Marketing and loyalty solutions developer Alliance Data (News - Alert) Systems Corporation announced that its Alliance Data Retail Services had been recognized with a "Center of Excellence" certification from BenchmarkPortal (News - Alert) and Purdue Research Park’s Center for Customer-Driven Quality. The company noted that the award applauded the level of service at the company's customer care centers. Alliance Data has been certified as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal seven times, the company noted.
Center of Excellence recognition is given to call centers that fall into the top 10 percent of call centers surveyed by BenchmarkPortal. The survey looks for best-practice metrics for efficiency, effectiveness, quality, cost, and superior performance. BenchmarkPortal maintains the world's largest database of objective and quantitative metrics. The database is routinely audited by BenchmarkPortal and researchers from the Center for Customer-Driven Quality at Purdue University (News - Alert).
"The achievement of the Center of Excellence certification of Alliance Data's customer care centers is a direct result of its leadership's commitment to balancing best-in-class service performance with cost-effective service solutions," said Bruce Belfiore, chief executive officer of BenchmarkPortal, in a company statement. "It is the culmination of important initiatives that were undertaken to achieve this level of sustainable service excellence."
BenchmarkPortal monitors 22 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that strongly correlate to quality and quantity of calls handled at call center operations. In the benchmarking survey, Alliance Data's call center performance was assessed against these KPIs to ascertain each center's level of efficiency and effectiveness. BenchmarkPortal found that callers to Alliance Data customer care centers gave “top box” caller satisfaction ratings 20 percent higher than the industry average. It also confirmed that Alliance Data customer care center associates answer customer service phone calls within an average of 8.75 seconds. 17.43 seconds is the industry average.
"We are honored to have all of our customer care centers certified by BenchmarkPortal for the seventh time," said Sallie Komitor, vice president of customer care operations for Alliance Data, in a company statement. "Our re-certification as a Center of Excellence is a direct result of our commitment to service excellence. Alliance Data's continued investments in both technology and customer care associate training programs are key to ensuring we deliver on the highest levels of call quality and customer satisfaction. We're incredibly proud of our customer care associates and thrilled to have achieved the most certifications from BenchmarkPortal of any company in our industry."
Edited by Rich Steeves