EFG Companies earned two gold and two silver awards at the 17th Annual Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service. The Stevie Awards are a feature of the American Business Awards, a top U.S. business awards program. Competing against companies from around the world, EFG brought home gold in leadership/management training, gold in customer service training, silver in contact center customer service, and silver in thought leadership.

“While many companies put their values on a wall and call it good, we live and breathe our values each and every day,” said EFG President and CEO John Pappanastos. “These awards are a testament to EFG’s stalwart commitment to superior customer service, measured by a simple premise – keeping a promise at a time when the customer needs it the most. We are honored to be recognized among so many companies who are leaders in their industries.”

EFG has won a total of 35 awards over nine years. For more information on its accomplishments and the history behind the Stevie Awards, visit the awards site.

EFG Awards

• A gold award in Leadership or Management Training Practice of the Year, recognizing the company’s ability to transition clients to a new software platform in response to the J.D. Power acquisition of Tail Light, an finance and insurance menu and reporting software business used by automotive dealerships to present, rate and sell F&I products. That included taking a proactive, training-based approach enabling clients to migrate to new platforms with  what the company says is no downtime, no lost business and no lost revenue.

• A gold award in Customer Service Training Team of the Year – External, for the company’s service center revenue training program. EFG says it enables dealership clients to increase profit and service absorption, significantly outpacing industry averages. With EFG’s award-winning engagement model, the company’s training team executed a custom training curriculum for service personnel, provided formal classroom training sessions on service bay best practices, and conducted on-site auditing and process reviews with senior management. It says that resulted in a 57% increase in gross profit through service, as well as dramatic improvements with third-party customer service ratings, such as Google star ratings. It's the second time that EFG has received a gold Stevie award for its external customer service training.

• A silver award in the Contact Center of the Year (up to 100 Seats) – Financial Services Industries for efforts to mitigate ongoing inflation, interest rates hikes and global supply chain and automotive parts shortages. EFG took early action to stem the issue by developing “new world” training curriculum, launching measurable virtual learning, and creating a virtual employee activity governance model.  EFG’s contact center improved upon key customer service metrics while embodying its value of "keeping a promise to a customer at a time when they need it most.”  The company successfully maintained simple and complex claims cycle times within EFG’s prepandemic standards. EFG received more than 235 five-star reviews through 2021 and 2022, 50% of which personally mentioned individuals within EFG’s contact center.

• A silver award in Best Use of Thought Leadership in Business Development recognizing EFG’s efforts to empower individual departments to develop their own missions and visions, strengthening their unification behind EFG’s corporate mission and vision. As a result, EFG was able to scale and diversify across all business segments with a unified team focused on enhancing the customer experience. EFG’s contract holders rely on quality service to maintain their investment in their homes and vehicles. EFG clients rely on EFG’s quality contract holder service to demonstrate their value to consumers and increase revenue. Business development advancement would not have been possible without mission and vision alignment within EFG’s operations teams. “Contact Center Pipeline” magazine featured EFG in 2022 as the standard-bearer for quality customer service. EFG was also featured in the November 2021 issue of “Full Throttle” magazine, where a contract holder raved about the quality customer service received with EFG.

This marks the ninth year in a row that EFG has been recognized with multiple awards for national excellence. EFG has now received 12 gold awards for the company’s work in the consumer protection product industry for client engagement and overall customer experience.

According to the Stevie Award judges, “Overall, EFG’s leadership and management training practice is a standout in the industry, consistently delivering high quality training and achieving outstanding results for clients. Empowering your employees to define a mission and vision for themselves is always a winning recipe and this is seen clearly in EFG’s impressive results.”

More than 2,300 nominations from organizations of all sizes and virtually every industry were evaluated for the 17^th Annual Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service competition. Finalists were determined by the average scores of more than 170 professionals worldwide in seven specialized judging committees.