Teleflora's Contact Center Blooms Through ICMI's Professional Certification

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Sept. 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Since its humble beginnings as a small "flowers-by-wire" service in 1934, Teleflora has blossomed into the world's largest florist network, with more than 15,000 member shops in the U.S. and Canada and 20,000 affiliates outside North America. Needless to say, adaptation to change has been essential to Teleflora's success. But not since the transition from telegraph to telephone had the industry experienced a major shift in customer-side technology. Then came the Internet.

"We were trying to bring our customer access strategy to the 21st century, so the idea of how customers could interact with our contact center was going through a transition," said Amas Tenumah, Vice President of Operations, Teleflora. "We were paving the way to bring Web 2.0 to our contact center. We wanted to ensure that we were doing all the right things for the company and our customers."

That's when Teleflora turned to ICMI's Professional Certification program, powered by the CIAC (Call Center Industry Advisory Council). Available exclusively from ICMI – the leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals for more than 25 years – Professional Certification delivers a standardized approach to contact center management, based on proven practices and principles.

"I was impressed that the program's content was updated to accommodate emerging channels, such as social media and chat. It really helped us define what we were trying to build at that point. We immediately started seeing benefits within the contact center," Tenumah said. "It's invaluable from a validation and certification standpoint, and from an educational standpoint. ICMI Professional Certification is an opportunity to learn best practices, to jettison some bad practices and habits you've picked up over the years, and to rethink all of your assumptions about how a contact center should work," he said.

"We're thrilled that Teleflora has experienced so much benefit through our Professional Certification program," said Joy Sobhani, Professional Development Director for ICMI. "Teleflora truly exemplifies our goal of helping organizations achieve customer care excellence through this industry certification standard."

Amas Tenumah, Vice President of Operations for Teleflora, will be participating in a pre-keynote session entitled, "Conquering Chaos In Your Center Through Professional Training & Certification," taking place on October 11 at Call Center & Conference in Dallas, TX. For information on this event, visit www.icmi.com/ccdemo. To obtain a media pass to this event, contact Rachel Ostafi at [email protected].

For more information about ICMI's Professional Certification, visit www.icmi.com/icmicertification, or contact Todd Piccuillo at [email protected]  or 203-242-6632.

About ICMI
The International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) is the leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals – from frontline agents to executives – who wish to improve customer experiences and increase efficiencies at every level of the contact center. Since 1985, ICMI has helped more than 50,000 organizations in 167 countries through training, events, certification, consulting, and informational resources. ICMI's experienced and dedicated team of industry insiders, trainers, and consultants are committed to helping you raise the strategic value of your contact center, optimize your operations and improve your customer service. For more information, visit www.icmi.com.

ICMI is a part of UBM (www.ubm.com), a global live media and B2B communications, marketing service and data provider.

About Teleflora
Teleflora is the world's leading flower service offering the best choice in flower arrangements and convenient local delivery.  Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Teleflora has over 15,000 member florists throughout the U.S. and Canada, with an additional 20,000 affiliated florists outside North America.  Teleflora offers industry-leading floral arrangements and gifts, technology, marketing and education services.  Teleflora also provides its extensive member florists' network with online support through www.eflorist.com and www.findaflorist.com.

SOURCE International Customer Management Institute (ICMI)/UBM Live