Temkin Group Announces 2017 Customer Experience Excellence Award Winners

WABAN, Mass., Nov. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Temkin Group, a leading market research, consulting, and training firm that helps organizations accelerate customer experience transformation, announces the winners of its sixth annual Customer Experience Excellence (CxE) Awards.

The six winners of Temkin Group's 2017 CxE Awards are AARP, Allianz, Century Support Service, Nurse Next Door, Reliant, and Sage.

Organizations were evaluated based on three criteria: 1) customer experience transformation efforts, 2) business and customer results, and 3) sustainability.

The CxE Awards were judged by noted customer experience experts: Ginger Conlon (chief editor of MKTGinsight), Shep Hyken (Author and Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations), Ingrid Lindberg (CXO and Founder of Chief Customer), Aimee Lucas (CX Transformist of Temkin Group), and Bruce Temkin (CX Transformist of Temkin Group).

Here are highlights of the winners:

• AARP - formally established its AARP Experience (AARPx) team in 2016 with the mission to work across the enterprise to create a seamless, personalized experience for members that is supported by a customer-centric culture.
• Allianz - an insurance company best known for its travel insurance products – recently began mapping and reviewing its customer journey in an effort to improve its processes and minimize customer pain points.
• Century Support Service– a large debt settlement firm – has a simple mission, "We do what we do to improve people's financial lives," and to achieve this mission, it leverages technology within three key drivers: Lifecycle marketing, customer advocacy, and customer metrics.
• Nurse Next Door is a private-duty home care provider that was founded on four core values – admire people, WOW customer experience, find a better way, and passionate about making a difference – and it delivers on these values by developing a tailored care package around each individual customer's needs, desires, and personality.
• Reliant's CX program recently evolved from a dedicated customer experience department to a hub-and-spoke structure that relies on 15 subject matter experts, or "fanatics," to drive their team or department's CX effort.
• Sage has made "Customer Obsession – Starts with Me" its goal for 2018. To help reach this goal, Sage has developed a few employee engagement programs, including "Sage Listens," which offers employees a variety of ways to connect with customers through an online self-service portal.

The judges were impressed by the high quality of the submissions. Lindberg stated, "It's incredible to see the customer experience journeys brands are taking today! These awards highlight some of the best and brightest who truly understand the value and ROI a solid customer experience can deliver."

According to Hyken, "It is never an easy job to judge these amazing companies. Reading through their applications, any of them could have been one of the winners. They are all playing at the top of their games."

Lucas stated, "The well-designed and disciplined CX efforts of the six winners showcase a variety of ways to build a more customer-centric culture that benefit each organization and its customers."

Conlon added, "The nominees all showed an exceptional commitment to customer experience. The results of they're doing so are concrete examples of what's possible when organizations live and breathe customer centricity."

Last year's winners of the Temkin Group CxE Awards were Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), Century Support Services, Crowe Horwath, Oxford Properties, and VCA.

For more information about the winners and the CxE Awards, visit the Customer Experience Matters® blog, at ExperienceMatters.wordpress.com.

About Temkin Group: Temkin Group is a leading customer experience research and consulting firm. Many of the world's largest brands rely on its insights and advice to steer their transformational journeys. Temkin Group combines customer experience thought leadership with a deep understanding of the dynamics of organizations to help accelerate results. Rather than layering on cosmetic changes, Temkin Group helps companies embed practices within their culture by building four critical competencies: Purposeful Leadership, Employee Engagement, Compelling Brand Values, and Customer Connectedness. The firm's ongoing research identifies leading best practices for engaging the hearts and minds of customers, employees, and partners. For more information, contact Bruce Temkin at 617-916-2075 or send an email to [email protected].

Customer Experience Matters is a registered trademark of Temkin Group.

SOURCE Temkin Group