2024 is the third year of Deep-Insight “Excellence in CX” Awards.
These awards focus on companies that we have worked with in 2024 that have embraced our Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) framework and methodology to make meaningful change for both their customers and their employees.
That makes us very proud!
Before we talk about the winners, let’s answer the following question:
Deep-Insight is a small team of Customer Experience (CX) consultants who work extremely closely with our customers. The single question which drives us in each engagement is “will this programme inspire transformation in our client organisations?”.
Transformation does not need to be, and usually isn’t, a huge significant event in itself. When done well, transformation is a series of small, well thought through changes and improvements. Transformation is only worth it if it leads to growth, and it always does when it is inspired by the customer.
Also, we are not interested in vanity projects! We are focused on our core mission of Inspiring Transformation i.e. effective, growth-oriented use of Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX). This is what excellence in customer experience looks like and it is the foundation on which our customers build their CX and EX programmes.
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Six Degrees has been a client of ours since 2020 and it has been a privilege to work with the team for the past four years on their journey to greater customer centricity.
Fiona Lynch has been the Deep-Insight CX consultant working most closely with Chris Blofield, Conley Newall and the Six Degrees team to improve their Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) scores this year.
Fiona has been hugely impressed by the strategic response from the leadership team, starting with their commitment to ‘Customer First’, a core value to place the client at the heart of organisation. Fiona adds:
“The response from Six Degrees right across the organisation to last year’s CRQ assessment was incredibly well executed and their jump in scores really reflects their efforts. We’re delighted for them.”
Six Degrees appointed Vince DeLuca as Chief Executive Officer in 2024 as it sought to distinguish itself as the UK’s leading provider of secure, integrated cloud services. Vince commented on this year’s award:
“We’re incredibly proud to be recognised for our commitment to our core value of ‘Customer First.’ At Six Degrees, actively listening to and acting on our customers’ insights is fundamental to driving meaningful change and delivering exceptional outcomes.
This recognition reflects the dedication and hard work of our entire team over the past year. With the continued support of Deep-Insight, we are excited to carry this momentum forward into the year ahead.”
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Everybody in Ireland knows open eir. You’ve seen their distinctive green and white “Connecting Ireland with superfast fibre broadband” vans on the streets, installing fibre lines into business premises and into homes across the country.
You’ve probably also seen vans from Circet (pronounced “sur-say”) who are open eir’s key partner on the ground. We have to mention them in this award as they are an integral part of the open eir teams who operate at the coalface and meet customers on a daily basis.
2024 was our second year working with open eir. What impressed me the most about their approach to implementing a Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) programme was the extent to which they embraced the whole CRQ approach – taking the feedback at face value, closing the loop with the customers, putting in detailed (in fact, very detailed!) responses to all of the feedback, and kicking off a transformation programme that they are committed to for the long haul. They know it’s not a 12-month initiative. It’s a journey.
Una Stafford, Managing Director Networks, and Maeve O’Malley, Managing Director, Wholesale, have been leading the charge on open eir’s CX transformation journey over the past two years.
Both Una and Maeve are industry veterans who understand the challenges of a cultural transformation in large complex telecommunications environments. However, their real skill has been to convince hundreds of people in both open eir and Circet to embrace Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) as a way of life.
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Vreugdenhil Dairy Foods conducted its first Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) assessment in 2022, impressing us with their smooth adoption of the CRQ process, as if it had been a long-standing practice. What stood out most was their commitment from the outset. They dived into the process with enthusiasm and maintained a strong momentum throughout all the phases of the CRQ process.
In 2022, strong client relationships were identified as a key strength. Determined to build on this foundation, Vreugdenhil developed an internal training programme for all colleagues who have contact with customers, to enhance their client communication skills. They employed a variety of creative formats like interactive training sessions customised for different departments. These ‘customer contact training’ sessions emphasized proactive client engagement and addressed the nuances of dealing with different customer types.
Leonie Soetendaal is a Commercial Project Manager who has been working at Vreugdenhil Dairy Foods for nearly 10 years.
Together with Commercial Director Gerben van Schaik, and colleagues Jeroen de Kunder and Erik Bulthuis, Leonie has been the driving force behind Vreugdenhil’s CX journey since 2022.
Leonie commented on this year’s award:
“At Vreugdenhil Dairy Foods, we believe in the power of connection and lasting relationships. This award is a wonderful recognition of our commitment to open and meaningful communication with our customers. Together with our partners, we make a difference!”
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We have been privileged at Deep-Insight to work with BT Ireland since 2008 when they first started on their journey towards becoming one of Ireland’s most customer-centric companies.
It has been a long and successful Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) journey for them. Initially, the BT Ireland leadership team worked hard on identifying and addressing its clients’ major service issues. Then they progressed to the more enjoyable part of the journey – collaborating with clients on new innovative technology-based programmes.
In recent years, the BT Ireland leadership team took a more commercial focus to CRQ. They used detailed customer insight, along with externally validated propensity to buy, to identify clients where they could develop further solutions to their business problems.
BT Ireland discovered that the excellent relationships they had built over years was critical to driving revenue growth with clients that continued to be delighted by their offerings. Not an easy task in an industry where, every year, customers expect better telecommunications solutions for less cost.
The BT Ireland leadership team were helped by an army of service managers, account directors and engineers. They were also guided by a CX team led by Barry O’Shea, Mary McDonagh and Deirdre Tyrrell whose great CX efforts have been recognised globally in recent years. Shay Walsh, Managing Director, BT Ireland (left) commented on the Deep-Insight award:
“We are absolutely thrilled to be recognised in the category of ‘Using CRQ for Growth’. Working with the team in Deep-Insight we challenged ourselves collectively to convert our top quartile CRQ scores to income growth. This brought a focus on widening our contacts base within our client base and creating a watch list of customers who needed more focus from our customer-facing teams. The additional insight and broader awareness informed how better to serve our customers and ultimately how we achieve the dividend of growth from CRQ.”