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JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. (June 22) – ACCENT Marketing Services, a member of the MDC Partners Network and provider of customer engagement solutions, received top honors at the 2012 ContactCenterWorld.com North American Top Ranking Performers Conference.

Earlier this year out of thousands of applicants, three ACCENT employees were named finalists and asked to compete for medals by presenting best practices and challenges to conference delegates this week in Orlando, Fla. Lovit White, director of facilities, competed in the category of Best Contact Center Design and demonstrated best practices used in the construction of the company’s most recent engagement center in Jeffersonville, Ind. Christine Kopp, health and well-being leader, competed for best Human Resources Professional, and Scott Van Stratten, senior engagement center director, competed in the category of Best Community Spirit.

Based on combined scores from a panel of judges and conference delegate votes, White and Kopp received gold medals in their respective categories, the highest honor awarded. Additionally, Van Stratten was named runner up for Best Community Spirit. Both White and Kopp will go on to compete against regional winners from Europe and the Asia Pacific for another gold medal and share their winning best practices at the Top Ranking Performers World Conference in Las Vegas this October.

“For the third time in four years, our employees have been honored as Top Ranking Performers by the ContactCenterWorld.com conference delegates,” said Tim Searcy, ACCENT’s CEO. “To once again be recognized as the best and brightest in the contact center industry clearly demonstrates that ACCENT is the place where great talent lives.”

This year marked the seventh time that ContactCenterWorld.com has hosted the Top Performers Conference, which recognizes the best performers in the contact center industry. The conference provides a forum for contact center professionals to come together to share best practices on how they lead to results, and in turn, provide the best possible customer experience in their respective centers. Additionally, it provides an opportunity for individuals and companies to be recognized for their hard work and performance.

ACCENT adds the Top Performers awards to a growing list of honors it has received this year. In March, ACCENT was recognized by Customer Interaction Solutions magazine with the bronze MVP Quality Award. The MVP Award honors companies that demonstrate a strong commitment to quality, excellence and customer service. In April, it was recognized again by the magazine as a Top 50 Teleservices Agency, ranking 10th on the Inbound Domestic list, 9th on the Outbound Domestic list, 10th on the Outbound International list, and 6th on the Interactive list.

About ACCENT Marketing Services, LLC
ACCENT, a member of the MDC Partners Network, is the performance marketing company for brands that need to maximize their ability to engage with consumers and influence behavior, while generating a better return on their investment. The company’s data-driven approach transforms customer service touchpoints across voice, online and social media channels into powerful relationship and brand-building tools. Founded in 1993, ACCENT employs more than 2,500 people across the United States, Jamaica and the Philippines. For more information, visit www.accentonline.com.

Media Contact:
Kelly M. Hilton, Director of Marketing and Corporate Communications
812.206.6215 / khilton@accentonline.com

Carrie: Welcome Back! I’m Carrie Schmelkin with TMCnet and today I am joined by Tim Searcy, Chief Executive Officer, of ACCENT Marketing Services.  ACCENT is the performance marketing company for brands that are passionate about keeping and growing customers.  Tim brings 25 years of direct marketing and teleservices experience to ACCENT.  For the past few weeks, Tim has been shedding light on ACCENT’s Continuous Engagement Improvement Process℠ and today we’re going to get into the fifth and final step of the process.

Tim thanks for joining us once again.

Tim: Thank you

Carrie:   Now we’ve been speaking with you over the last few weeks about your company but please remind us all again about ACCENT does.

Tim: Sure.  For the last 20 years ACCENT has been helping world renowned brands with every stage of their customer lifecycle.  We use a data drive approach to help guide us in what we call our Continuous Engagement Improvement Lifecycle Process℠, which is kind of a mouth full, but basically, regardless of channel or point in the customer lifecycle we help companies engage directly with their customers.

Carrie: Can you also remind our listeners about the goal of the Continuous Engagement Improvement Process℠?

