Diligent Appoints Chief Customer Officer and Chief Marketing

Diligent Appoints Chief Customer Officer and Chief Marketing Officer

Diligent Corporation (NZX: DIL) today announced the promotion of Jeff Hilk to Chief Customer Officer and the appointment of Shawn Lankton as Chief Marketing Officer.

Jeff has been at Diligent for over four years, and as Diligent’s Chief Customer Officer, he will continue to lead the world-class customer success team. “I am proud of the service we deliver to our clients to consistently meet and exceed their expectations,” said Jeff Hilk. “Last year alone, the client success team on-boarded over 20,000 users in 37 countries and assisted users with our true 24/7/365 support line, with 99% of incoming calls answered directly by Diligent in less than five seconds.”

Jeff Hilk’s promotion to Chief Customer Officer coincides with the modernizing of the account management and support teams to collectively form the customer success team. These changes better align Diligent with other leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies. Diligent’s best-in-class client retention rates and award-winning service define customer success at Diligent and validate its leadership position in the industry. Just last week, Diligent won a Gold Stevie Award for 2014 Customer Service Team of the Year and a Silver Stevie Award for 2014 Customer Service Department of the Year at the American Business Awards.

Brian Stafford, President and Chief Executive Officer of Diligent, said, “Prior to joining Diligent, I led McKinsey & Company’s SaaS Practice. In that role, I had exposure to hundreds of leading US SaaS companies and benchmarked performance of more than 150 of these companies. Based on that experience, I can say that Diligent has, by far, the best customer success organization in the industry. With a 24/7/365 phone-based customer success team, Diligent is trusted by over 3,100 diverse organizations around the world. A significant part of Diligent’s financial success is attributable to the persistent commitment of the customer success team and our industry-leading client retention rates of 99%.* Jeff’s leadership within this team has been fundamental to driving our business’s growth and our clients’ success.”

Shawn Lankton comes to Diligent from McKinsey & Company, where he was Associate Partner and a leader in McKinsey’s SaaS practice. He is considered an industry expert in lead generation, marketing and pricing for business-to-business (B2B) software companies and is an active blogger on sales and marketing topics. Shawn will have full responsibility for the global marketing operation and will work closely with the global sales team to create an effective lead generation engine driven by end-to-end analytics.

Stafford added, “I am delighted we were able to attract Shawn to Diligent. He helped to build McKinsey’s SaaS practice, and I believe his experience in boosting lead-generation within B2B SaaS companies will be pivotal in supporting sales to drive further growth of Diligent’s client base.”

ENDS

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