media update’s Darren Gilbert spoke to Chelsea Wintle, a producer at Kinetic Events, the company behind the Awards, about the inaugural event and how one can enter.

Can you tell us more about the Customer Experience Africa Awards?

The Customer Experience Africa Awards takes place on Tuesday, 15 August, which will be the evening before the sixth Customer Experience Management Africa Summit kicks off.

It will recognise and award the top customer experience professionals for growing the customer experience industry in Africa.

This is about building on the customer experience industry in Africa, while also advocating customer experience awareness across the continent.

The Summit itself delves into industry trends and creates a space for the sharing of ideas about customer / company relationships. It will be the sixth year that we are running the Customer Experience Management Africa Summit.

Why do you believe the Customer Experience Africa Awards are important?

The general feeling when interacting with brands has become extremely important.

To give you a background on customer experience, interaction between customer and brands are not limited to buying and receiving products anymore. It has become more about the whole process of the interaction with the brand from start to finish.

Because we are currently in a social media and digital age, we thus have many more opportunities to interact with the brand. In this age, companies need to understand people’s emotions – how they feel and what they want.

About 75% of customers expect help within five minutes, so it’s important to recognise the people who are making waves in this space. It does take a lot of effort and energy, and you have to deploy a number of solutions and training courses.

What were the reasons for only launching the Awards this year?

In the past, there have not necessarily been as many people with the job title of ‘customer experience’. However, in the last year or so, those types of positions have opened up. More companies are developing an entire unit for customer experience.

The Summit has also grown. Last year, we had over 450 attendees and it has really taken off. From that perspective, we wanted to grow the Summit.

Also, as I said earlier, the Awards help us recognise the people who are operating in this industry. With this, we want to promote the great treatment of customers by large organisations.

Do you have any advice for a person or company interested in entering the Customer Experience Africa Awards?

The most important thing to do is to nominate yourself, your colleagues or your business, and show how you have used customer experience to enhance your company.

Perception is also important. There are many ways to measure customer experience digitally, but the customers’ and general populations’ perception of your brand is the most important thing. Show us how the public received you.

And then, obviously, promote and share your participation on social media with you customers and colleagues.

Who should enter? Where do we enter? And when do entries close?

Entries are open to everyone who is aligned with an organisation. You don’t even have to have a specific job title. It can be anyone in the company, from a customer experience-oriented cashier, to the CEO.

So long as there is justification for why the person nominated is aligned to the award, then that is perfect.

People can enter themselves or nominate their colleagues or company at CXA-Awards.com. Nominations are already open and close at the end of May. We will then narrow the entries into finalists.

There are six different award categories: OmniChannel Champion, Customer Insight Award, Customer Centric Culture Award, Digital Innovator, Gamechanger, and Practitioner. All descriptions are on the website.

For more information, visit www.cxa-awards.com.

Are you interested in entering the Loeries this year? Read more in our article, How can I enter this year’s Loeries Awards?