What does outstanding customer service look like? Look at our 2022 CX Excellence Award winners

What do you get when you have 16 organizations that are leaders in their own industries—but also use NICE contact center software solutions in extraordinary ways to drive digital interactions that create frictionless experiences for their customers? A diverse group that’s raising the bar on customer experience–which earned them a 2022 CX Excellence Award.

As we close out 2022, we wanted to recap these standout organizations. Chosen from many applicants, winning organizations were selected in six award categories, each showing how using the extensive NICE portfolio of technology, products and solutions can make experiences flow with personalized CX and brand engagement that ultimately translates into happy customers.

“In a world where consumers are conditioned to expect everything to be easy, effortless and instantaneous, eliminating friction makes all the difference between brand loyalty and brand abandonment,” NICE CEO Barak Eilam said in announcing the winners during Interactions Live earlier this year. “We’re delighted to celebrate organizations that have excelled in ensuring frictionless customer journeys by redefining their customer and employee experiences using advanced innovations.”

Among the organizations that were singled out, each has a compelling story. Each is unique in its challenges and demands and in how it has leveraged NICE CXone cloud solutions to achieve results. All, however, share a common commitment to their customers and to providing exceptional, seamless CX in every interaction.

Best Cloud Implementation

Honored for flawless deployment of next-gen, cloud-based technology with proven business impact

• Tripadvisor
  Hundreds of millions of travelers tap into Tripadvisor's 1 billion-plus reviews and opinions every month to find deals on accommodations, book experiences, make restaurant reservations and more. Customer service is obviously central to Tripadvisor’s commitment to making travel plannng easy. Which is why the company undertook a rapid consolidation of its global support and telesales operations on the NICE CXone cloud platform, getting its 2,000 agents up and running on the new system in 12 months. The results are impressive, according to David Fox, Tripadvisor’s Senior Director of Global Telecoms Services, including “operational efficiencies, cost reduction and improved performance worldwide.” Tripadvisor has received the Best Customer Service Award three years running and enjoys an industry-leading Customer Effort Score (CES) of 70+. Read more about Tripadvisor's move to CXone.
  
  
• Disney Streaming
  Disney Streaming’s 10,000 agents now use NICE solutions in 100 countries and 20 languages. Their goal: to provide the same legendary “Disney Magic” to customers of its four streaming brands—Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ and Star+—who engage with its Viewer Experience contact centers. Moving to NICE CXone included a full integration with Salesforce that provides agents with instant customer information. It has also provided enhanced capabilities that include consistent, accurate reporting, easy agent onboarding, minimal downtime and speedy IVR configuration. “If you’re a global organization or you’re expanding operations quickly, NICE CXone can reduce the level of effort for new business launches and enable efficient utilization of a remote workforce,” said Ryan Schweers, Director - Support and Operations for Disney Streaming. Read more about Disney Streaming’s experience.
  
  
• Teleperformance
  A global leader in next-gen business services, Teleperformance employs 420,000 contact center agents worldwide, who serve customers in 265+ languages and dialects in 170 countries. About 9,000 employees are in the UK, with contact centers across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Early in the pandemic, the company was able to deploy CXone within five days and double its capacity, enabling it to manage the unprecedented demand experienced by a UK health care provider and continue to manage the fluctuating needs of other clients. Nearly 8,500 agents were transitioned to remote work in just three weeks, with record speed onboarding. CXone’s flexibility also enabled Teleperformance to manage campaigns in response to evolving demands for vaccinations, testing and COVID PASSes. At a time when speed, flawless execution and continuity were critical, Teleperformance received a letter of thanks from a UK healthcare client that said, “No organization has ever achieved so much in such a short time.” As James Timms, Chief Technology Officer for Teleperformance, said: “We were at the forefront of responding to the pandemic with a range of services that the world had never had to deploy before. And it was the CXone platform that made it possible.” Read more about Teleperformance’s accomplishments.

Best CX Innovation

Honored for adopting innovative AI, analytics or automation that produced transformational and/or business results

• Trimble Transportation
  Trimble Transportation provides carrier, fleet and transportation management solutions that transform its businesses clients. The company uses technology to connect and simplify supply chain challenges and empower customers to maximize productivity. The company replaced six distinct tech support systems with NICE CXone, including a Salesforce integration, which has enabled it to deliver on its brand promise to provide streamlined and enhanced CX in every customer interaction. Workflow and quality management are more efficient and productive, which has also contributed to exceptional CX. Trimble’s Senior Manager for Technical Support Creighton Engen, refers to NICE CXone as “the silent hero…in the background,” providing solutions that are flexible, customizable and reliable. Read more about Trimble's CXone journey to the cloud.
  
