The overall Innovation of the Year award for 2023 was won by FIS. Flexible working is no longer a nice to have but an essential offering for colleagues. This organisation has been able to provide choice, certainty and control which has improved employee engagement and customer experience.

The Innovation of the Year Award for 2022 was won by Sky Agile Planning Team, who demonstrated a collaborative and engaging way to influence key stakeholders and drive continuous improvement. Taking an agile approach to create sustainable and future proof flexibility for their people, they were also presented the award for Planning Transformation.

North Yorkshire County Council won the Innovation of the Year 2021. They are a team who showed outstanding focus and determination. Engaging stakeholders led them to clear goals and fresh insight. This innovative operating model to support vulnerable customers was up within days of the first lockdown. Evolving and now sustainable, it is multi-channel. It’s built on good data, great communications, and much collaboration. We can do so much, so quickly, when we all work together. They were also presented with the Award for Collaborative Innovation.

The Innovation of the Year 2020 was won by Openreach who showed outstanding focus and determination. Engaging stakeholders led them to clear goals and fresh insight. Lack of budget did not deter them from making huge changes in a very short period of time and making future changes simpler for everyone. They were also presented with the Award for Innovation at Pace.

The Innovation of the Year 2019 award was won by British Engineering Services; a team that put customer service at the heart of transforming the business, from strategic planning to pricing to real-time flexibility. It lays down a challenge to all of us: how do we make our organisation stand out from the crowd? They were also presented with the Innovation award for Enterprise Planning.

Homeserve gained the overall Innovation of the Year Award 2018. An organisation centred on people and customers. In achieving commercial success and building community engagement, front-line teams re-connected with the organisation’s purpose, to rebuild trust. Marked out by judges as one of the best entries they’ve ever seen, this is a story everyone can learn from and be inspired by. They were also presented with the Innovation Award for Social Transformation.

Three Ireland gained the overall Innovation of the Year Award 2017. Empowering leadership has released potential, building customer focus and enabling functions like real-time planning to innovate in analytics, technology and social media. They were also presented with the Innovation Award for Real-Time Empowerment.

EE gained the overall Innovation of the Year Award 2016 for transforming customer experience. They listened to their customer and colleagues, fixed what they said was broken and made it easier for them to access services. This led to huge increases in customer and colleague net promoter scores, while involving 38 technology implementations in 3 years. They were also presented with the Innovation Award for Transformation.

British Gas Service and Repair gained the overall 2015 Innovation of the Year Award for delivering an exceptional end-to-end customer journey. A focus on customer experience led to a new operating model for planning, and used insight to improve NPS, backlogs & efficiencies at the same time in Service & Repair, cutting broken promises 78%. They were also presented with the Innovation Award for Customer Experience.

Arise Virtual Solutions was awarded the overall 2014 Innovation of the Year Award for achieving high performance homeworking at scale. Their modern resourcing model motivates people to work flexible schedules, which in turn helps clients to resource rapidly to manage volatility, deliver quality and gain 20-30% efficiency savings. They were also presented with the Innovation Award for Agility and Empowerment.

BT Retail Customer Services was presented with the overall 2013 Customer Contact Innovation of the Year Award for radical changes that are making it easy for customers. The radical customer effort metric NetEasy has helped increase customer loyalty, deliver efficiency and emphatically engaged front line advisors. They were also presented the Innovation Award for Cultural Transformation.

DRL gained the overall 2012 Customer Contact Innovation Award for the highly successful innovation that made it easy for customers to buy appliances online, reducing contacts per order by a massive 29% through listening to customers and acting on this insight. They also won the Innovation Award for Customer Experience.

Autoglass was presented with the overall 2011 Customer Contact Innovation Award for their highly successful but radical approach to enterprise resource modelling.

Scottish Power was presented with the overall 2010 Contact Centre Innovation of the Year Award, for their industry-leading integration of workflow and workforce management in the back office.

The Innovation of the Year Award 2009 was presented to QVC for the impressive and pioneering planning initiatives that cut occupancy by 15% in the call centre, dropped agency hours by 23% and cut team leader admin.

EDF Energy won the 2008 award for their ground-breaking new end-to-end service delivery for new customers.

Salford City Council in 2007 for their Think Customer initiative.

Tesco in 2006 for a programme of change that took the stress out of their Christmas peak period.

HBOS in 2005 for developing initiatives to improve work-life balance and schedule efficiency.