2018 Customer Contact Innovation Awards Shortlist Announced

The Forum have announced that 11 organisations have been shortlisted to win the 2018 Customer Contact Innovation Awards.

The winners will be announced at the gala dinner on April 24^th at the close of the annual Customer Strategy & Planning conference organised by The Forum.

The Award Finalists for 2018 offer great examples of transforming customer experience in contact centre operations, as well as in the wider organisation – from using speech analytics to drive continuous improvement to employee engagement bringing about cultural change.

There are great role models for Planning, Insight, Quality, Customer Experience and Continuous Improvement teams – as well as operations teams at all levels.

“This year’s innovations reveal a powerful range of the best approaches to improve your customer operations,” explains Paul Smedley, Founder and Chair, The Forum.

“All customer professionals will learn a huge amount from seeing their conference presentations in April and the Best Practice Site Visits in the summer.”

The full list of finalists is:

• ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) – How changes in how we work together can make a huge impact for our customers
• ADT Home & Business Security – Developing the planning & insight teams to deliver powerful impact in field operations as well as the contact centre
• Anglian Water – Transforming maintenance schedules and planning for engineers
• Barclays – Planning as a trusted partner in the business
• BT – Zero in on what matters most and help each call make the difference to customers
• Centrica – The global managed learning service and proactive planning
• FSCS (Financial Services Compensation Scheme) – Planning in partnership to transform customer service
• HomeServe – Putting the customer first, by engaging our people
• RS Components – Enabling cultural change
• Sainsburys Bank – Developing a culture of innovation
• Sky UK – The power of speech analytics to lift coaching performance and customer service

14 external judges are involved in the judging process, many of whom are previous award winners or finalists themselves, in addition to senior specialists and leaders at The Forum. They will now visit each centre during January and February for an in-depth evaluation.

Finalists were delighted with the news. “It is an honour. It reflects all the work the team has put in,” comments Steve Trott, Head of Operations at HomeServe.

“This has brought us together as a team. The team will be so excited to hear this,” adds Amy Brown, Delivery Planning Manager at Anglian Water.

As Ian Gibson, Director of Shared Services at Ingeus and one of the judging panel, puts it, these are “very interesting case studies … best practice that I can learn from.”

Full details of the shortlist can be found here.