Innovation Awards 2015 – Winners Announced

The winners of the Customer Contact Innovation Awards winners have been announced.

Organised by The Forum, the awards celebrate and benchmark excellence in the industry. These awards, together with the five Forum Heroes, were presented at the 15th anniversary conference in Newcastle, where each talked about how they achieved their outstanding results.

British Gas Service and Repair gained the overall Innovation of the Year Award for delivering an exceptional end-to-end customer journey. A focus on customer experience led to a new operating model for planning, and used insight to improve NPS, backlogs & efficiencies, at the same time cutting broken promises by 78% in Service & Repair. They were also presented with the Innovation Award for Customer Experience.

Five organisations won prestigious innovation awards for outstanding initiatives that are making customer operations great places to work and transforming the experience of customers.

The overall winner was British Gas Service and Repair, with individual awards taken by Hughes Insurance, LV=, Motability Operations and RESPONSE.

The winners were selected by a team which included 15 experienced industry practitioners, many of them previous winners or finalists. Judges visited each of the 13 shortlisted organisations, and then assessed them against a strict set of criteria.

Four further awards recognised innovation in specific areas:

• The Innovation Award for Sustainable Culture was awarded to Motability Operations, whose approach to knowledge management builds trust and supports effective conversations, getting it ‘right first time’, optimising call length and – above all – helping advisors give customers confidence.
• The Innovation Award for People Empowerment was won by Hughes Insurance, where continuous improvement has transformed the organisation’s culture, engaging everyone in shaping improvements to customer service, streamlining processes and realising over £150,000 in cost-savings.
• The Innovation Award for Customer Outcomes was gained by LV=, whose focus on the customer led to removing sales incentives and targets, part of a strategic change involving new approaches to engagement, performance management and cross-skilling.
• RESPONSE won the Innovation Award for Transforming Communication, using a desktop and mobile APP to connect people, focusing performance around one version of the truth and opening up a two-way conversation in the business.

Forum Hero awards

Forum Hero awards were presented to five outstanding customer contact professionals, recognising their exceptional personal contribution in developing the role of planning, analysis or quality. They join our growing ranks of heroes, reflecting excellence at all levels in our profession.

• Richard Abdy, Workforce Scheduling & Planning Manager, NE Ambulance Service
• Ivan Smith, Support Services Manager, Motability Operations
• Dee Chapman, Call Centre Manager, Essex & Suffolk Water
• Ruth Mercer, Service Quality Manager, Hughes Insurance
• Colin Whelan, Senior Solutions Consultant, Aspect

“Every year judging visits exceed our expectations and amaze our external judges,” said Paul Smedley, Founder and Chair of The Forum. “It is exciting to see how customer operations are developing. This year’s theme, Changing Gear – Rise to the Customer Challenge, is exactly what all our winners have achieved. They have been asked to speed up, do more with less or deliver a result that has never been achieved before in our customer operations. They are addressing the twin challenges of sustainable improvement and responsiveness to a fast changing market.”

For more information about The Forum, visit their website.