Best Practices in Customer Success

This award recognizes the company that has delivered breakthrough results and established best practices in customer, employee, and financial performance metrics within customer success.

GE Digital

Best Practices in Knowledge Management

This award recognizes the company that has best leveraged knowledge management people, processes, and technology to improve operational performance, service levels, or the overall customer experience.

Best Practices in Service Offer Development

This award recognizes the company that has demonstrated best practices in its portfolio of service offers.

Best Practices in the Delivery of Customer Success and Support

This award recognizes the company that has embraced best practices in people, process, and technology to increase agent productivity, service levels or customer satisfaction, increase problem avoidance, or effectively handle more interactions using unassisted channels.

Best Practices in the Delivery of Field Service

This award recognizes the company that has most clearly and effectively delivered breakthrough results and established best practices in the improvement of customer, employee, and/or financial performance metrics within field services.

Best Practices in the Delivery of Support Services

This award recognizes the company that has embraced best practices in people, process, and technology to increase agent productivity, service levels or customer satisfaction, increase problem avoidance, or effectively handle more interactions using assisted and unassisted channels.

Complex Application Support

This award recognizes support organizations that deliver sophisticated technical and field support for complex applications in mixed or otherwise complex environments. An applicant in this category is typically identified as having senior-level technical support representatives with advanced degrees. These reps interface with senior-level customers typically in engineering and/or scientific fields. For software companies, these typically would be product design application implementations, or complex medical or process monitoring/automation offerings. For hardware companies, these typically would be measurement and monitoring equipment, or complex medical diagnostic equipment.

Continual Improvement

This award recognizes the company that has most demonstrated exceptional service levels and customer satisfaction for three or more years, with year-over-year improvements and a plan in place for continual improvement in the future.

Customer Commitment

Presented to a company who successfully demonstrates organizational commitment, alignment, and focus around gathering and responding to customer feedback, issues, and requests, including using voice-of-the-customer (VOC) input to improve support operations and offerings.

Education Services Excellence in Enabling Customer Success

This award recognizes education services organizations for their demonstrated organizational commitment to and record of achievement in enabling customer success. Successful candidates should not only be able to demonstrate strong culture and process, but also clear benefit to the education services organization, or to the company, as a result of excellence in enabling customer success.

Emerging Business Support

Applicants in this category provide technical support within emerging businesses (defined as companies with under $250M in total annual revenue) for which exemplary customer support is important for company growth and typically is provided with constrained resources. Applicants should demonstrate how their support effectively maintains their customers’ satisfaction and loyalty, and helps drive new business. For software companies, these typically would be application implementations or core systems infrastructure offerings. For hardware companies, these typically would be servers, network components, etc.

Enabling Customer Success–Professional Services

This award recognizes professional services organizations that have demonstrated organizational commitment to and record of achievement in enabling customer success. Successful candidates should not only be able to demonstrate strong culture and process, but also clear benefit to the professional services organization or to the company as a result of excellence in enabling customer success.

Excellence in Remote Diagnostics for Hardware Service

This award recognizes the company that best demonstrates overall excellence in the deployment of remote monitoring and embedded diagnostics for hardware service.

Avaya

Innovation in a Managed XaaS Solution

This award recognizes the company that has most effectively implemented a specific managed XaaS offering that has fundamentally changed their company’s go-to-market model for products and services.

Field Services Excellence in Service Spare Parts Management

Service spare parts management is the science of ensuring that the right spare part is available at the right place and at the right time. Companies with world-class spare parts management strategies are also successful in balancing the sometimes competing demands of customer satisfaction and cost (inventory) reduction. This award recognizes the company that most best demonstrated overall excellence in the management of service spare parts.

Innovation in the Application of Social Media for Technology Services

This award recognizes the company that has advanced the effectiveness or efficiency of its services organization through innovation in the application of social media.

Cisco

Innovation in Closing the Consumption Gap

This award recognizes the company that has innovated in finding ways to close the consumption gap in the use of its products, whether on-premise or cloud-based, thereby delivering higher levels of business value to its customers.

Cisco

Innovation in Customer Commitment

This award recognizes innovation in gathering, analyzing, and responding to customer feedback, issues and requests, including using Voice of the Customer (VOC) input to improve support operations and offerings.

