Jun 22, 2023

Meet the Winners and Finalists for the Inaugural Support Experience Awards

We’re thrilled to announce the finalists for the first-ever Support Experience Awards. These awards recognize organizations, teams, and individuals who have excelled in delivering exceptional customer experiences and redefined the realm of support. 

As a company founded on the mission of helping companies transform their support experiences, SupportLogic, as the host of SX Live, honors the remarkable efforts, innovation, and creativity exhibited by these teams and professionals in the support industry.

Elevating Customer Experience through Support Experience

To foster community and collaboration, we launched SX Live in 2022, the industry’s first conference solely dedicated to support experience. 

Last year’s event was a resounding success, bringing together industry leaders and experts to share insights, strategies, and best practices. With the overwhelming excitement around the event, we knew we were on to something and wanted to celebrate the best of the best in customer support and success.

Introducing the Support Experience Awards

To build on what was started last year, the Support Experience awards aim to recognize organizations, teams, and individuals who have made significant strides in transforming support. We firmly believe that by highlighting these outstanding achievements, we inspire others to raise the bar and continue pushing the boundaries of support excellence.

The Seven Prestigious Awards

Customer Experience (Team Award)

This award celebrates a support team that consistently delivers outstanding customer experiences. The evaluation criteria include attention to customer personas and journeys, exceptional customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics, proactive use of metrics to improve the customer experience, and implementation of customer-focused workflows and processes.

Finalists:

  • Nutanix
  • Qlik
  • Siemens

Winner:

Siemens

“What was remarkable about this Siemens nomination was the way that they describe the process that they use to maintain this great customer experience. Great personas, they had journeys. They had a complete process from A to Z to design everything. I want to say one thing about their personas. Siemens obviously is a huge company and they are working with just three personas, end user, partner and admin. And I think it’s a great lesson to all of us in the industry that you don’t need to make these personas any more complicated than that, sometimes. Very remarkable. They are using AI for search and translations, so I’m intrigued by that, and maybe we’ll learn a little bit more about that. And also the metrics that they’re using to measure customer experience in particular.”

Organizational Influence (Team Award)

This award acknowledges a support team that utilizes insights and data to demonstrate strong influence outside their function and deliver value to the broader company. The evaluation criteria encompass impact on other functions, leveraging insights from support interactions to drive cross-functional impact, and designing processes for repeatability and scale.

Finalists:

  • IBM
  • Qlik
  • Zywave

Winner:

Qlik

“Qlik has leveraged customer interaction data, CSAT survey and usage metrics to identify and drive the resolution of recurring problems affecting their customers throughout their journey, and thereby improving the overall experience. As a result of the work, Qlik has reduced cost in both customer success and their support organization. To make this possible, they fostered a SaaS mindset throughout the entire organization, worked with cross- functional teams with key reps from product management, R& D, legal, IT and customer success.

Some of the metrics that we attribute and they were able to prove to us, reduced the volume of customers not activating their tenants from 30% to less than five. Reduce the time to activate from 30 days to five days. Reduce customer interactions with live agents support about product download from 14% to less than 3%. Congratulations to Daniel, Bastien and the entire Qlik Organization.”

Employee Experience and Transformational Coach

This award recognizes a high-performing support organization that prioritizes employee experience and invests in programs to systematically develop their people. Evaluation criteria include showcasing strong team skill development, proactive coaching and quality monitoring, employee metrics such as retention and satisfaction, and employee referral and hiring.

Finalists:

  • IBM
  • Science Logic

Winner:

ScienceLogic

“It was very clear to us that ScienceLogic was going to win because of the team contribution, but also because of a certain individual.

René Cantwell brings out the best in people and exhibits strong leadership skills. She was an easy choice for transformational coaching. She is exactly what we were looking for in this category.”

Self Service (Team Award)

This award commends the self service organization that places customer experience at the forefront. Evaluation criteria include measurable positive customer experiences and outcomes through the self-service channel, focus on quality rather than quantity of articles, reduction in onboarding and cross-training time, and systematic process improvement.

Finalists:

  • Cadence
  • Nutanix
  • Zywave

Winner:

Cadence

“Cadence Design Systems understands the need for a holistic view of self-service.

