Customer Experience Award

If you've had a great (or awful) customer experience with any of the finalists for the Fast Company Customer Experience Award, make your voice heard!

Fast Company magazine is calling all consumers and business leaders to play a part in choosing the winners of its inaugural "Customer Experience Awards." By participating in a brief online survey, people can help select the winners in five distinct customer service categories, which will be featured in the October issue of Fast Company.

To select a list of best-in-class companies, Fast Company convened a panel of experts in the fields of customer service and customer experience. From an initial set of over 100 nominations, Fast Company chose fifteen companies as "Customer Experience Award" finalists, listed below:

* Chick-fil-A
* Commerce Bank
* Costco
* Enterprise Rent-A-Car
* Fairmont Hotels & Resorts
* Harrah's Entertainment
* Mini USA (BMW)
* Petsmart
* Progressive Insurance
* Sharp Electronics
* Trader Joe's
* Vail Resorts
* Wachovia
* Walgreens
* Wegmans Food Markets

Input from online survey participants and the expert panel will be weighed to help determine the "Customer Experience Award" winners in the following
categories:

* High-Tech Achiever: The finalists in this category have put technology to work for customer service -- and succeeded in areas that others have failed.

* Employee Innovator: These companies are known for innovative employee hiring, training, empowering, or rewarding that creates a customer-focused work environment.

* Leading Listener: The finalists in this category are committed to truly listening to customers and consistently responding to feedback in an effective, appropriate manner.

* Profitable Player: Great customer service can be outrageously expensive, but these companies have managed to implement successful customer service initiatives that make a contribution to the companies' bottom line.

* Customer-Centered Leader: The finalists in this category are led by executives with an intense focus on putting customers first and a commitment to setting a customer-centered tone for their organization.

Comments

[Craig Chester]

I did not format the link right in my name at the end of the comment. Sorry. It is correct in this one.

[Craig Chester]

I am surprised Starbucks did not make the list. After all, they basically brought the idea of selling an expirience, rather than a product, into the chain food service industry. Other chains are using their model of success to sell other "food expiriences" rather than simply product, like ColdStone Creamery, which trains their employees to sing whenever they are tipped.

And besides, at Starbucks, who can resist the charm of the average Starbucks location? Baristas with pierced pre-frontal cortexes, walking designer racks talking into cellphones like they were trying to be heard over a chain saw, struggling film students working on "scripts in process" that still have less words in in than their latte order...........

[Effern]

Yeah, CVS has been a much stronger chain, in my opinion. The photo processing is better, the prices lower, and the employees friendlier/more competent (sorry Walgreen's).

Since Wag's was listed in Good to Great or talked up by Tom Peters (I forget where I saw the write-up), I figure FC went after Walgreen's instead. I also wonder if CVS is not fully national, compared to Wag's. Not sure though. But that could also have been the deciding factor.

[Rich Westerfield]

I didn't read the background on how FC narrowed down to 15, but Walgreens? I don't get it. Did the survey, had experience with six companies, five of whom got 8-10s across the board. I gave Walgreens no higher than a 6 on any criteria.

Am I missing something? Is it just the Pittsburgh Walgreens that are below par?