the course of the past four quarters, based on our
internal measurements, we have improved 10% in call quality and personalization.

In order to drive efficiency, we undertook a proactive outreach campaign. In
fact, the number of outgoing emails and calls to customers increased 66% vs. the
previous year. This outreach allowed us to reduce incoming issues volume by 28%
and to focus on educating our customers on the value of our service and the
effective use of our products.

No restructuring is done without some angst in our employees. Our turnover in
customer support was 38% over the course of the last four quarters. With many
new employees, our improved call observation process helped us catch our reps
doing something right on their calls with customers reinforcing their individual
and collective positive impact on the company.

A discovery made during 2007 was that our clients were using our services
differently, in fact, companies that hired for their own need tended to be more
job advertisement centric versus searching the resume database. Upon this
discovery through our customer support feedback loop, Dice introduced a new
product called Premium Post which allows companies to post a job advertisement
and automatically receive 15 qualified candidates from the database. Premium
Post is on the path to being a seven-figure contributor to revenues.

A second innovation, related to the number of applications our customers were
receiving. In fact, unemployment in our professional categories is extremely
low and the labor markets we serve are tight. Therefore, in certain cases, some
job advertisements were receiving a low number of applications. Many times,
this is simply due to the way the advertisement itself is written. Customer
support implemented an early warning system to alert representatives when job
advertisements weren't getting a sufficient number of applications. This system
allowed Dice to have substantial, personal and helpful conversations with our
customers ultimately boosting the effectiveness of their job advertisement. Our
direct hiring customers report a more than 10% boost in satisfaction related to
the number of candidates they are receiving over the past four quarters.

Since July 2007, our customers support department has gone through rapid change
in the way we work with customers and work within the corporation to increase
the value of our services. It's been a rewarding challenge that has driven
increased teamwork within customer support and the company as a whole, increased
usage of our services, new product development and a better experience for our
customers.

2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

http://library.corporate-ir.net/library/21/211/211152/items/301482/DHX2Q08EarningsReleaseFinal.pdf

http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/21/211152/DHXHistory0607b.pdf

Wall Street firm, Stifel Nicolaus report which states: As part of our due
diligence, we solicited feedback from a number of Dice customers. When asked
what they liked most about the Dice websites, the two most common responses were
'quality of candidate' and 'quality of customer support,' in that order. (Page
3, Paragraph 3) http://marketing.dice.com/pdf/xDHXStifel.pdf

3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated customer service organization:

Melanie Rosenow, Director of Customer Support for Dice Holdings, Inc., was the
third employee hired at our predecessor company. Over the past 12 years,
Melanie has built a customer service organization that manages more than 8,000
customer relationships and 40 customer support representatives, while supporting
revenues of more than $100 million. While managing the growth from start-up to
a New York Stock Exchange-listed company, Ms. Rosenow philosophy has stayed
consistent: each customer gets personalized care. Ms. Rosenow holds a B.S. in
Education from Iowa State University.