CX Network reveals three new CX Elite Award winners for 2019

CX Network, one of the global leaders in premium content for customer experience professionals, announced three winners in the 2019 CX Elite Awards at MaritzCX's Experience Forum in New York last week. 

Following on from the first CX Elite Awards presentation in London, these awards are designed to champion the outstanding work by professionals who are positively impacting customer experiences and have successfully led CX initiatives within their organization.

“CX Network’s recent research shows that customer experience is finally beginning to gain the respect it deserves in boardrooms” said CX Network’s Editor-in-Chief, Chanice Henry. She adds: “With this in mind, brands need to remember that the stakes are high. Customer experience is no longer just about gaining a competitive edge, it’s about brand survival.”

“I'm honoured to lead this year's CX Elite Awards and celebrate the best of the best in customer experience."

The categories and winners are as follows:

Transforming Culture for CX Success Award
Tara Oglesby, Ameren Missouri

Energy services provider Ameren Missouri is dedicated to meeting rising energy needs and customer expectations through cultural transformation. The culture within Ameren has changed significantly over the past several years which has in turn contributed to improved customer engagement and satisfaction results.

This culture, both top-down and bottom-up, embodies customer and employee centricity, which is lived-out by the company. This is seen in the company’s $5 mn donation in 2018 to the Energy Outreach Program to help limited income customers state-wide and its involvement in Puerto Rico by sending more than 200 responders to assist with power restoration efforts in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

The utilities provider remains close to its customers by regularly listening to them, with insights gleaned from various channels including phone, IVR and email transactions for near-real time feedback.  This, alongside the constant loop of reviewing and communicating results, allows for timely praise and coaching for employees. Customer care advisors receive monthly scorecards that track individual performance, measure the quality of business processes and customer satisfaction to help enhance customer experience.

In reaction to the award win, Tara Oglesby, Ameren Missouri said: “It’s inspiring to know that the work we have done already is being recognized. But also still there is so much left to do, you are never done when it comes to culture in transforming it and continuing to sustain the results. Just knowing what we have accomplished so far makes me look forward to the future.”

Holistic View of the Customer Award
Natalie Nasr, BMW Canada

Not only does BMW Canada’s Customer Experience Program provide a holistic view across all four brands (BMW, MINI, BMWi and Motorrad) it also provides in depth visibility across the customer journey. 

The program includes feedback on core customer touchpoints, including: 

• Prospects
• Sales,
• Service
• Roadside assistance 
• Call center
• Product
• Defectors

Each of these surveys have been strategically designed to include consistent metrics to gauge the customer journey across touchpoints. These surveys all feature a verbatim question to provide the opportunity for text analytics to mine for trends. 

Thanks to this program retailers, field and corporate employees can obtain a rounded understanding of the customer journey with the customer feedback all housed within one central location. These parties are also better equipped to address any issues that may arise across the customer lifecycle via case management and action planning.

Proactive Approach to Improving Experiences Award
Pat Marotta, American National

American National is a Fortune 1000 insurance provider that has been growing, evolving and improving its CX program over the last four years. 

The financial services provider originally started by identifying the stages and moments of customer journeys that mattered most.  Today, they use the MaritzCX’s MCX Platform to automate the listening and collection of feedback various touchpoints with the intention to make broad and surgical level improvements to the business.  With this system in place, American National can detect problems and opportunities earlier and faster than ever before, which is enabling a more proactive approach to improving the customer experience and the bottom line.

Dissecting the drivers of loyalty and forming plans around those drivers to improve performance is already creating a path toward a better customer experience in both the short and long-term. Leveraging capabilities such as case management to triage problems before they get to a ‘point of no return’ and guiding leadership with targeted analysis and visualizations are just some of the ways this team has and likely will continue to make the most of the valuable feedback it gathers from its customers.

Pat Marotta, American National said: “It always feels good to be recognized, especially by an organization that emphasizes the importance of delivering continual and consistent value to clients.  It means a lot to our team.”

Back in October at MaritzCX's 2019 CXForum in London, HSBC, Volvo and Petplan were recognized in the CX Elite Awards, take a look at the coverage here.