BenchmarkPortal Announces: The Northern Virginia Community College Call Center Achieves Its Third Certification as a BenchmarkPortal Center of Excellence
Santa Barbara, CA (PRWEB) September 24, 2013 -- The Northern Virginia Community College Call Center 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. Contact centers that achieve certification are remarkable in their ability to balance a commitment to service excellence with cost effective service strategies.”
Linda Barthelus, director of the College Call Center, said achieving the designation of Center of Excellence for the third time was both rewarding and a motivator for her staff. “Most gratifying was the acknowledgement that 91 percent of our customers indicated that they were very satisfied or satisfied with the services they had received from the Call Center.”
“The ability to operate effectively is crucial for all businesses, especially in today’s economy and the College Call Center is proud that it continues to achieve that goal,” Barthelus added.
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.
Factors (called key performance indicators) such as first call resolution, cost per call, call waiting time, customer satisfaction, agent satisfaction and utilization of human resources are taken into account. BenchmarkPortal is able to scientifically gauge how the contact center being studied compares to other centers in the same industry, and if the performance of the contact center is superior. Customer satisfaction, which relates to customer loyalty and business growth, is the goal, balanced by financial metrics which show that the center is being operated efficiently.
“The achievement of the Center of Excellence represents a contact center’s commitment to delivering customer service that is both effective and efficient,” said Belfiore. “It is the culmination of important initiatives that were undertaken to achieve sustainable service excellence. The Northern Virginia Community College Call Center has shown its ability to achieve that balance through its objective performance metrics. We have validated its metrics and have certified that the Call Center is, indeed, among the best in its industry. I congratulate the Call Center on a job well done.”
“Benchmarking delivers a crackerjack profile of a contact center’s operations that can inspire management to move forward aggressively, even in a less-than-robust economy,” added Belfiore, who has been with the company since 2000.
About BenchmarkPortal
BenchmarkPortal’s founders pioneered the first contact center benchmarking study in 1995. Now custodian of the largest database of contact center metrics in the world, BenchmarkPortal is a leader in certification, training, consulting and research for the customer contact industry. Its team of professionals has gained international recognition for expertise and innovation in best practices. BenchmarkPortal’s mission is to help management optimize the performance of their center in terms of both cost and quality, encourage customer loyalty and build enterprise value. For more information on BenchmarkPortal, call 1-800-214-8929 or visit http://www.BenchmarkPortal.com.
About Northern Virginia Community College
Northern Virginia Community College is the largest institution of higher education in the Commonwealth of Virginia and one of America's largest community colleges. NOVA enrolls more than 75,000 students at its six campuses in Alexandria, Annandale, Loudoun, Manassas, Springfield and Woodbridge, and through the Extended Learning Institute. For more information about NOVA and its programs or services, call 703-323-3000 or visit the College's Web site, http://www.nvcc.edu.
Crystal Kay, BenchmarkPortal, http://www.benchmarkportal.com/, +1 (800) 214-8929 11, [email protected]
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