  
• Banco BMG
  As one of Brazil’s major banks, Banco BMG provides retail (both consumer and business), wholesale and asset management services to 9.1 million customers and staffs its contact center operation with 950 agents. The bank uses NICE Nexidia Analytics for predictive modeling in managing risk in unhappy customers by first identifying key stress and dissatisfaction indicators. In fact, managing dissatisfaction risk is now an important KPI in contact center performance, and a “rescue team” of highly skilled agents takes immediate action to “save” at-risk relationships based on the analytics. Future enhancements are planned, including extending this risk management capability to other lines of business. Read more about Banco BMG's transformation.
  
  
• Medscheme
  Guided by its vision of creating a world of sustainable healthcare, Medscheme’s mission is to provide quality, affordable health care seamlessly and efficiently to its 3.2 million constituents throughout South Africa. Its 1,000 agents are critical to delivering that care, and NICE solutions have enhanced both workforce management processes and coaching capabilities. Improved operational integration, efficiency and visibility have all contributed to rising quality and CSAT scores. “NICE provides the level of detail that we need in order for us to encourage accountability for our case managers, and the drive towards the numbers our decision-makers and managers want us to deliver. The support from the NICE VRS team has been great, not just in showing us how the product works but in understanding how it can work best in our environment and suggesting valuable measurements,” said Ncumisa Hlapo, Medscheme’s Senior Specialist for Business Intelligence. Read more about Medscheme here.

Best Customer Experience

Honored for establishing a new CX standard in increased first contact resolution (FCR), service levels or Net Promoter Score® (NPS)

• County of San Diego
  “When you want to build a great call center, what do you do?” asked the County of San Diego's Human Services Operations Manager. The county’s Access Customer Service Center, whose 2,500+ agents provide access to a range of health and social services to more than 3.3 million residents in San Diego County, turned to NICE CXone. Now that the center is using a variety of NICE solutions, performance has increased substantially: Average handle time (AHT) has been reduced by 53%, and most impressively, despite a 38% rise in contact volume, average speed of answer (ASA) decreased by 85%.
  Most importantly, constituents have noticed and are responding accordingly: Positive CSAT feedback has risen, and negative feedback has dropped by 93%. Read more about how County of San Diego County won over constituents with CXone.
  
  
• Vera Bradley
  Vera Bradley Director of Customer Experience Susan Campbell cites NICE CXone for helping the company “establish and maintain a hybrid contact center model, give customers and retailers a consistent experience and increase customer satisfaction scores during a pretty tumultuous year for business.” The company, known worldwide for its popular and colorful bags and accessories, has 70 contact center agents. They all moved to working remotely during the pandemic and later transitioned back to the office and to a 60/40 hybrid model—thanks to the NICE work-from-anywhere solution. The company never missed a beat, adding new capabilities like co-browsing enhanced CX, decreasing call abandonment and achieving year-over-year increases for its Net Promoter Score® (NPS) and customer satisfaction score (CSAT). Read more about Vera Bradley's use of CXone solutions.
  
  
• Pfizer
  With a global portfolio that includes some of the world’s best-known consumer health care products as well as pharmaceuticals and vaccines, Pfizer maintains approximately 100 agents in its U.S. trade group to serve a vast and varied customer base of patients, caregivers and providers. Working with NICE CXone solutions has helped the company “see the point of view of our customers,” said Pfizer Customer Service Support Analyst Jay Soria, “including improvements we can make and our customer service representatives can make.” NICE CXone features, including modernized onboarding and training that address work-from-anywhere agents, have helped mitigate COVID’s impact on service levels, improve average speed of answer (ASA) and reduce rejected calls. Read more about Pfizer's journey.

Best Employee Engagement

Honored for using advances in workforce engagement (WFE) and motivation strategies, winners empowered their employees to be brand ambassadors in a work-from-anywhere environment

• Lands’ End
  Lands' End is a classic American lifestyle brand that stands for quality, value and legendary service. Its global contact center operation comprises 1,000+ agents and uses various NICE solutions. Deploying the NICE WFM suite across all domestic and international locations, the company was able to replace disparate, 20+ year-old contact center solutions and siloed policies and practices, as well as eliminate extensive duplicate effort and waste. Identified as priorities within these modernization and optimization efforts, agent self-service and engagement have improved: For example, schedule-related calls to the WFM help desk declined 70%, while WFM staff effort spent on scheduling transactions fell 80%. Mary Judkins, Senior Director of Customer Care Services for Lands’ End, described this as “a critical step for us to empower our agents to take control of their schedule and allow them the flexibility that we want to deliver.” Read more about how Lands' End raised the bar on agent engagement.
  