EMC Corporation

Innovation in the Delivery of Field Services

This award recognizes the company that has most clearly and effectively embraced innovation or undertaken a specific, innovative initiative to improve productivity, SLA adherence, cost efficiencies, customer satisfaction, revenue generation or other measures of field services business success.

Innovation in the Delivery of Managed Services

This award recognizes the company that has most effectively undertaken a specific, innovative initiative to increase scalability and productivity, contract performance, or other measure of managed services business success through predictive and preventive methodologies.

Innovation in the Delivery of Professional Services

This award recognizes the company that has most effectively undertaken a specific, innovative initiative to increase consultant productivity, project performance, customer satisfaction or other measure of professional services business success.

SAP

Innovation in the Delivery of Support Services

This award recognizes the company that has embraced innovation in people, process and technology to increase agent productivity, service levels or customer satisfaction, increase problem avoidance, or effectively handle more interactions using unassisted channels.

Innovation in Education Services

This award recognizes the education services organization which has most clearly and effectively embraced innovation or undertaken a specific, innovative initiative to increase productivity, enhance instructor and/or content developer performance, satisfy customer needs, or otherwise improve other measures of education services business success.

PTC

Innovation in Enabling Customer Success

This award recognizes the company that has innovated in finding ways to close the consumption gap in the use of its products, whether on-premise or cloud-based, thereby delivering higher levels of business value to its customers.

EMC

Innovation in Enabling Customer Success—Education Services

This award recognizes the company that demonstrates the most innovative approach, through education services, to assisting customers in realizing the maximum business value from the use of its products.

Innovation in Enabling Customer Success—Professional Services

This award recognizes the company that demonstrates the most innovative approach, through professional services, to assisting customers in realizing the maximum business value from the use of its products.

Innovation in Enabling Customer Success—Service Revenue Generation

This award recognizes the company that demonstrates the most innovative approach, through service revenue generation, to assisting customers in realizing the maximum business value from the use of its products.

Innovation in Enabling Customer Success—Support Services

This award recognizes the company that demonstrates the most innovative approach, through support services, to assisting customers in realizing the maximum business value from the use of its products.

Innovation in Enabling Customer Outcomes—Customer Success and Support

This award recognizes the company that demonstrates the most innovative approach, through customer success and support services, to assisting customers in realizing the maximum business value from the use of its products.

Innovation in Enabling Customer Outcomes—Education Services

This award recognizes the company that demonstrates the most innovative approach, via education services, to assisting customers in realizing the maximum business value from the use of its products.

Dell

Innovation in Enabling Customer Outcomes—Professional Services

This award recognizes the company that demonstrates the most innovative approach, through professional services, to assisting customers in realizing the business outcomes from the use of its products.

Innovation in Execution of Education Services

This award recognizes the company that demonstrates innovation in overall education practices. This could be in how training is sold, marketed, packaged, delivered, developed, and/or the technology used to manage it. This innovation has contributed measurable value to the customer, the company, and the education services organization.

Innovation in Expand Selling Lead Generation Programs

This award recognizes the company that demonstrates the most innovative approach to generating profitable revenue growth with existing customers through a formal lead generation program.

Splunk, Inc.

Innovation in Expand Selling Programs

This award recognizes the company that demonstrates the most innovative approach in utilizing services touch points to generate leads, drive revenue growth, and provide better outcomes with existing customers.

Cisco Systems

Innovation in Leveraging Analytics for Service Excellence

This award recognizes the company that has best leveraged analytics to improve operational performance, service levels, or the customer experience. The analytics project should have been done internally, and may or may not have been embedded into products sold to customers.

Innovation in Leveraging Social Support for Service Excellence

This award recognizes companies who have leveraged social support, i.e., online customer communities and/or support or listening via social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), to better understand the Voice of the Customer, identify renewal challenges or expand selling opportunities, improve products or services, and improve margins and productivity for assisted support.

Innovation in Leveraging Technology for Service Excellence

This award recognizes the company that has best leveraged technology to improve operational performance, service levels, or the customer experience. The technology should be used internally, not a tool or product sold to customers.

Innovation in Marketing Value-Added Services

The need for technology companies to evolve and innovate around their services business is now broadly accepted amongst service leaders in our industry. Services marketers have a key role to play in supporting the shift to a consumption-oriented, value-added service model. This award recognizes the company that has most clearly and effectively innovated in repositioning its services portfolio to address customer adoption of its products and in marketing value-added services.

