Jo Boswell is Founder & Director of Sentio-B, and one of the UK’s innovative CX consultants. This October she returned to Wembley Stadium to judge at the 2019 UK Customer Experience Awards, where she was impressed with the calibre of finalists…
Recently I had the pleasure of judging the 2019 UK Customer Experience Awards.
This was my second time at the UKCXAs, and my third time as an awards judge, having chaired a panel at the UK Digital Experience Awards earlier this year.
As a consultant, I spend my time helping organisations work out how to improve their Customer Experience, and so being invited to judge these awards is a privilege as it gives me the opportunity to hear about what other businesses are doing to innovate and improve their CX.
The recent awards day was made even more enjoyable as I got to work alongside fellow judges including Helen Gillett, Kathryn King, Victoria Orr, and Niranjalee Rajaratne. Once the scoring was done (without discussion of course, as that is strictly verboten’) it was a joy to share perspectives on a range of topics with these inspiring CX professionals.
This year I was allocated to the Customers at the Heart of Everything – SME category. When I read the written submissions, I found the standard to be generally high and an improvement on the previous year. On the day, I was even more pleased with the quality of the presentations, and impressed by the effort these finalists had put into the process, particularly as this represents a significant commitment in time and resources for a small business.
We heard some great examples throughout the day, showing how these organisations were getting a customer mindset firmly embedded in their business processes. What was also noteworthy was that most of them were able to attribute tangible business benefits to the bottom line as a result of taking this approach.
The Gold winners in the category were Trusted Housesitters, whose approach to improving the experience included a relentless focus on removing pain points for their customers. This resulted in a significant reduction in inbound calls to their contact centre, even though their customer base had substantially increased at the same time.
The Silver runners-up, AllClear Insurance Services, described how they had seen notable improvements in their employee engagement and retention numbers as a result of addressing customer issues that their front-line colleagues were raising – a great illustration of the close link between Employee Experience and Customer Experience.
Both examples are a reminder that simple and relatively low-cost approaches can reap some great results.
Overall, what struck me with all the presentations was the energy and enthusiasm the teams showed around improving the experience for their customers, and their ability to drive the internal change with relative ease – this is often an area that larger businesses struggle with.
There were some impressive examples of cross-functional processes being established to tune into the customer voice and to monitor the top customer issues needing to be addressed, and a recurring theme throughout the day was one of actively seeking out customer complaints, so that feedback could be acted upon.
Whilst it was encouraging to see the businesses in this SME category managing to deliver some great customer outcomes relatively quickly with reasonably simple approaches, it was also clear that as their businesses expand, they will face new challenges in sustaining these efforts. If they put the same heart and soul into meeting that challenge as they did to their UK Customer Experience Awards entry and presentation, however, I’m sure they will succeed.
Positions are now open for the 2020 UK Complaint Handling Awards judging panel. Click here for more details on how to apply.