Company: PeopleAdmin, Austin, TX
Company Description: Experiencing over 675% growth over the past three years, PeopleAdmin was named to the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing companies in the country. PeopleAdmin provides web-based Human Resources systems designed for the higher education and public sector markets. With over 400 customers, our company has established itself as a leader in these markets and continued growth is expected.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year - Public Services & Education

Nomination Title: PeopleAdmin's Client Services - Department of the Year!

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:

PeopleAdmin's customer service department has worked hard to keep pace with our
company's fast-paced growth during the last year. As PeopleAdmin has increased
revenues by over 40%, the customer service department has increased customer
satisfaction by 10% (from under 86% approval rating to over 95%), increased
productivity by over 23%, while decreasing department costs.

Customer satisfaction is our number one goal and we have evolved the
organization to reflect this key requirement. By aligning employees' strengths
with customer needs, we have fashioned winning partnerships. Everything from
developing our Client Success Manager group to restructuring our tiered levels
of technical support to launching our project-centric task force, the customer
service department has seen marked increases in customer satisfaction. The
Client Success Manager group engages a number of proactive initiatives to
ensure that our customers thrive including the creation of Customer Newsletters
outlining company news and upcoming functionality, Customer Blogs informing our
customers of best practices in our niche market, proactive system audits
intended to increase customer knowledge and product adoption, and
intradepartmental outreach to nurture company cohesion. Our technical support
groups have been honed with new and dedicated training resources, employee
career plans for promoting job satisfaction and personal growth, and customer
care resources for ensuring expert coverage including standardized requirements
gathering tools, improved CRM software, and leading edge telephony.

Productivity gains have been realized by streamlining customer request
completion practices and empowering customers toward greater self-reliance.
Our front lines team now guides initial customer consultations, the second tier
Systems Support group specializes in deeper, technical issues, and our Projects
group manages large-scale product enhancements. Formulating teams based on
proficiency allows those who are excellent with customer facing strategies and
those who are talented with technical acumen to grow their core strengths and
deliver results. In addition, we created a customer portal as a single source
for customers to log requests, stay in touch with peers, research knowledge
base articles, and learn all the latest goings on at PeopleAdmin. Empowering
customers to become more self-reliant and serving our customer base with
specialized teams has led to enhancements in overall productivity.

Over the past year, we have reduced costs on a number of fronts. The
aforementioned customer site audits holistically streamline systems helping to
avoid excess customer requests, comprehensive QA processes ensure that new
customer systems are accurately configured and in line with industry best
practices, weekly TOI sessions expand system knowledge among our teams, and our
Extended Services group has established itself as a beneficial resource for our
diverse customer base while creating new revenue for the organization from
targeted consulting and training sales. By implementing proactive measures and
increasing revenue, cost has been significantly reduced.

Going from a small company to a medium sized company has required our customer
service teams to work smarter to realize increased customer satisfaction and
productivity while decreasing revenue. These challenges have been
organizationally as well as personally rewarding for everyone involved. We
look forward to seeing what the next year brings!

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]:

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

Sandra oversees PeopleAdmin's industry-leading services organization as Vice
President of Services. Her team sets the standard for account management,
implementation support, consulting and customer support for higher education
and public sector companies. Most recently she was the Director of Services at
Convio, Inc., a provider of constituent relationship management solutions for
nonprofit organizations, where she was instrumental in increasing client
renewal rates to more than 90 percent. She has held various other executive
management roles at leading technology companies, including BMC Software,
Evity, and BroadbandNOW.