Their multipronged approach includes a knowledge-first mindset inspired by KCS, where every case is an opportunity to reuse, capture or improve knowledge. A recognition program that reminds all contributors of the benefits of knowledge and celebrates those who create value in the KB. Robust content standards and QA processes, a machine-learning-based universal search tool, and ongoing communications to remind customers that knowledge is there for them.

Cadence has reaped significant quantifiable business results from its COS 2.0.”

Technology Adoption (Team Award)

This award acknowledges a support organization that effectively utilizes technologies to improve the customer and employee experience while enhancing operational efficiency. Evaluation criteria include the use of AI and customer signal harnessing tools, quality monitoring and automated coaching, and a defined roadmap for evolving the technology stack.

Finalists:

  • Automation Anywhere
  • Coveo
  • SAP

Winner:

Coveo

“Coveo started with a strategic vision to improve not only the customer experience, but the employee experience as well. They integrated four tools, including their own, to support a series of use cases, backlog management, escalation prediction, agent coaching, self-service, case routing and intelligent swarming. We’ve learned that making swarming intelligent requires exactly the kind of integration Coveo did. We knew they thought about their big objectives, ’cause they did a stellar job of quantifying the benefits they’re receiving from the new tools, they knew what they were solving for. Happier customers, happier employees. This is how technology adoption is supposed to work. Thanks for showing the way, Coveo.”

Customer Hero (Individual Award)

This award honors an exceptional individual contributor (support engineer, agent, CSM) who consistently delivers exceptional customer experiences. The evaluation criteria include turning customers around from detractors to promoters, strong customer sentiment and satisfaction metrics, and direct contributions to customer revenue protection and growth.

Finalists:

  • Aaron Jaskluli, Zywave
  • Sandro Latini, Delphix
  • Steven Sanchez, SimpleLegal

Winner:

Steven Sanchez, SimpleLegal

“We were looking for folks who do amazing things. We were looking for people who turn customers around. We were looking for people who contribute to the bottom line. We were looking for people who were innovative and allowed the organization to grow. Steven is asked for by name by top clients. Customers love him. He shares knowledge effectively, and he implements tools that reduce staff time and frustration.”

Transformational Leader (Individual Award)

This award recognizes a senior leader who strategically transforms the support organization to deliver better outcomes for customers, employees, and the business. Evaluation criteria encompass effective change management, leveraging modern technologies and collaborative methods within the support org, expanding beyond traditional metrics, and driving the adoption of unassisted support models.

Finalists:

  • Massey Decker, Degreed
  • Mohammed Ajouz, SAP
  • Patrick Martin, Coveo

Winner:

Mohammed Ajouz, SAP

“The judges unanimously selected Mohammed Ajouz of SAP. In addition to running an organization of 3000 people, Mohammed implemented too many strategic initiatives to mention.

The ones that really stood out, were:

  • Focusing the team by organizing [them] by product, rather than by country
  • Implementing predictive proactive support
  • Providing an in-product support experience
  • Developing AI-based tools to improve both the customer and the engineer experience
  • Modernizing metrics

Leaders like Mohammed inspire the people of their own organizations.”

Meet the Judges

Our esteemed judging panel, consists of industry leaders and experts who possess deep knowledge and experience in the support domain:

Judith Platz - Chief Customer Officer at SupportLogic

Judith Platz
Chief Customer Officer, SupportLogic

Al Hahn
Executive Director,
The Association of Support Professionals

Françoise Tourniaire
Founder, FT Works
Author of “The Art of Support”

David Kay
Principal,
DB Kay & Associates

The judges bring a wealth of expertise and a passion for recognizing outstanding support achievements. Their dedication to customer success and commitment to highlighting excellence make them an invaluable part of the Support Experience Awards.

A Milestone in Celebrating Support Experience

The first-ever Support Experience Awards marks a significant milestone in celebrating the organizations, teams, and individuals that have reshaped the support landscape and elevated customer experiences. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to all the finalists who have showcased exceptional achievements in their respective categories. 

Stay tuned for the grand finale at SX Live Industry Conference on Thursday, June 15th at 2:30 PM PT, where the winners of the Support Experience Awards will be announced.

As Judith Platz, Chief Customer Officer at SupportLogic, rightly said, “With support and success teams being in a renaissance period, I can’t think of a better place to highlight their stories of excellence.” Let us come together and applaud the heroes who are setting new benchmarks for customer satisfaction and success.

Join us virtually on Thursday, June 15th at 2:30 PM PT as we announce the winners!

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