CustomerSat ACE Awards

	"At AIG American General, we recognize that superior customer service is a key differentiator in the competitive financial services marketplace. These awards are tangible evidence that our employees' vision, strategy and commitment to customer service are indeed impacting our customers' experience in a positive way." -Simon Leech - SVP & Customer Advocacy Officer at AIG American General "At Getronics, quality is core to all our Workspace Management Services. When we deliver quality services our clients are happy, which is reflected in our high client satisfaction scores. We are pleased with our partnership with CustomerSat, which helps us measure the quality we deliver." -Dick Boynton - Vice President, Integrated Managed Services Delivery at Getronics

The CustomerSat ACE Awards certify, acknowledge, and celebrate outstanding achievement in customer satisfaction. Receiving a CustomerSat ACE Award is a distinct honor, which demonstrates both rigorous application of customer feedback processes and outstanding performance as measured by those processes.

Candidates for CustomerSat ACE Awards may include companies, business units, or segments of a business. Each Award recognizes processes and performance measured during a single year. To apply for an ACE Award, your organization must complete an application form and have conducted one or more customer satisfaction surveys for the better part of that year. The customer feedback on which an award is based must be representative of the entire business, business unit, or business segment to which the award applies.

2008 ACE Award application submissions will be accepted from September 1 - September 30, 2008. Award recipients will be notified by November 3, 2008 and publicly announced shortly thereafter. Awards will be formally presented to recipients in a ceremony at the 2009 CustomerSat Leadership Conference. Press releases, recognition events and trophies are available as soon as the award is announced.

ACE Awards demonstrate to the world your organization’s success and effectiveness in customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Benefits of the ACE Award

Our 2007 winners:

• Received awards certificates and trophies.
• Demonstrated the ACE logo as certification on their website and in annual report.
  
• Presented their achievement in their promotional mailings to their customers.
  
• Developed their own press release.
• Produced employee recognition events.

View Past ACE Award Winners.

How Does the Process Work?

1) Award Scope

Applications are made for an ACE Award with a proposed scope. Scope has two parts: business area and segment. Business area may comprise the business overall, a part of the business, or a stakeholder group. The proposed scope of the award must be fully covered by one or more customer (or other stakeholder) satisfaction surveys.

For example, an application for an ACE Award for the business overall must include one or more relationship surveys covering all aspects of customers’ relationships with the business. An application for an ACE Award for technical support must include one or more surveys covering all aspects of technical support (e.g., multiple touchpoints, if applicable).

CustomerSat reserves the right to disqualify combinations of business areas and segments that it deems are too narrow to warrant award recognition (e.g., “customers in region X using product Y at support level Z.”) A data collection channel used by a survey (e.g., phone or online) does not qualify as a segment. However, a well-defined customer segment such as “online customers” may qualify.

2) Survey Methodology

Survey processes and results used in ACE Awards nominations must be rigorous, defensible and repeatable. CustomerSat will review feedback processes and audit results to verify that they meet these requirements.

Sampling may be either a census or random sampling with a minimum 90% confidence level with a ±5% margin of error or better. Beyond sampling, data collection methods must not exclude significant customer subsets. In some cases, multiple data feedback channels may be required, such as a combination of online, telephone, postal mail, and/or IVR. We may review results for statistically significant differences by data collection channel. An award whose scope is worldwide may require that surveys be conducted in multiple languages to ensure that the worldwide customer base is adequately represented.

3) Customer Satisfaction Performance

For 2008 ACE Awards, qualifying performance are a combination of overall satisfaction scores and top-box percentages. Surveys using any rating scales may be eligible.

Contact your CustomerSat Project Manager for specific eligibility criteria.

4) Survey Process Timeframe

ACE Awards recognize achievement of customer excellence for the year in which they are awarded. All survey results available for the year in which an award application is made must be included in determining performance; timeframes cannot be arbitrarily reduced to achieve higher scores. For new surveys begun in 2008, approximately six months of customer feedback are required for eligibility. That feedback may consist, for example, of six months’ worth of responses for a continuous survey; two deployments of a relationship survey that is deployed quarterly; or one deployment of a relationship survey that is deployed once or twice per year.

For questions about the ACE Awards, contact your CustomerSat Project Manager or ACE@CustomerSat.com.