ProQuest Names William Italia to Lead Global Customer Operations
Subscriber-support expert William "Bill" Italia has joined ProQuest as Director, Global Customer Operations. Most recently, Mr. Italia was Managing Director, Subscriber Support Services at OnStar, which is regarded by many as the gold standard for in-vehicle communication and security services. Mr. Italia succeeds Candace Wise, who is retiring after 34 years. During her tenure with ProQuest, Ms. Wise built a customer care department that's renowned for its high-quality service and driven by partnership with librarians to understand what they need to best serve their end-users.
"Candy is deeply knowledgeable about our business, beloved by her staff, and a treasured colleague of mine," said Lynda James-Gilboe, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Customer Care. "She will be deeply missed, but we're very excited about Bill joining our team. His experience managing a large, global call-center environment will be invaluable as we continue to evolve the services we offer our customers around the world. Further, Bill is highly technical, which is critically important as we work with our customers to ensure their successful migration to our new platform."
As ProQuest customers move to this highly-anticipated and groundbreaking new platform, Mr. Italia will build on a foundation of experience-based design to guide and support them. The migration process was developed in the same manner as the platform itself, employing ongoing interactions with users and librarians, as well as the creation of detailed "migrating user" profiles. Further, Mr. Italia will explore new solution management techniques that will enable service team members to spend more time directly with customers assessing requirements and developing new service standards.
"We want to create a service model that fits a broader range of our customers, those that want a live conversation, and those that don't," said Mr. Italia. "At the end of the day it is about continuing to grow on our foundation of 'Customer First' service by adding options for delivery that maximize the value of our products to our customers. By doing this, it will allow us to make our representatives proactive customer advocates."
Mr. Italia's background is at OnStar, a company where superior assistance to millions of subscribers at a moment's notice isn't a goal, it's the benchmark. During his time with the OnStar Subscriber Support teams, he developed a culture of first-call resolution, empowering each agent to fully resolve issues during the first call. "We find that experience and sense of urgency to be ideal for ProQuest customer care," said Ms. James-Gilboe.
Mr. Italia has a B.A. in Telecommunications/Information Technology Systems from Michigan State University, where he has also served as a guest lecturer. Currently, he is pursuing an M.S. in Information Systems Management at Carnegie Mellon University. He previously held positions at AT&T Broadband Network Solutions, Comcast, and Ameritech Cellular.
About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company has forged a 70-year reputation as a gateway to the world’s knowledge – from dissertations to governmental and cultural archives to news, in all its forms. Its role is essential to libraries and other organizations whose missions depend on the delivery of complete, trustworthy information.
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