Tim: Well the Continuous Engagement Improvement Process℠ was built and designed to respond to the changing social consumer.  As consumers move beyond the single dimension of telephone for customer service and sales on a direct basis, we needed to transform as well.  Our process is designed to change customer service channels into powerful relationship and brand building tools.  Using our process we have helped clients to lower their costs, increase their efficiency, get more revenue but all of it has been around the concept of improving the customer’s lifetime value and driving a greater return on investment, something we refer to as the customer return on engagement.

Carrie: Now the final step in the Continuous Engagement Improvement Process℠ is optimize.  What does that mean?

Tim: Well there are five steps and we’ve gone through four of them listen, learn, connect, influence and optimize.  Optimize is where we move to the money part of this, where it starts to make a difference for our clients.  So optimizing your customers involves getting some hidden insights about your customer.  How they view your brand and your products throughout the engagement process and how you can get the next interaction, to be more personal, more intelligent and more profitable than the last.  It’s about analyzing, monitoring and incorporating the information in to good knowledgeable databases, which we refer to knowledge bases, which insure consumers and our engagement specialists, who are talking to them, have the most accurate and relevant information at their fingertips, when it’s needed.

Carrie: Why is this step critical for successful customer engagement strategies?

Tim: Well every brand has got to evolve and they have to improve to order to get bigger and to grow.  Using that same principle, you have to improve every interaction in order to continue to grow your relationship with your customers.  It needs to be dynamic.  It needs to be continuous and it needs to be improving.  Without this step the process becomes one sided and consumers don’t get anything from the process.  And if consumers are not getting something for their time and their interest they will stop participating.  This step insures the feedback received and the knowledge acquired is implemented into a strategy that moves that brand and that relationship forward.  Again, we want to look at that customer return on engagement.  How can we go ahead and optimize touch points, products, services, customer groups and channels to get the best possible outcome.

Carrie: What can brands do to improve how they optimize their customer relationships?

Tim: Well they need to focus on this five step process and look first to customer feedback; and use root cause analysis to solve some of the repetitive issues that are coming up that drain them from having true engagement from their customer.  They need to implement the solutions and the asked for items in a way that is visible and noticeable for their customers.  In essence, they need to demonstrate that they’re listening and that they’re caring in a way that is meaningful for the customer and they need to correspond with their customers in a way that will take those timely, relevant, valuable offers and put them in the hands of the customers at the point in time when they are most interested.   It’s a lot about creating that relationship with your customer which is deep, but also has a wide number of ways in which connection can take place.

Carrie: Tim, Thank you so much for joining us these past few weeks to discuss the Continuous Engagement Process℠.  We really appreciate it.

Tim: It’s been my pleasure.  Thank you!

Carrie:  And for you listeners out there please continue to check back at TMCnet in the coming weeks for more on this subject.  Thank so much for joining us!

Carrie: Hi I’m Carrie Schmelkin with TMCnet and today I am joined by Tim Searcy, Chief Executive Officer, of ACCENT Marketing Services.  ACCENT is the performance marketing company for brands that are passionate about keeping and growing customers.  Tim brings 25 years of direct marketing and teleservices experience to ACCENT.  For the past few weeks, Tim has been shedding light on ACCENT’s Continuous Engagement Improvement Process℠ and today he will delve into the fourth step in the process.

Tim, welcome back.

Tim: Thank you

Carrie:   We have been speaking with you over the last few weeks about your company but please remind us all again about what ACCENT does.

Tim: Sure.  ACCENT helps brands in every stage of their customer life cycle using a data dip driven approach to customer engagement; we call it our Continuous Engagement Improvement Lifecycle Process℠.  Basically, what that means regardless of what the channel is or the point in the customers life, we help companies engage directly with their customers.

Carrie: Great. Can you also remind our listeners about the goal of the Continuous Engagement Improvement Process℠?

