How you can use The WOW! Awards in your business

How does it work?

Simple...

1. A customer can nominate your business, a department or an individual for The WOW! Awards™.
2. This is a rolling award programme and nominations can be made at any time.
3. Nominations are reviewed on a monthly basis. Hand signed certificates are issued to all individuals and businesses that have delivered the WOW!™ factor in the judge's opinion.
4. Winning stories are posted on our website and distributed in a newsletter that goes to people in 38 countries.
5. As a winning business you can also obtain a variety of trophies and other products to help celebrate your success.
6. We provide a targeted press release service to help you enjoy even more publicity from your achievement.

Download PDF Brochure version of this page

Making it work for you

You can tell your customers about The WOW! Awards™ and invite them to make a nomination if you have given them great service.

When you do this you really start to engage with your customers and your employees. And the results can be staggering! We know because these are some of the businesses that are already using The WOW! Awards™:-

Ladbrokes - the first business to fully adopt The WOW! Awards™ in their stores. In 2005 they received 1,752 customer nominations. WOW!

I Want One of Those - an internet gift business that has received more than 300 nominations in just five months. WOW!

Gems TV - a home shopping channel that differentiates itself through service and customer loyalty. WOW!

Also there are many more businesses that are now using WOW, please take a look at [Businesses Using WOW].

What is your investment?

The amount of your investment is based on the size of your business. We do it this way so that The WOW! Awards™ are affordable to even the smallest of businesses.

There are two options available to you. There is an annual licence agreement. And, in addition, you can have a dedicated web page at our website.

What you will receive

1. Licence agreement

These are the benefits that you will receive:

• Use of The WOW! Awards™ logo so that you can tell your customers about the programme. Plus links to The WOW! Awards™ website.
• We will help you set up the nomination process so that you get the greatest possible benefit from those nominations
• We can advise you on other ways that you can use The WOW! Awards™ within your business to encourage event greater achievement.
• By acting as an independent third party we will help to keep you on track.
• Your winning stories will feature on our website and in our newsletters. These newsletters go out to people in 38 countries - reinforcing your reputation with both your national and global audience.
• You can have access to our newsletters to use in your own business to help you promote even better service.

  Our newsletters are packed with tips, ideas and case studies. We will allow you complete freedom of copyright to use these items in any way that helps you. All that we ask is that you always mention that the item came from The WOW! Awards™.

  Many of our customers have used our newsletters in training programmes, in their own newsletters, for brain storming, in posters and in customer communications.

• If you reach the final of the National Customer Service Awards you will receive a free ticket to the award ceremony. The WOW! Awards™ is the only category that you don't have to pay to enter.
• Hand signed certificate printed on quality parchment paper for all winners of The WOW! Awards™.
• You will be entitled to discounted prices on all events (conferences, workshops, seminars etc) run by The WOW! Awards™.
• We will prepare, target and issue one press release free of charge about your company each year. The content for this press release will obviously be agreed with you in advance and can be timed to coincide with the winning of The WOW! Awards™ or any other significant event in your business.

2. Dedicated website page

This will provide a number of additional features:-

• This page will be branded with your business logo and will feature customer nominations for your business.
• Nominations would be sent directly to a designated person within your company for acceptance. Once accepted, they would appear automatically on your webpage at The WOW! Awards™.
• In addition to making nominations, your customers will also be able to make suggestions and complaints. These would not be published on the website but would be sent directly to a designated person within your company.
• Customers who have registered a complaint with The WOW! Awards™ will be supplied with a reference number. If they wish to have this complaint escalated they can come back into the system and asked for it to be referred to a higher level of authority within your company.
• Your company would be listed as a supporter of The WOW! Awards™ together with links back to your own website.

