Much like the A-list stars that rocked up to the 97th Academy Awards ceremony this year, we all crave a little recognition.
Even if you claim modesty, or demur your moment in the spotlight, you will be over the moon if you win an award.
It’s natural to seek external validation about how we act and what we do on a very emotional level. Whether it is a child looking toward their parents, an employee looking to their line manager, or an actor at the Oscars, all third party validation is welcome. (Let’s be honest even being nominated for an award will probably make your day!)
Measuring the ROI that awards provide is more problematic and depends on context. Winning a Best Picture Oscar will boost a movie’s earnings by an average of $12.7 million. Just being nominated can add another $5 million to the takings!
Winning a Best Actor gong boosts your reputation, and will probably help with contract negotiations. But it doesn’t guarantee you more roles. (It just puts you in a better position to secure more work).
Awards are more than an opportunity for a good night out, some team bonding, and a gong in a dusty cabinet.
Winning is a certified growth hack for your business. An awards process done right, can take you and your organisation from bit-part character roles, to A-list stardom in the space of a few months.
Reason 1: Turbo-charge your marketing with an awards victory
External recognition from third parties is cost-effective and emotionally powerful marketing.
They put your organisation in the shop window, gaining local, national and trade news coverage, and unlock multiple opportunities. In a recent survey, 85% of consumers said an award influenced their buying decision.
Consider the example set by Sally Alington, founder and CEO of Ethos Farm, a CX consultancy. Since starting the firm, she has been a relentless awards competitor, not just with Awards International, Customer Experience Magazine’s parent company, but also with a host of other organisations, including The Sunday Times.
Ethos Farm has won over 20 major awards in the past five years.
Last year Sally won the CX Leader of the Year, at the UK Customer Experience Awards in October. (Read about Sally’s meteoric rise here).
Alington intuitively understands the value of winning awards. When starting out in 2017, awards programmes offered a cost-effective way of validating her organisation’s work.
“Awards have been one of our secret sauces of success. The ROI has been absolutely incredible. It is definitely one of the secrets to our success,” said Alington.
She is also astute enough to realise that if Ethos Farm wins awards on behalf of its clients, it benefits everybody. Winning awards improves the client’s reputation, and validates the CX work done by Ethos Farm.
Reason 2: Awards create business opportunities
The whole point of marketing is to create business opportunities — to open doors to other organisations, and to sell products or services.
Third party validation — like customer recommendations — are marketing gold with clear commercial implications.
Take Emirates Airlines as an example. Today, it is the world’s largest airline, but in the early 2000s, when it was still relatively small, it regularly competed in and won the Skytrax Airline of the Year.
When you’re an emerging airline, third party validation helps convince consumers that you’re safe, and that your luggage is likely to arrive.
Reason 3: Awards build trust
Third party validation is important because it builds trust.
In the world of customer experience, trust is king. It is hard to earn, and yet easy to lose. It’s the key to unlocking doors to bigger and better opportunities, both internally and externally.
Andrew Carothers did just that while working as a digital CX leader with Cisco.
Carothers, a CCXP, used awards programmes to build confidence with key internal stakeholders.
His team used analyst reports and customer data to create and communicate the vision to stakeholders. However, awards were essential to convince senior management that the team could deliver.
“The third party validation from winning awards was integral to our success,” said Carothers.
“We needed to build a coalition within Cisco that not only agreed with our vision, but trusted in our ability to execute,” he added.
Reason 4: Awards help companies get better at what they do
Even just the entry process for an awards programme can drive change within organisations.
The process is an opportunity to benchmark business maturity against industry standards. This effort often provides the urgency to re-examine systems to establish how to reach the next level.
Saira Demmer, CEO of SF Recruitment, has participated in numerous award programmes, including The Sunday Times Best Places to Work List and the UK Employee Experience Awards.
From her first day in the office, Saira wanted employee experience to be a crucial part of the organisation.
The awards criteria provided her with a roadmap to improve SF Recruitment’s employee experience. The result was a multi-award winning EX strategy that has become a cornerstone of its business.
“We don’t always win. But the process has given me a brilliant structure to focus on a benchmark and figure out what good looks like,” said Demmer.
The EX programme has been credited with a 30% increase in new clients, a 70% boost in client retention, and a turnaround in its NPS value. (Read SF Recruitment’s story here.)
Reason 5: Awards help build teams and attract fresh talent
Awards programmes can form an essential component of your organisation’s employee experience strategy and help with recruitment.
Outstanding candidates want to work for great organisations that provide opportunities and rewards. Awards programmes offer the chance for teams and individuals to develop their careers.
Do you want more resources for your CX project? Get your work validated by winning an award!
You want a pay rise? Well, you could do a lot worse than winning an award!
It’s also worth remembering at this point that while winning awards is a lot of fun, putting together a nomination is a lot of hard work. But the shared objective brings teams together. The awards process and shared experience of winning (and losing) often creates powerful bonds between colleagues and to an organisation.
Debra England, director and co-founder, ALA Insurance, recently won two awards at the UK Customer Experience Awards. She said the awards were a “fantastic PR opportunity for us, but more importantly, it was a really good bonding exercise for our team. The team absolutely loved it.” (Listen to ALA Insurance’s story here.)
Reason 6: Even the downside, has an upside
There are some downsides to awards. The most obvious being the amount of work required to enter.
As Saria Demmer said: “Do not underestimate how high the bar is and how hard you have to work for these awards.”
But the truth is only those who enter the awards have a chance to win.
Teams that don’t win shouldn’t be discouraged, but take some value from their entry. Transparent award programmes like those run by Awards International should provide all finalists with feedback that can be used as guidance for another crack at the awards.
There is no reason to why people can’t have fun while they learn something about themselves and their organisation. Even being nominated has its own marketing value. (Just ask all those actors who didn’t win an Oscar this year. It’s guaranteed that the nomination will be on their CV).
Awards International, which runs CXA award programmes in the UK, Europe, Africa, Middle East and Americas, can highlight multiple firms that failed to win on their debut, but went away, learned how and where to improve, and returned to claim gold a year or two later.
It makes sure the awards process is, at the very least, educational. “Our awards provide contestants with the opportunity to benchmark themselves against the best and create a plan for future development,” said Neil Skehel, CEO and founder of Awards International. “You don’t get that with the Academy Awards!”