Tim: Sure. ACCENT created our process to respond to the changing social consumer.  When we realized that things had moved beyond the single dimensional approach of either just phone or direct mail and retail into a multi-dimensional facet with the social media being harder to control, we wanted to develop a process that would transform what would be traditional consumer service channels into relationship and brand building tools.  Using our process, we have helped our clients lower their costs, increase their efficiencies, get more incremental revenue.  All of this around the concept of improving their overall customer life time value and getting a greater return on investment, something we refer to as the customer return on engagement.

Carrie: Great. As part of the Continuous Engagement Improvement Process℠, ACCENT says step four is to Influence.  What exactly does that mean?

Tim: Influence may be one of the most important that companies are now able to do, which was difficult for them in the past.  In our five step process, we look at listen, learn, connect, influence and optimize.  Influence happens when your brand cannot just meet but anticipate your customer’s needs.  This can be accomplished by providing information to help them figure out the answers they are looking for, resolving their issues quickly and efficiently, turning a bad experience into a good one, or presenting an upsell or cross sell that actually is relevant to them in a timely manner that helps them further entrench with the brand.  The goal with influencing customers is to strengthen their level of involvement and intimacy with the brand and we want to do that across a wide variety of channels.  We also have to recognize that influence has a great deal to do with what that customers influence is in the social community.  Where are they in the blogosphere? How active are they within their own communities and what level of involvement do they have that we want to be able to impact?

Carrie: Why is this important for true customer engagement?

Tim: Well if you want to influence your customer, that’s going to require a certain level of respect, it’s also going to require some vulnerability.  They’ve got to be willing to listen, engage and respond to that brand before you can actually influence them, for them to influence others, and in order for them to want to do any of that, they have to feel that you care about them and you are listening to them.  This level involvement is necessary for effective influencing to take place.   Without it you can’t have true customer engagement.  You are really still stuck in a superficial message to recipient.  We don’t want to be in the position, we want to be closer.

Carrie: Many brands strive to accomplish this and fail.  Why do you think that is?

Tim: Well a lot of brands think the customer just wants information, so they do a lot of that one way pushing of information through advertising, or they advocate people to go to their site to do their shopping.  However, if those campaigns fall on customers who aren’t engaged with the brand, they are less likely to pay attention and act on that call to action.  In essence, until you break through and become a brand of consideration, you’re going to spend a whole bunch of marketing costs without getting a lot of return on investment.  You have to create the sense of influence and community so that the customer says “I’m willing to consider your product.”

Smart brands will focus on their customer base and see how they can get their high life time value customers to engage and be the ones out to create advocacy or promotion in the marketplace.  The whole idea being is that we are more likely to listen to someone we know and like than we are to listen to a brand that is advertising to us.  These folks are more likely to buy products, not just those that are loyal to us, but potentially new customers.  They are more likely to respond positively to a cross sell or up sell.  And when they have a mistake occur, which it does happen, and service has to occur they are more likely to forgive that brand for that mistake.  See the strategy can’t be just about producing more sales, it also has to reduce marketing cost and ultimately service costs as well.

Carrie: Thanks so much Tim and everyone who listened today thanks so much.  Please check back at TMCnet in the coming weeks to hear about the last step in the Continuous Engagement Process℠.

Carrie: Hi this is Carrie Schmelkin with TMCnet and today I am joined by Tim Searcy, Chief Executive Officer, of ACCENT Marketing Services.  ACCENT is the performance marketing company for brands that are passionate about keeping and growing customers.  Tim brings 25 years of direct marketing and teleservices experience to ACCENT.  For the past few weeks, Tim has been shedding light on ACCENT’s Continuous Engagement Improvement Process℠ and today we’re going to get into the third step of the process.

Tim thanks for joining us again.

Tim: Thank you

Carrie:   We had a chance to speak a couple of weeks ago, but please remind our first time listeners about what ACCENT does.

