Neon One Wins Silver Stevie® Award for Transforming Nonprofit Customer Support

Recognition follows major investment in faster, more accessible support for nonprofits of every size

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Neon One, the Nonprofit Relationship Management Platform, today announced it won a Silver Stevie® Award in the Customer Support Team of the Year category in the 2026 American Business Awards®.

The recognition follows a year-long transformation of Neon One’s Customer Support and Enablement Team focused on delivering faster, more effective support for nonprofits operating with limited time, staff, and resources.

The company has significantly improved customer support performance, reducing average ticket resolution times from 40 hours to just two hours, a 95% improvement, while increasing customer satisfaction scores from 65% to a record 97% by May 2026.

“The support experience our customers were receiving was unacceptable,” said Keith Reed, Chief Executive Officer of Neon One. “For nonprofits, subpar support is not a minor inconvenience—it can disrupt fundraising campaigns, events, and mission-critical work. Our goal was to provide ‘fast, fixed, and friendly’ support to every customer, and this Stevie Award recognizes the incredible work our team has done to deliver on that commitment.”

The transformation reflects a broader shift in how Neon One approaches customer experience. Rather than relying on a traditional tiered support model common in SaaS, the company invested in making high-quality support accessible to every nonprofit it serves by expanding live chat, phone, and email support to every customer, regardless of organization size or pricing tier.

A key part of that investment was people. In September 2025, Neon One transitioned from an offshore support team to a U.S.-based team in Oklahoma City focused on nonprofit workflows and product expertise. The company also reorganized support operations around specialized nonprofit use cases, introduced real-time messaging as a primary support channel, and established weekly improvement reviews designed to continuously refine the customer experience.

Building on that foundation, Neon One launched ACE, its AI-enabled support system built on Zendesk. Unlike traditional chatbots that primarily redirect users to help articles, ACE was designed to resolve issues directly while seamlessly escalating more nuanced cases to human specialists when needed. ACE now independently resolves 38% of live messaging support cases, allowing the support team to focus on complex customer needs and consultative guidance where their expertise matters most.

The results were immediate. By the end of 2025, customer satisfaction scores had climbed from 65% to 84%, while time-to-first-response improved by 250% year-over-year.

Customer sentiment reflected the operational changes. Organizations that previously described long wait times and unresolved issues began describing support interactions as “fabulous,” “swift,” and “complete.” One nonprofit customer called live messaging “a game changer” during gala planning because getting answers in minutes instead of days changed what their team could accomplish.

“Nonprofits need more than software,” Reed added. “They need a partner that understands the pressure they operate under and can help them move quickly when the stakes are high. This award recognizes a team that transformed support into something our customers can genuinely rely on.”

The American Business Awards are the premier business awards program in the United States. More than 3,700 nominations from organizations of all sizes and industries were submitted this year for consideration across a wide range of categories.

Details about The American Business Awards and the list of 2026 Stevie winners are available at https://ABA.StevieAwards.com.

About Neon One

Neon One is the leading Nonprofit Relationship Management Platform designed to help small-to-midsize nonprofits cultivate the personal connections that fuel growth. Its unified system offers a 360-degree view of every supporter, enabling organizations to manage fundraising, memberships, events, communications, and payments in one integrated system. Learn more at neonone.com.

About the Stevie Awards

Stevie Awards are conferred in nine programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, and the new Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes, as well as the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding workplace performance worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.