NEW YORK, July 1, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- 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."
* Based on number of clients and excluding "unavoidable" client
reductions due to bankruptcy or M&A.
About Diligent Corporation (NZX: DIL)
Diligent is the leading provider of secure corporate governance
and collaboration solutions for boards and senior executives. Over
3,100 clients in more than 50 countries rely on Diligent to provide
secure, intuitive access to their most time-sensitive and
confidential information, ultimately helping them make better
decisions. The Diligent Boards (formerly Diligent Boardbooks)
solution speeds and simplifies how board materials are produced,
delivered and collaborated on using iPads, Windows devices, PCs and
the Web, removing the security concerns of doing this by courier,
email and file sharing. Diligent is a publicly listed company (NZX:
DIL) with nearly US$90 million in
annual recurring revenue, based on previously reported revenue
retention rates. Visit www.diligent.com to learn more.
Safe Harbor Statement
Statements made in this press release that state Diligent's or
management's intentions, beliefs, expectations or predictions for
the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of The
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including without
limitation Diligent's revenue outlook for the second quarter and
full year 2015. Readers are cautioned that these statements are
only predictions and may differ materially from actual future
events or results. All forward-looking statements are only as of
the date of this press release and Diligent undertakes no
obligation to update or revise them. Such forward-looking
statements are subject to a number of risks, assumptions and
uncertainties that could cause Diligent's actual results to differ
materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements.
For example, if we do not successfully develop or introduce new
product offerings, or enhancements to our existing Diligent Boards
(formerly Diligent Boardbooks) offerings, or keep pace with
technological changes that impact the use of our product offerings,
we may lose existing customers or fail to attract new customers and
our financial performance and revenue growth may suffer. Factors
which could cause our actual results to differ materially from
those projected in forward-looking statements include, without
limitation, economic, competitive, regulatory and technological
factors affecting Diligent's operations, markets, products,
services and other factors set forth in Diligent's Risk Factors
filed as Part II, Item 1A to its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q
filed with the SEC on May 11,
2015.
Contact:
Taylor Lavalli
taylor.lavalli@rfbinder.com
1-212-9947678
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SOURCE Diligent Corporation