Energy, Creativity, and Trust Make for Award-Winning Service

Learn more about Citrix, winner of the 2017 ICMI Global Contact Center Award for Best Medium Contact Center

“The energy and creativity of this team shows! The core values (“bias for yes”) feel like values that employees can truly embrace. Kudos on changing the focus of the Executive Team to the customer experience.”

         - 2017 ICMI Global Contact Center Awards Judges

Working in the Citrix contact center in Raleigh, NC comes with a lot of perks. Employees have access to premium coffee, standing desks, a stunning rooftop patio (complete with a putting green), a state-of-the-art gym, and more. And while everyone here works hard, they save time for fun, too. It’s not uncommon to walk through the contact center on a Tuesday and see agents engaged in a friendly Nerf gun battle.

Fun and games aside, the team at Citrix has mastered the art of serving customers. This year, their efforts were recognized by the ICMI Global Contact Center Awards program, when Citrix snagged the coveted title of Best Medium Contact Center. What makes their team superior? It’s all about attitude, and a clear vision for success that keeps employees motivated and customer-focused.

A Culture of Trust

The core values that the Citrix contact center abides by are simple but powerful:

1. Have a bias for YES
2. Own it
3. We Win Together

While many organizations are bogged down by policies and procedures that hinder the contact center from doing what’s right for customers, that’s not the case at Citrix. Their philosophy: hire smart people, and then trust those people to make good decisions. That culture of trust permeates the contact center and has helped Citrix become one of the most sought after employers in the area.

“We do everything we can to instill confidence in each of our agents,” says Justin Nuzum, Senior Manager of Customer Care at Citrix. “Though they know that QA is and will always be part of our culture, we enjoy setting protocols in place that allow for as much autonomy as possible and establish a certain amount of trust with how agents are working to engage and help clients. This level of empowerment is what allows us to create the experience that we do.”

Not only does management trust and empower agents to do what’s right, but they also encourage career growth opportunities in a variety of meaningful ways.

An Intentional Approach to Career-Pathing

Many all-star agents have worked their way up the ranks, and Citrix works to promote awareness of the career paths former support team members have paved. On their intranet, you’ll find the Support 'Hall of Fame' which highlights members of the support team who’ve landed promotions throughout the organization. Employees also receive a monthly 'Where are they now?' email that shines a light on career growth success stories.

The 'Hall of Fame' is an internal site that shines a spotlight on support team members who have moved up to various critical roles throughout the business. These functions include product management leadership, senior engineering, and QA roles, as well as various successful sales roles. The page outlines the amount of time spent in support, some favorite memories from their time in the support center, and the skills and initiatives they learned and undertook to advance their career.

The 'Where are they now?' program quickly outlines more recent members of support that have moved on to either escalation roles within the support team, or new roles in other departments such as customer success (account management), management, or entry-level engineering positions.

Citrix also works to partner rising stars within support with ex-support members to establish mentorships and programs that allow the individuals to develop the skills and traits necessary to advance. Employees who participate in these mentorships significantly increase their likelihood of promotion.

Proof That Bigger Isn’t Always Better

It’s true. The larger the contact center, the bigger the budget and the bigger the team. But size hasn’t been a limiting factor for Citrix. They’ve grown in the past several years from a small center of fewer than 25 agents to a center with just over 75, but they’ve never let size limit them.

“We do more with less. We service thousands of accounts, big and small, with the same level of service and the same drive to raise the bar,” says Nuzum.“We put processes in place to make sure we are improving, while never losing our passion for the customers as well as our employees.”

And the numbers certainly back-up those claims. Last year, their average customer satisfaction rate sat at 95%. The average First Contact Resolution rate was above 94%, and their escalation rate hovers below 3%. Citrix is also working hard to reduce customer effort. They recently rolled out a total user interface refresh, but due to careful planning and proactive communication, less than 1% of their customers had to interact with support as a result of the changes. The support team has tackled billing issues, too, reducing the overall influx of billing issues into support by 15% over the past year.

Learn Even More Customer Service Success Secrets

Want to learn a little bit more about the way this team approaches customer service? Hannah Bell, Manager of Product Support at Citrix, recently spoke in a panel-style webinar for ICMI. Watch it on-demand to hear how their customer service team collaborates with other departments, how they celebrate Customer Service Weeks, which metrics they prioritize, and more!

Think you have what it takes to bring home the prize next year? The 2018 application process with open on September 24.