Philips Healthcare

Innovation in Product Supportability

This award recognizes the company that most convincingly demonstrates innovation in product supportability through the deployment of remote monitoring, embedded diagnostics, and “self-healing” functionality.

EMC

Innovation in Professional Services

This award is presented to the professional services organization that has most clearly and effectively embraced innovation, or undertaken a specific, innovative initiative to increase consultant productivity, project performance, customer satisfaction or other measure of professional services business success.

EMC

Innovation in Service by an SMB

This award recognizes the company whose exemplary service has effectively maintained or improved customer satisfaction or loyalty, or helped drive new business.

PROS Inc.

Innovation in Service Offer Development

This award recognizes the company that has demonstrated the most innovation in its portfolio of service offers.

Innovation in Strengthening Customer Relationships via Customer Success Teams

This award recognizes the company that demonstrates the most innovative approach, through establishing a customer success team, to assisting customers in realizing the maximum business value from the use of its products and services.

Innovation in the Transformation of Support Services

This award recognizes the company that has designed and implemented transformational strategies in the area(s) of customer experience, customer engagement, support modernization, and/or technology adoption.

Innovative Support

This award recognizes the company that has embraced innovation in people, process, and technology to increase agent productivity, service levels, and customer satisfaction, increase problem avoidance, and effectively handle more interactions using unassisted channels.

Knowledge Management Practices

This award recognizes the company whose knowledge management strategy includes repeatable, effective processes for capturing, publishing, and maintaining content in order to solve customer problems in a consistent and efficient manner.

Mission-Critical Support – Hardware/Software

This award recognizes the company that has demonstrated their ability to provide support in mission-critical environments where system uptime is imperative, as well as how their technical or field support effectively maintains their customers’ mission-critical systems in continuous operation.

Online Support

This award recognizes the company that has best leveraged web-based technologies and knowledge management processes to provide an effective web self-service experience for their customers, including raising awareness and driving customer adoption of online support, personalizing the experience, using customer feedback for improvement, and measuring customer success through usage metrics for ongoing improvement.

Overall Operational Excellence in Technology Professional Services

This award recognizes the professional services organization that has demonstrated exceptional organizational maturity across all or most areas or functions of the professional services business.

Overall Operational Excellence in Education Services

This award recognizes the education services organization that has demonstrated exceptional organizational maturity across all, or most areas and functions of the education services business.

EMC

Overall Excellence in Field Service Delivery

This award recognizes the company that has best demonstrated the ability to provide excellent on-site support to customers with hardware or a combination of hardware and software installations at their facilities. These companies and their field technical service organization are able to effectively respond to and/or maintain their customers’ equipment in excellent working condition and continuous operation.

EMC

Partner Management

This award recognizes the company that excels at leveraging third-party providers for the delivery of service and support. This could apply to onshore or offshore outsourced partners or a combination therein. In all cases, partners must be composed of indirect company employees.

Service Delivery Optimization

This award recognizes the company that has successfully improved its support delivery operations through the use of outsourcing, consistent global processes, service technology development or deployment, and/or a quality improvement methodology such as Six Sigma, ISO 9000 to optimize and improve efficiency.

Small Company Excellence in Support Services

This award recognizes companies that provide technical support within small businesses (defined as companies with under $250M in annual revenue) for which exemplary customer support is important for company growth and is typically provided with constrained resources. These companies have demonstrated how their technical support effectively maintains their customers’ satisfaction and loyalty, and helps drive new business. For software companies, these typically would be application implementations or core systems infrastructure offerings. For hardware companies, these typically would be servers, network components, etc.

Use of Metrics and Business Intelligence

This award recognizes the company whose metrics and benchmarking programs gathers data on all aspects of the operation to ensure that SLAs are met and that work is flowing according to internal objectives and targets. In addition to core operational metrics, business intelligence is derived from captured data, enabling decision-oriented analytics.

Value-Added Support^TM

This award recognizes the company that has successfully demonstrated their commitment and focus on developing and delivering support offerings designed to help customers increase or accelerate the ROI on their product or technology investment or to help the company increase overall product sales.