CX Leader of the Year 2022: Four highly commended entries revealed!

Having assessed the applications from the 20 CX Leader of the Year finalists, our panel of expert judges were so impressed by the calibre of entrants that they have handpicked four applicants for special commendation, ahead of the winner announcement next week. 

These four entrants have been singled out for special awards recognising their achievements in specific customer experience fields. 

The four applicants receiving highly commended honours are:

• Manuela Pifani, Asda - The CX Leader of the Year Insight award
• Georges Essama, Cameroon Telecommunications - The CX Leader of the Year Culture award
• Samantha Statham, Fulfilmentcrowd - The CX Leader of the Year Employee Experience award
• KV Dipu, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance - The CX Leader of the Year Technology award

WINNER OF THE INSIGHT AWARD: Manuela Pifani, Senior Director of Customer Experience & Insights, Asda

Joining Asda in December 2020, Manuela set to work to help the supermarket giant with its ambition to become #2 market share in the grocery sector. The work she has achieved in the subsequent 20 months has been significant. One of her main projects has been to create a bigger, better and stronger customer experience & insights function. This has seen Manuela expand the team from 8 to 30 people; upgrade the basic and manual Voice of the Customer capabilities which supported our Tell Asda programme; launch a new online customer community panel, a regular customer listening programme and an ongoing Mindset Tracker to better understand customers; and overhaul its entire insight approach from being heavily agency-dependent to a new hands-on and immersive co-creation design thinking methodology, collaborating with customers to co-ideate and co-design solutions and value propositions.

"Manuela’s focus on shifting customer listening from being an external agency-led effort to being a key insights driver within the organisation was a key activity, moving to information-gathering across many different listening posts and methodologies, and leveraging what was learned to help inform, educate and motivate employees. Further, her ability to utilise these insights to design and implement specific programmes targeted to eliminating the pain points that were identified appear to have been significant contributors to the organisation's ability to quickly and significantly shift customer perceptions and behaviours and translate these behaviours into business results linked to management’s original remit for CX." Michael Hinshaw, CX Leader of the Year judge.

Read more about Manuela's achievements, and more from our judges on why they believe she deserves to be highly-commended, on her profile page.

WINNER OF THE CULTURE AWARD: Georges Essama, Head of Customer Relations, Cameroon Telecommunications

Appointed Head of Customer Relations for the Center Regional Division in 2019, one of the key pillars of Georges' CX strategy was to foster a more customer-centric culture. To achieve this, the organisation created a content programme called “Customer Insights” - a weekly podcast featuring customer interviews as well as advice, CX tips and lessons learned. Employee reward schemes were introduced, tied into metrics that heavily influence customer perception such as service availability, while a training programme was also launched, focusing on the gaps identified by the research, and also the requirements requested by staff. 

"To shift a culture from bureaucracy to best-class customer experience is not an easy task, especially across 4,000 employees. While a new CEO had given clear directives, the attitudes of employees were not shifting so Georges put in place a programme with a clear focus on communication and training. Ideas such as a weekly Podcast, “Customer Insights”, which shared live conversations with customers, providing advice, CX tips and lessons learned. This is a great way to bring customers into daily work life and help teams improve and just one example of the hard work and effort put into his programme." James Scutt, CX Leader of the Year judge.

Read more about Georges' achievements, and more from our judges on why they believe he deserves to be highly-commended, on his profile page.

WINNER OF THE TECHNOLOGY AWARD: KV Dipu, Senior President CX, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Co

With the increasing expectation for companies to provide support through digital and mobile-friendly channels, Dipu recognised that his company’s inaction in this area would hamstring them moving forward. He therefore made creating an end-to-end digital journey for customers and setting up an industry-leading digital experience his top priority when he started his CX journey.

"Dipu has been instrumental in driving customer-centric digital transformation at his organisation. There have been a host of digital innovations under his watch, and they have generated measurable returns, whether that be cost-savings, complaint reductions or NPS / satisfaction improvements. Little wonder that the organisation ranks so highly in the global top 100 digital insurers and has twice been named Asian Digital Insurer of the Year recently." Neil Davey, CX Leader of the Year judge. 

Read more about Dipu's achievements, and more from our judges on why they believe he deserves to be highly-commended, on his profile page.

WINNER OF THE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE AWARD: Samantha Statham, Head of Customer Experience, Fulfilmentcrowd

Additional to her CX role, Samantha has also been leading employee experience initiatives, launching a company-wide staff survey, introducing and implementing an employee assistance programme to support the wellbeing and mental mealth of employees and creating new company values - 'one crowd' - to align every employee with the brand, its customer’s experience/journey, and its culture and values.

"Samantha led an employee experience programme that has put individuals at the heart of the improvements and put in place wellbeing and mental health initiatives that were not previously in place." James Scutt, CX Leader of the Year judge.

Read more about Samantha's achievements, and more from our judges on why they believe she deserves to be highly-commended, on her profile page.