InterContinental Hotels Group

Company: InterContinental Hotels Group
Company Division/Group: Global Customer Care
Company Description: IHG is a leading global hospitality co. and one of the world’s largest hotel groups. The company owns, manages, or franchises almost 4,000 hotels and more than 590,000 guest rms in nearly 100 countries around the world. The Group owns a portfolio of respected brands including InterContinental Hotels, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge & Candlewood Suites and Hotel Indigo.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year - Leisure & Tourism

Nomination Title: InterContinental Hotels Group

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:

Global Customer Care (GCC) should be selected as the Stevie Award recipient for
demonstrating excellence in supporting “Great Hotels Guest Love.”; During 2009,
IHG, along with the rest of the world, was challenged with an uncertain economy
which led to unprecedented cost-cutting initiatives.; However, service and
support are strategic components of IHG’s success, and it was not an option to
sacrifice the quality of service to our hoteliers.

Global customer care is a 24x7x365 technical support operation which provides
“live” and personable assistance for 4000 hotels globally.; These services
include support of IHG’s proprietary revenue and reservations system, software
product management, hardware maintenance, project management, trend analysis for
over 120,000 components and other services, statistical reporting and data
translation, data base development, internal/external training, supplier
management, asset tracking, depot maintenance services, hardware system
monitoring, contract negotiations, product certification, software updates and
distribution.

Significant accomplishments last year included:
-Cost reductions of approximately $1M achieved through re-negotiating key
contracts which allowed us to pass those savings on to our customers through
maintaining staff levels that allowed us to offset incremental expenses to our
hotels
-Reduction of call volume through targeted trend analysis that allowed the
development and implementation of solutions to drive the trend downward from
approximately 18K to an average of 14-15K monthly.; This represents an overall
decrease of 20% in targeted areas, as well as our ongoing commitment to create a
more cohesive relationship between Development, Deployment, Training and Support
to reduce issues prior to becoming problematic
-First call resolution of 85%, which is significant since a large majority of
our customers are owners and GMs who have hotels to operate
- We began laying the foundation to enhance the customer experience by
consolidating our global Tier I and Tier II desks and moving to one global tool.
Our customer support organization is a part of the Global Technology Division,
which is development focused, thus, it is often difficult to bring the
appropriate attention to the customer experience.; However, support's inherent
role is to be the customer advocate, while also ensuring that products perform
as intended. Therefore, we consistently communicate and map trends in
performance to specific products and relative issues that increased call volume
such as product design, deployment process gaps, defects, or training. This
resulted in software patches being quickly developed and deployed through
support's early detection, as well as, better self-help tools.; The average
tenure of our associates is 7 years and we continue to experience a less than 3%
turnover rate, attributed to the care we have for our employees and manifested
in service excellence to our customers.

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]:

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

As Director of Global Customer Care for IHG, Jacque Plair-Rushin is responsible
for providing global support solutions for IHG's proprietary systems, including
management of suppliers in the support delivery channels. She began her career
with IHG in 1998 as a Senior Manager and strategically worked her way up to her
current role as Director of GCC.

Prior to joining IHG, she worked as an educator and with AT&T for 15 years.
Her career history includes operations, business process reengineering,
strategic planning, training, business alignment and talent development. Mrs.
Plair-Rushin has a B.S. degree in Business Education and M.B.A. in Management.