iContact Wins International Customer Management Institute’s Global Call Center of the Year Award

John Hayes iContact

John Hayes iContact

Congrats to John Hayes & his team for this award, in his own words “call centres aren’t sexy – but these guys are our frontline troops and separate us from the competition

iContact Corp., a leading email marketing and social media marketing company, announced that its customer support call center won the coveted Global Call Center of the Year Award from International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) in the small-medium call centre competition.

“It is an honor for iContact’s customer support teams to be recognized as a benchmark by one of the service industry’s most recognized and trusted advisory organizations,” said Sarah Stealey, senior vice president of customer support at iContact. “This reflects our rigorous standards, and our outstanding agents’ ability to bring the highest level of focus and quality to all customers at every touchpoint. Small- and medium-sized businesses rely on iContact to help their businesses grow and succeed through email and social media marketing.”

Every day, iContact polls its customers to determine their level of satisfaction. The company consistently exceeds its service-level performance goal, averaging more than 88 percent on the surveys. iContact’s customers enjoy responsive, educated, and high-quality service center support, available to them via chat, phone, and email.

The award was presented at the recent Annual Call Center Exhibition (ACCE) to the best call centers in the world to celebrate excellence in ICMI’s global membership of thousands of call center professionals.

About ICMI

The International Customer Management Institute is the leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals – from frontline agents to executives – who wish to improve contact center operations, empower contact center employees, and enhance customer loyalty. ICMI’s experienced and dedicated team of industry insiders, analysts, and consultants is committed to providing uncompromised objectivity and results-oriented vision through the organization’s respected lineup of professional services including: training and certification, consulting, events, and informational resources. Founded in 1985, ICMI continues to serve as one of the most established and respected organizations in the call center industry.  For more information, visit www.icmi.com.

About iContact

iContact is a purpose-driven company based in Raleigh, NC, working to make email marketing and social marketing easy so that small and midsized companies and causes can grow and succeed. Founded in 2003, iContact has more than 300 employees and more than 700,000 users of its leading email marketing software. iContact also provides the event marketing platform Ettend. As a B Corporation, iContact utilizes the 4-1s Corporate Social Responsibility Model, donating 1% of employee time to community volunteering, 1% of payroll, 1% of equity, and 1% of product to its local and global community as part of its social mission. iContact works hard to maintain a fun, creative, energetic, challenging, and community-oriented company culture. Visit us on online at iContact.com, on Twitter @iContact, at iContact LinkedIn Group and on our Facebook Fan page.

About iContact Free Edition

The following is a press release from iContact regarding their newly release free edition of their product, allowing users to manage up to 500 subscribers and to send upto 2000 emails free each month. Also for comlpeteness, I’ve included the video too, which I thought was rather cool:


New Product Brings Email Marketing & Social Marketing to Individuals, Small Businesses & Non-Profits for Free

iContact-Free-EditionRALEIGH, N.C., April 13, 2011 iContact Corp., a leading email marketing and social marketing company, today announced it is launching iContact Free Edition. This no-cost version of its flagship email marketing and social marketing tool makes it easy for individuals, community organizations and small businesses without a large budget to easily stay in touch with their subscribers and fans via email, Facebook and Twitter.

iContact Free Edition enables anyone to easily manage a contact database, select a professionally designed template, send out an email and social network message, and track the opens, clicks and social views.