The commercial benefits

These are some of the things that we've discovered by working with businesses like yours:-

1. Great customer service comes from people who are engaged and committed. When you tell your customers about The WOW! Awards™ you're also sending out a very clear message to your employees that customer service is a priority for your business.
2. Customers love to say "Thank You". And if you don't give customers a channel for saying "thank you" then you will only ever get complaints.
3. When a customer tells you that you've done a good job, they do it for a reason. They want that service level to be maintained for the future.
4. They also know that by congratulating you on doing good things, they are encouraging you to do even better. They are playing an important part in your continuous development.
5. Employees who feel appreciated and encouraged by customers and management become even more engaged and deliver higher levels of discretionary effort. Many of the businesses that are using The WOW! Awards™ have also noticed reduced absenteeism and turnover of employees.

   * Research by Gallup has established that a 5% improvement in employee engagement can add 2% to sales revenue.

6. Also, customers give themselves a re-assurance that they chose the right supplier in the first place when they tell you what a great job you've done.
7. And finally, by actively using The WOW Awards, you are giving your business a chance of being a finalist of the National Customer Service Awards! Each year we choose four finalists to go forward for this.

Just imagine...

• How good your people will feel to know that they've given great service.
• How that helps to raise morale. Especially since your employees are each other's customers too!
• How this drives repeat business and customer recommendation.
• And, most importantly of all, your management team becomes focused on catching people doing things right.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

Background to The WOW! Awards™.

The WOW! Awards™ is the only national customer service award programme based entirely on customer nominations.

Our mission is...

To raise standards of customer service in the UK to the point that visitors from Florida say, "WOW! Have you seen what a great job the Brits are doing!"

Since 2002 The WOW! Awards™ has been a category of the National Customer Service Awards. It is the only category that is based purely on customer nominations.

The WOW! Awards™ are regularly featured in all types of media including radio and television.

Other services

There are a number of other ways in which you might choose to use The WOW! Awards™:-

• We can create a customised newsletter for your company to use as you wish. Our fee for doing this would be agreed with you in advance based upon your specific requirements.
• All winners of The WOW! Awards™ receive a hand signed quality parchment certificate completely free of charge. In addition, we offer a wide range of trophies, plaques and other quality products that you can purchase to promote your achievement.
• If you would like the creator of The WOW! Awards™, Derek Williams, to personally present certificates or trophies to winners of The WOW! Awards™ in your company, this can be arranged (subject to sufficient notice being received) for £875 per day plus travel and VAT.

Our guarantee

We will invoice you for these services annually in advance and start work immediately your payment has been received.

If, at any time, you're not completely satisfied that you have had value for money, we will refund up to six months of the current year plus the unexpired portion of the annual fee.

Our trademark

The WOW! Awards is a registered Licensed Trade Mark of The WOW Awards Limited and may only be used under licence from The WOW Awards Limited. If you would like to consider becoming a licensee of The WOW! Awards, please download it to obtain a draft copy of the licence agreement.

What Do The People Think?

Just look at what Paul Adams told me about his business.

Paul bought a copy of my book, 3 Dimensional Care and followed up on one of my ideas. Paul went ahead and implemented a suggestion scheme. "The scheme was greeted with some cynicism says Paul and nothing much was happening. I got a few suggestions but nothing like what I'd hoped for."

Paul was also getting my newsletters. "These were really good," says Paul. "But each time I got one, I would file it away. I had good intentions of using some of the ideas but I just never got round to implementing them. I was just too busy doing all the normal day to day things to put all these great ideas into place.

I thought that it might be a good idea for other people in my business to get the updates from you. So I got all of them to visit The WOW! Awards website and register their email addresses.

Since then everyone in my company has been receiving your updates. They love the stories and the little bits of inspiration. But what has been really amazing is that they've started coming up with ideas and putting them into the suggestion scheme.

They are getting rewarded for the suggestions that get accepted and they are involved in implementing the ideas. We've implemented more suggestions in the last 4 weeks than we had done in the last 4 years. These ideas have significantly improved our customer service, our sales and our profits.

My people are delighted with what is happening. They tell me that they feel more involved than they ever did before. Our customers love the new things that we're doing and the way they are being treated. And best of all, I don't have to worry about implementing all the ideas myself.

I just wanted you to know how valuable your updates are. Please keep them going."