Customer Experience: How Far We’ve Come

With entries for the UK Customer Experience Awards opening very soon, it’s a good time to reflect on how much we’ve seen CX improve over the years.

The inaugural Awards were held in 2010 – a decade ago. At that time, customer experience was still in relative infancy. Organisations certainly saw its potential, but there was a gap between the rhetoric and the action. Many companies were yet to invest heavily in customer experience transformation.

But as the 2010s progressed, so too did customer experience. And at Awards International, we got to see that change first-hand. The tactics and strategies that organisations presented grew more sophisticated with every passing year, and the ‘bar’ for a winning entry kept rising. The Awards themselves have also grown alongside CX – last year saw 1000 CX professionals celebrating their achievements at Wembley Stadium.

It’s been a privilege to witness the maturing of an entire discipline. Having seen the early phases of CX transformation, it’s now very satisfying to see customer-centricity become such a dominant force.

These improvements aren’t just in the UK: standards have been rising consistently in the UAE, where we organise the Gulf Customer Experience Awards. And we’ve seen significant improvements in South East Europe, which is why we started the South East Europe Customer Experience Awards this year.

We’ve been very impressed by the rise of sophisticated new CX tools, but also by the human culture and employee experience that can harness these insights effectively. As we move into a new decade, we expect that companies able to combine these approaches to deliver for their customers will be the ones who succeed at the Awards.

Watching presentations at our various events is a bit like a CX ‘check-up’: you get exposed to the latest ideas, but also get inspired by the dedication and brilliance on display at the Awards, hopefully taking that inspiration back into your daily work.

In 2020, we can’t wait to hear how organisations have delighted their customers in new and innovative ways. We hope you can join us and share your story!

Register your interest for the UK Customer Experience Awards

Enter the South East Europe Customer Experience Awards 

For more customer experience stories, click here.