The SSPA STAR Awards have become one of the highest honors in the service and support industry, acknowledging the contribution of companies of all sizes to the continual improvement of service and support delivery industry-wide.  The judging committee, comprised of industry executive SSPA Advisory Board members and senior SSPA association executives, evaluated data tabulated on criteria including description of overall support model, the nature and types of assisted support offered, the nature and types of non-assisted support offered, key performance metrics, and customer satisfaction results and methodologies.

“The STAR Award is an established honor, bestowing peer recognition that these companies are, hands down, among the best in the business. This year’s judging process was extremely rigorous due to the large number and high quality of nominations,” said Bill Rose, founder and executive director of the SSPA.

Awards were presented in seven major categories, acknowledging excellence in different aspects of service and support delivery, including:

Complex Support:
Tektronix
Presented to the company that delivers sophisticated technical support for complex applications in mixed or otherwise complex environments, typically engineering and scientific fields.  The company deploys senior level technical support representatives with advanced degrees who interface with senior level customers.

High Case Volume (two winners):
IBM System x, BladeCenter and Intellistation Support
(Enterprise Support)
Microsoft Customer Service and Support (Consumer Support)Presented to the companies that demonstrate unmatched excellence at a support center with hundreds of support reps fielding thousands of technical assistance/customer support requests per day, and more than 10,000 requests per month – all with a high level of customer satisfaction. Award-winning companies in this area generally support a wide range of products.

Innovative Support:
Oracle
Presented to the company that has developed new, cutting-edge systems and processes for delivering exceptional technical support to their customers, displaying innovation and creativity through use of technology, tools, and systems.

Mission Critical Support:
EMC Corporation
Presented to the company that is the best at keeping customers “up and running” 24/7. Award-winning companies in this area must demonstrate how important their technical support is to the operation of customers’ mission critical systems or services where “system uptime” is imperative.

Most Improved:
Intuit
Presented to the company that demonstrates the greatest increase in support quality over the past year. Key measurements include dramatic improvement in customer satisfaction and overall gains in support productivity, backed by support metrics and customer satisfaction results for current and prior years.

Sustained Performance (two winners):
IBM Rochester Support Center (Enterprise Support)
HP (Consumer Support)
Presented to the companies that have sustained outstanding service and support with high customer satisfaction levels for the past three consecutive years.

WebSTAR Service (two winners):
Oracle (Enterprise Support)
HP (Consumer Support)
Presented to the companies that deliver exceptional customer service and technical support via the web. Award-winning companies in this area have helped to set benchmarks other organizations can use to measure their level of online technical support.

Hall of Fame
EMC
EMC Corporation was inducted to the SSPA Hall of Fame in recognition of having won their fifth SSPA STAR Award since the program’s inception in 1989.