The Planet Enhances Customer Service

Friday, September 02, 2005

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The Planet today announced a new customer service initiative focused on maintaining and improving customer experiences with the company. The first two phases of the plan include an upgrade of customer care center capabilities and the appointment of Marissa Bybee as customer relations manager.

"Customers contacting The Planet's customer care center are now met with faster and more efficient service, with 90 percent of questions answered by the first person who answers the phone," said Steve Kinman, director of support and leader of the customer care initiative. "The Planet achieves this rate of success due to a unique, more efficient approach to staffing. All customer care technicians are trained in various departments, allowing them to answer questions across a broad range of specialties while eliminating the need to pass callers from department to department."

According to Anthony Yarbrough, manager of customer care at The Planet, customer care technicians are just as technologically knowledgeable as the company's Tier 2 technicians or server analysts. "The beauty of customer care is that our staff wears a variety of hats to fit a variety of customer needs. Whether technical support, product questions, or accounting matters, customer care can handle it all in a one-stop solutions center."

Those who prefer an Online approach to customer service can still use The Planet's proprietary customer portal, Orbit(SM) and will be met with the same efficient process as customers who call the customer care center receive.

The addition of Bybee at The Planet will help the company launch the next phases of the customer care initiative. Her role encompasses customer relationship efforts including growth of current accounts, effective customer communications, increased customer education of products and services, and continued customer retention.

"As The Planet continues to innovate and lead in the Web hosting industry, it is experiencing a phenomenal increase in number of customers," said Bybee. "Customer satisfaction is very important to The Planet, and I'm pleased to help lead the department to make sure the company's reputation for the highest level of customer service is maintained and exceeded."

Bringing extensive customer relationship management experience in the enterprise IT and telecom service market, Bybee most recently served as senior account executive for Birch Telecom, where she was responsible for prospecting, proposing and closing the company's key new account relationships, as well as ongoing account management.

Previously, she was channel manager with New Edge Networks where she managed agent and reseller data service sales nationwide and was responsible for the production, training and management support of twenty-two agents and resellers.

About The Planet

With over 10 years experience, The Planet continues to be one of the fastest growing Web hosting companies in the world. Delivering enterprise level hosting solutions to the SMB and SME marketplace, The Planet offers the ideal blend of affordability, simplicity and reliability. The Planet's dedicated server product lines offer extreme value through a broad range of turnkey solutions. Services also include co-location, Internet access, email and business continuance solutions. Customers benefit from value-added features such as advanced security services, proactive server monitoring, database administration, managed data storage, load balancing, clustering, and virtual private networks, all managed through Orbit(SM), the Planet's customer portal. For additional information, visit www.theplanet.com.