“Today, we are announcing a major new product launch for iContact designed to make email marketing and social marketing available to everyone in both their professional and personal lives,” said Ryan Allis, CEO, iContact. “We want to provide easy access to free email marketing and social marketing tools backed by world-class customer service.” Here is more about iContact Free Edition in the words of our co-founders: http://blog.icontact.com/blog/helping-more-companies-causes-succeed-with-icontact-free-edition/

About iContact Free Edition

iContact’s proven email marketing solution empowers businesses to engage, educate and retain customers, targeted prospects and website visitors. Now individuals or small organizations with subscriber lists of 500 or less can have email marketing, social marketing, event marketing and surveying for free.

iContact Free Edition includes:

  • Email creation, sending and tracking capabilities for up to 500 subscribers and 24 designer templates for effective, eye-catching messages quickly and easily – http://www.icontact.com/messagebuilder-templates
  • Social Media Tools Integration with Facebook and Twitter allows users to create and share links to their email communications from within the application. iContact will automatically post a web version of the email message and report related views and clicks on the user’s tracking dashboard – http://www.icontact.com/social-tools
  • Compatibility with iPhone and Android mobile apps allows users to manage contacts, access and send messages, and view detailed tracking reports, all in real time – http://www.icontact.com/icontact-iphone and http://www.icontact.com/android
  • Built-in survey tool enables users to easily create questions and choose a response type, such as text box, radio button, drop-down menu or selector – http://tinyurl.com/3vgl5jj

According to a recently released 2011 Outlook report from Borrell Associates (ClickZ, March 11, 2011), the SMB market accounted for more than 70 percent of all online advertising expenditures including email, search and run-of-site display last year. While individual SMBs on average spent less than $12,000 on all advertising in 2010 – about $2,300 of which went online – they represented 95 percent of U.S. business locations.

About iContact

iContact is a purpose-driven company based in Raleigh, NC, working to make email marketing and social marketing easy so that small and midsized companies and causes can grow and succeed. Founded in 2003, iContact has more than 300 employees and more than 700,000 users of its leading email marketing software. iContact also provides the event marketing platform Ettend. As a B Corporation, iContact utilizes the 4-1s Corporate Social Responsibility Model, donating 1% of payroll, 1% of employee time to community volunteering, 1% of equity, and 1% of product to its local and global community as part of its social mission. iContact works hard to maintain a fun, creative, energetic, challenging and community-oriented company culture.

For media inquiries, contact Leigh Anne Varney, Varney Business Communication, 415.387.7250, [email protected].

Visit us on online at iContact.com, Twitter @iContactiContact LinkedIn Group and our Facebook Fan Page.

Online Transport Marketplace uShip offers solution for the pickup problem on eBay Germany

uShip LogoeBay Germany launches new Transport microsite – Online Transport Marketplace uShip offers solution for the pickup problem on eBay Germany.

Berlin, 4 March 2010 – From March, a new eBay Germany Microsite will help eBay buyers and sellers solve the tricky problem of delivery for those hard to transport items such as furniture and household items, cars, and motorcycles. Too often, these items are simply listed as pickup because neither buyers nor sellers know how much it will cost or how to best to arrange transport for things that are simply too bulky to go through the normal parcel services.

uShip’s eBay micro sites solves the Pick Up Only problem by enabling customers to get free quotations for delivery with just postcode details and a few quick clicks of the mouse, before they purchase their eBay items. uShip sends the details out to their many thousands of registered transport companies who then quote competitively the reverse auction platform to the customer, who is then free to select whichever quote they prefer.

The German eBay microsite is a further continuation of uShip’s expansion, building on the successful partnership with eBay motors in the US, and the existing integration with mobile.de, eBay’s German car classifieds subsidiary.

With the launch of the French localised website in January, uShip continues to make its stamp in Europe where it is truly able to offer customers an international service, whether their transport requirements are just a single item going a few miles locally, cross Europe deliveries, or containers for international shipments.

About uShip
uShip helps relieve the stress and high cost of moving hard-to-transport items, such as cars, antiques household goods, boats, freight, heavy equipment, pets and more.  Since it was founded in 2004, the uShip marketplace has attracted nearly £170 million in business transactions, one million customers and 200,000 service providers.  uShip operates globally with localised functionality in the Germany, UK, France, Netherlands, U.S.,  Canada, and Australia.  http://www.uship.com/de/

Contact:
Lutz Philip Hecker, uShip [email protected] Press Officer, +31 (0) 20 7944580