Brace yourselves for a glittering event as the UK Customer Experience Awards 2013 is almost upon us.
The sell-out extravaganza takes place in London on October 17 and will reveal and reward winners in 25 categories. Top names including Virgin Media, Barclays, easyjet and Sage (UK) are in the finals of the awards, which celebrate and promote excellence in customer experience across a broad spectrum of
industries.
Customer Experience Magazine will be covering the proceedings full details of the event and the winners. Guests at The Grand Connaught Rooms can look forward to a highly enjoyable day with celebrity guests, entertainment and first class cuisine.
Judging will take place in the morning with finalist presenting their case studies to a panel of experts, and then the winners will be announced during the gala lunch. There will also be lots of network opportunities during the day.
The 2013 Awards are presented in partnership with the Cranfield Customer Management Forum (CCMF), and this year the awards helped four final year Master of Science students with their theses.
Four marketing students were given special access to data supplied as part of the entry process for the Awards, and came up with some inspiring results. These were presented to a panel of marketing experts at the University of Cranfield in September.
The Awards information allowed the students to use real business case studies and responses to complete their MSc Strategic Marketing theses.
Students Hao Qui, Gladys Ge, Marisa Brandt and Yingxue Gong took marketing topics and used the information in the case studies to apply their thinking and draw conclusions.
Senior Lecturer Dr Emma MacDonald, who supervised the students, thanked Neil Skehel, Managing Director of Awards International, for the data and praised the students for their presentations.
“All of our students are most grateful for the opportunity provided in giving them access to the Awards data. They all worked extremely hard to complete their theses,” said Emma.
After listening to the presentations Neil Skehel, Managing Director of Awards International which runs the UK Customer Experience Awards, said; “You’ve blown my mind.”
As a follow up to the Awards CCMF will be holding a workshop on February 27 revolving around lessons learned from the UK Customer Experience Awards. Full details and speakers will be announced later.
MSc Strategic Marketing Students
Customer Experience Magazine has invited all four students to summarise their thesis work in a future issue, so look out for their stories.
Hao Qiu – How employee engagement helps improve customer experience: Multiple case studies in UK Financial Services Sector
Gladys Ge – Investigating the impract of collaborative innovation with customers on customer experience
Yingxue Gong – Co-creating value with the customer on the internet: Customer experience management in practice.
Student Marisa Brandt was not available for the presentation but her thesis is entitled How can retail brands use co-creation of experiences to create value to the customer and enhance brand perception.
Photo caption
Marketing students with supervisor Dr Emma Macdonald. From left Hao Qiu, Gladys Ge, Yingxue Gong, Dr Emma Macdonald and Marisa Brandt