Customer Contact Innovation Award Winners Announced

Seven 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 Engineering Services, with individual awards taken by Anglian Water, Capita Innovations, Capita PIP, EE, e.on, esure, NewDay, Openreach, RBS and The Times and Sunday Times.

Organised by The Forum, these sought-after awards celebrate and benchmark excellence in the industry.

The awards, together with four Forum Heroes, were presented at The Forum’s Customer Strategy & Planning conference in Warwickshire on 9^th April, where each talked about how they achieved their outstanding results.

The Forum also organise opportunities to see them and learn more during their best-practice site visit programme during the summer and autumn. Detailed case studies are available from The Forum.

The Innovation of the Year 2019 award was won by British Engineering Services, a team that put customer service at the heart of transforming the business, from strategic planning to pricing to real-time flexibility.

It lays down a challenge to all of us: how do we make our organisation stand out from the crowd? They were also presented with the Innovation Award for Enterprise Planning.

Nicola Callan

The winners were selected by a team which included 12 experienced industry practitioners, many of them previous winners or finalists. Judges visited each of the shortlisted organisations, and then assessed them against a strict set of criteria.

“Every year, our judges tell us how much they learn from and are inspired by the judging site visits, and this year was no exception,” explained Nicola Callan, Director at The Forum.

Six further awards recognised innovation in specific areas:

The Innovation Award for Digital Transformation was awarded to RBS, for using technology and agile working, this team has made life quick & simple, an exceptional experience for customers and colleagues, whatever the channel of contact. A change in culture and mindset has unlocked innovation . . . with a proposition that’s unique in their market.

The Innovation Award for Customer Insight was won by Capita Innovations, whose creative analysts in this team are shaping strategic thinking. They listen to customers and help business leaders understand customers’ experience. Working at an incredible pace, they are no longer in the back room but in the forefront of business transformation.

The Innovation Award for Planning & Wellbeing was gained by esure, who resourced strategy and brilliant shift design which is vital for workplace wellbeing, to attract and retain the best people. They engaged people at all levels – to create a suite of options that delivers for the company, customers and, most importantly, colleagues.

The Innovation Award for Customer Engagement was won by The Times & The Sunday Times for using a single metric that brings the whole business together to focus on customers. This team have harnessed the power of data from digital channels and have outstanding results in a challenging market and truly shown how engaged customers are great for business.

The Innovation Award for Insight & Improvement was won by Anglian Water for sharing knowledge across a wide range of disciplines, rapidly developing the organisation’s capability for analysis, insight and data science. They are connecting information to drive actionable insight!

Lastly, EE swept away with the Innovation Award for Planning & Engagement. They have challenged themselves, with fresh thinking and new approaches that are taking their operation to the next level. Crucially, this is making a big business responsive to the diverse, local and individual needs of colleagues and customers.

Forum Hero Awards

Forum Hero awards were presented to four outstanding customer professionals, active in our Customer Strategy & Leadership Forum, recognising their exceptional personal contribution in developing professionalism and best practice. They join our growing rank of heroes, reflecting excellence at all levels in our profession.

The 2019 Heroes are:

David Bruce, Innovation Lead, Openreach

Ian Gibson, Operations Director, Ingeus

Laura Moss, Head of Command Centre, Santander Operations

Lorna Stanley, Head of Planning & Change, BGL

Follow the link to find out more about the Forum Hero Awards

For further information about The Forum, visit: theforum.social

Author: Robyn Coppell