Tim: Sure.  For about the last 20 years ACCENT has helped world renowned brands with every stage of their customer life cycle.  We use a data-driven approach to continuous engagement improvement and we use that through our Continuous Engagement Improvement Process℠.  Basically, regardless of which channel a customer wants to use or what the point in time is in the customer’s life cycle, we help companies engage directly with those customers.

Carrie: Great.  Now we are here today to talk a little bit more about the Continuous Engagement Improvement Process℠, but can you remind us of the process a little bit?

Tim: Sure.  The process is something that we created to respond to the changing consumer.  We watched through what’s going on in social media and the development of communities that the consumer is not the same say that they were five or ten years ago.  Our process is designed to transform traditional customer service channels into more powerful relationship and brand building tools but to also adapt and adopt new channels as they come into being, like social media.  Using this process, we’ve helped clients lower their costs, increase their efficiency, get more revenue from their current customers, as well as improve that overall customer lifetime value through greater retention.  We look to drive greater return on investment, something we refer to as customer return on engagement.

Carrie: Now step three of the Continuous Engagement Improvement Process℠ is Connect, but brands usually start with this step.  So why is it number three in the process?

Tim: I am glad you asked.  It’s interesting we look at connecting with the customers as being the natural first step that people like to go through.  But you have to with “What does it mean?” If you don’t have a complete view of your customer before joining the conversation, you’re going to put yourself in a position where your brand is going to be weak.  You need to understand at what point you should connect with them to build a better foundation to participate in that conversation.  So when we look at things that we have seen before, insights that were gained through listening and learning, we know that we will be able to engage in a personal conversation through the channel that the customer prefers.  By postponing the connection we can insure that regardless of how the consumer chooses to interact, we can provide the personal and relevant information that they need and want to accelerate the relationship.  This is about both being timely and relevant.  You have to know what the customer wants, how they want to communicate with you and you have to do that in a timeframe that is meaningful to them.

Carrie: Great.  How do customers generally respond to connecting with brands?

Tim: Well customers who are actively engaged with the brands they care about, enjoy connecting at a personal level with their brands.  You’ll find that people like to be part of the old fashioned Nielson family.  They want their opinion to be heard at an individual level and a collective level.  Unengaged customers may feel the brand is being intrusive or pushy if they don’t ask permission to engage at that personal level.  You have to understand what the customer wants and you have to interact with them in a manner that is consistent with those wants, if you want to insure that the relationship you are creating, that positive connection, continues and actually builds brand loyalty.  We have to keep in mind that when and how we communicate and connect with customers is a lot about choice.  Their choice.

Carrie: What can a brand do to improve how they connect with their customers?

Tim: Well connection goes back to the first two steps of listening and learning.  The best thing that we can do is to understand what customers want from their brand.  Are they looking for technical support?  Do they want to do self-guided assistance?  Do they believe they can handle this on the web?  We want to give them personal assistance with an engagement specialist through something like chat support or telephone support when they want it.  But we really believe that if they want to connect with their customers they are going to have to figure out the three things I mentioned before: When and how and how to be relevant.  If we are not doing those three things we’re not going to create the relationship that we want.

Carrie: Thanks so much Tim and thanks to everyone who joined us today.  Please check back at TMCnet in the coming weeks to hear about the fourth step in the Continuous Engagement Process℠.

Visit us at Booth 207

The theme of this year’s American Teleservices Association Convention and Expo is “Managing Customer Experience in a Digital World.” Accent Marketing will join companies from across the nation to discuss strategy and provide solutions to respond to your consumer demands.

ATA Convention and Expo 2012

We’re proud to be a sponsor at the American Teleservices Association’s Washington Summit this fall. The ATA is the only non-profit trade organization dedicated exclusively to the advancement of companies that utilize contact centers as an integral channel of operations.

American Teleservices Association

Accent Marketing is an exhibitor at the 2012 SOCAP Annual Conference. We’ll showcase our solutions to top professionals and decision makers in the customer care profession from multiple industries.

SOCAP International