I remember hearing about The WOW! Awards back in the very late 1990’s. As someone who has been obsessed with great customer service for much of my career, I was delighted when I discovered that Derek Williams  had found a way to encourage customers to recognise companies’ front line people for individual and collective acts of excellent customer service. Simply, The WOW! Awards are the only customer-nominated customer service awards programme in the world.

Derek Williams had been high on  my list of people that I wanted to meet for a long time. In December 2011, I attended a meeting of the Customer Service Training Network – and sat next to Derek. We chatted during the day and I sensed a kindred spirit. Someone who totally believes, as I do, that front line customer service professionals are as important as anyone else in any organisation – in fact, I would argue that they are more important than most if not all other people in a business! The WOW! Awards offer a simple way for customers to show their appreciation for a job well done, or an instance, of which there are plenty, when a customer service professional or team has gone the extra mile. Managers and supervisors are often not around when these acts of greatness take place, and, even if they are, the brilliant acts of the front line people often go unnoticed, so keen can the managers sometimes be on keeping the boss happy! I could go on…!!

Well, early in January Derek and I met, and we met again today. We are very much on the same wavelength, and I’m delighted to announce that I am joining the team at The WOW! Awards as an Employee Engagement Adviser as from today. I’ll be helping to look for companies who want to recognise their people for their efforts on the front line, and helping them to get involved. I’ll still be delivering training, professional speaking and writing too. The involvement with The WOW! Awards fits my ‘strapline’ of  ‘Supporting Achievement’ like a glove, and I have a great feeling about this new collaboration that I have started.

I met some of The WOW! Awards team today and they are all a great bunch of people! Contact me if you would like to know more about The WOW! Awards, wherever in the world you are!