The WOW! Awards

The WOW! Awards is an organisation which recognises outstanding customer service based purely on customer nominations. It also holds an annual ceremony to recognise the “best of the best” organisations and employees.

Founded in 1997 by Derek Williams, The WOW! Awards are used by a wide variety of UK organisations in both public and private sectors. Users include utilities, local government, police forces, NHS hospitals, contact centres, financial services, housing associations, retail, manufacturing and financial services. Household names working with The WOW! Awards include Cadbury, LoveFilm and Richer Sounds.

The organisation exists to empower customers with a formal way of saying "thank you" when they have received great service. This gives The WOW! Awards the credibility of being independent from the organisations that use it.

Another motivating force is the need for employee engagement. Each award is intended to give the employee a “pat on the back” that a member of management may not be able to do personally. It also highlights how enthusiastic customers are to praise good service. The nominations can be used for benchmarking, identifying key characteristics of best practice and as a basis for future training.

The scheme is open to all customers and runs throughout the year for all companies. The WOW! Awards are licensed by various organisations for an annual fee, but "ad hoc" nominations for any company can be made through The WOW! Awards official site. Nominations are judged and certificates presented for deserving nominations every month. The WOW! Awards is now being introduced into Australia, USA and Canada and is trademarked in many territories worldwide.