Best of Staffing 15-Year Diamond Award Winner Proves Their ‘Service Excellence’ Value Is More Than Window Dressing One of Cella by Randstad Digital’s core values is service excellence—and it’s not just words on their wall. At this digital, marketing and creative-focused talent and solutions firm, team members strive for service excellence both internally and externally. Leaders at all levels highlight great examples in practice. They even include this value as criteria for Cella’s internal President’s Club with an annual award focused entirely on Service Excellence. Learn more about how they’ve used their partnership with ClearlyRated to support their values over the years, earning a Best of Staffing Award for all 15 years. Challenge Even prior to hiring ClearlyRated 15 years ago, Cella measured its Net Promoter Score® (NPS) to track service excellence. So what was the issue? According to Tim Gearhart, a 23-year Cella veteran and the firm’s current Vice President of Talent Delivery, Cella only surveyed talent at the end of an assignment and wanted to capture feedback throughout the different stages of the assignment. Leaders also wanted a better idea of how they measured up against the competition. Solution “We needed exactly what ClearlyRated offered. We wanted their whole program.” – Tim Gearhart, VP, Talent Delivery Cella chose to work with ClearlyRated, taking advantage of the NPS survey program on both the client side and the talent side. They appreciated that ClearlyRated’s deep experience in the staffing industry would enable them to compare their ratings with the industry as a whole. The fact that ClearlyRated’s survey program came with external experts who could help the Cella team validate their data was a bonus. “Being included in the ClearlyRated directory serves as a third party, unbiased proof point and gives customers a place to compare us with other firms,” Tim says. “Over the past 15 years, we’ve seen ClearlyRated continually improve their program, and they always bring us along. There’s no stagnation.” Outcomes “ClearlyRated opened our eyes to what we could learn by surveying more often, which has helped us better understand and improve our talent and client experience.” – Tim Gearhart It’s a difficult task to share all that Cella’s team has achieved with the help of their NPS survey program. Below are some of their highlights. Boosted marketing efforts “The survey feedback informs our go-to-market strategies, highlighting what we should include in our messaging,” says Jordan Welby, Cella’s Director of Marketing. And thanks to using official digital surveys, the quality of Cella’s feedback has gone beyond secondhand anecdotes. “Gathering [this direct] feedback means we can use it for shout-outs and testimonials, giving us credibility that proves we actually do what we claim,” Jordan says. To help talent and clients feel more comfortable working with Cella, her team incorporates its ClearlyRated awards into messaging and makes sure to display the award badges everywhere they can. Cella promotes it’s Best of Staffing Award with: Virtual badges on its website Digital campaigns with both social and paid advertising Email marketing communications Email signatures Press releases Featured videos, both internally and externally “When we went 100% remote, we could no longer display our physical awards in a meaningful way. Being able to use our virtual badges has helped us maintain that sense of pride and unity,” Jordan says. Strategic, high-touch talent experience (TX) “Most of the feedback we get from clients is about how happy they are with the way we treat talent,” says Tim. In fact, Cella often hears from clients that they have contractors ask to be switched from another firm to Cella. Cella’s service-focused culture means its teams both listen to input from talent and are comfortable making changes based on it. With that attitude, they’ve been able to make many TX improvements over the years thanks to feedback from ClearlyRated’s survey program. For instance, Cella has a dedicated TX team that ensures communication with talent never breaks down. They organize both in-person and virtual events, create and send newsletters, and ensure important communication is shared timely and with all. Cella has also made sure that whenever they automate any processes, it’s to boost personalization, not to take it away. Rather than automating emails to talent, they use automation to nudge recruiters who then personally reach out when key touch points arise. “Both the technical support and the account support from ClearlyRated has been excellent from day one.” – Jordan Welby, Director of Marketing Consistent, timely understanding of sentiment Cella makes it a point to share both praise and constructive feedback internally as survey data comes in. “Sharing shout-outs from surveys in real time energizes and motivates our team,” Tim says. He also notes that continually using a survey program helps Cella keep a consistent pulse on how its clients and talent feel rather than assuming their preferences. “Post-COVID, we heard that people missed our in-person events and wanted to know how we could bring them back. Without this survey, we wouldn’t have known people were comfortable being face to face yet,” Tim says. Results Note: To qualify for Best of Staffing an NPS of 50 is required. 15-Year Diamond Award: Best of Staffing, Client Satisfaction 66.7 NPS 15-Year Diamond Award: Best of Staffing, Talent Satisfaction 55.6 NPS While service excellence has always mattered to Cella, signing on with ClearlyRated in 2008 helped them back up their claim with credible, third-party data. One of their proudest moments, Tim says, was earning a 70% NPS from their October 2020 talent survey – their highest talent NPS on record – during a year when many firms struggled with their TX. The client side of that survey revealed their second highest client NPS of 81%. For comparison, the industry benchmark that year was 18% for talent satisfaction and 28% for client satisfaction. “ClearlyRated’s program has provided huge value to us over the years. I encourage anyone who’s considering it to do it. It’d be silly not to.” – Tim Gearhart, Head of Recruiting A big congratulations to Cella on delivering quality service for over 15 years and being a leader in the industry. Click here to view their press release and celebratory video.
