Delta Dental of Arizona announced its certification as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal, a leader in contact center certification and training. The Center of Excellence recognition is one of the most prestigious awards in the customer service and support industry and highlights Delta Dental’s commitment to improve lives by promoting optimal oral health.

“We mean it when we tell our clients that we are serious about providing top-notch customer service,” said Craig Livesay, vice president of operations at Delta Dental of Arizona. “We are focused on how to best serve our customers—whether members, employers or providers—and receiving the Center of Excellence certification for the third year in a row validates the hard work of our call center staff and reinforces our position as the state’s top dental insurer.”

Call centers achieve the Center of Excellence distinction based on best-practice metrics drawn from the world’s largest database of objective and quantitative data. BenchmarkPortal’s rigorous standards include auditing and verifying the center’s key performance indicators and comparing that data to other peer organizations. Key metrics evaluated by BenchmarkPortal’s certification process include the average speed of answer, percentage of calls satisfactorily handled on the first call, average length of call and even the number of hours that new customer service agents spend in training. Center of Excellence recipients rank in the top 10 percent of call centers. 

“Maintaining high levels of excellence in the center over a period of years is a wonderful testimony to the contact center management team, the frontline agents and senior leadership who support and encourage a commitment to superior customer service,” said Bruce Belfiore, BenchmarkPortal CEO. “Delta Dental of Arizona’s contact center professionals have shown exceptional dedication and results, for which I commend them.”

Earlier this year, Delta Dental of Arizona was also awarded North America’s “best first call resolution rate” by BenchmarkPortal. The dental insurance company received the international distinction based on performance data on key operating metrics and was praised as a leader in the call center industry

Each month, Delta Dental of Arizona’s customer service team answers nearly 17,000 phone inquiries from subscribers, employers and dental providers. On average, Delta Dental of Arizona subscribers are connected to a local customer service representative within 18 seconds and the first-call resolution rate for all callers in 2016 was 99.92 percent.