  
• IAG Loyalty (Avios)
  Experts in making brands “stick,” IAG Loyalty is known as a pioneer in the loyalty industry. The company provides a loyalty currency (Avios) to help its commercial and airline partners retain customers. A major upgrade to NICE WFM enabled IAG to reset and modernize operations and establish best practices, especially regarding work-from-home. Not only are IAG’s 250 agents happier, but the company is saving time and money. In fact, all measures of positive agent sentiment are up, from satisfaction with work-life balance (+ 21%) to appreciation for schedule flexibility (+50%). “Our upgraded solution is far more effective,” said Terry Harrison, Resource & Planning Manager, Avios. “But more than anything, the emotional feelings staff have toward their ability to influence their shifts is absolutely massive. It sells itself.” Read more about IAG Loyalty's journey with NICE.
  
  
• PSCU
  As the leading payments credit union service organization (CUSO) in the U.S., PSCU uses digital payment technology to help its more than 1,900 financial institution clients grow, providing nearly 7 billion transactions annually. Replacing outdated solutions from multiple vendors with NICE solutions—Employee Engagement Manager (EEM), WFM, Engage and QM—has boosted productivity and efficiency. Agent self-service has increased fivefold and is accessible from any device, including mobile. Additionally, the company now has a consistent view of contact center performance. Brian Vogel, Manager of Forecast and Workforce Management for PSCU Contact Center Services & Solutions, said its NICE solutions are “delivering on our business goals to align staffing with the needs of our client programs and helping us get our real-time WFM analysts away from data entry so they can focus on more analytical work.” Read more about PSCU's results with NICE solutions.

Rookie of the Year

Honored for excellence in adopting best practices in areas from digital fluency to rollout efficiency and training during implementation of a NICE solution

• Gusto
  More than 200,000 small and medium-sized businesses take advantage of full-service payroll, health insurance, 401(k), HR and team management services and tools provided by one-stop “people platform” Gusto. The company’s contact center employs 2,000+ agents who work in-office, at home or both. Gusto’s rapid transition to the NICE CXone platform has positively impacted performance and the bottom line. Key metrics—service levels, answer time, abandonment, exceptions and uptime—all improved substantially, and overall, Gusto has realized an annual financial benefit of over $9 million. Most importantly, the company is pleased to be delivering the white-glove concierge service its customers expect. “[WFM]…is now seen as a way to save money and make the business more efficient” rather than as a cost center funded by the business, said Staniscia Holmes, Head of Gusto Global Workforce Management and Quality. Read more about the path that Gusto is taking with CXone.
  
  
• Freedom Mortgage
  With 3,250 call center agents taking 180,000 calls monthly to service the mortgage loans of more than 1.4 million homeowners, Freedom Mortgage is one of the largest non-bank mortgage lenders in the U.S. NICE solutions have helped the company shift from a production-based to a performance-based organization, which benefits agents and customers. Consolidated analytics and reporting, for example, have helped eliminate manual processes, which has boosted efficiency to save time and money. Increased productivity has resulted in improved staffing—and CX. “Now, we can look at productivity. We can see who is excelling and their methods. Good habits can be discovered, mimicked and replicated. That’s our business driver. That drives revenue and is a huge shift for our organization,” said Thomas Gallo, VP, Centralized Operations for Freedom Mortgage. Read more about the Freedom Mortgage transformation.
  
  
• Shared Services Connected Ltd. (SSCL)
  A leader in providing critical business support services, SSCL empowers its UK public sector clients with digital solutions and innovative services that enable better outcomes for citizens. Despite WFM practices that were manual and not well coordinated, SSCL enjoyed early growth and a positive Net Promoter Score® (NPS). However, by moving to NICE WFM, scheduling errors and uncertainty have been reduced, and the WFM function overall has transformed from backward-looking to forward-looking. Improving the agent experience has raised bar for its CX, and NPS continues to improve. NICE WFM has resulted in “a much more engaged employee population,” according to Sumit Singh, SSCL’s Head of Resource Planning. “On the front line and among team managers, they all feel that they are better supported to deliver services,” he said. Read more about SSCL’s WFM journey.

Trailblazer of the Year

In this category, exceptional success was demonstrated in the most effective use of AI or self-service and in adopting the most cutting-edge tools, such as Enlighten AI.

• Fifth Third Bank
  As a large ($211 billion in assets) Midwest financial institution, Fifth Third Bank has been able to harness the power of the latest technology to forge new inroads into understanding customer sentiment and applying those insights to help agents be better listeners and build strong customer relationships. Through the use—and major expansion of—NICE Nexida Analytics and NICE Enlighten AI across the bank’s lines of businesses, agent coaching and performance, reporting and goals for improvement are now informed with insight analysis based on every agent interaction. “Enlighten AI analyzes every interaction and provides additional intelligence on agent behaviors for more effective coaching conversations that improve the customer experience,” said Kevin Anderson, Fifth Third’s Speech Analytics Program Manager. “Our goal is to be number one from a customer experience standpoint, and NICE is helping us climb the ladder in those rankings.” Read more about how Fifth Third Bank transformed its Voice of the Customer program with NICE solutions.