Episode 59: The 1st Ever Back To The Customer (B2C) Awards - Why The Flip You Should Nominate

James: I'm James.

Brian: And I'm Brian.

James: And this is Spamming Zero. Hey, what's up everybody? I'm your host, James Gilbert. We're going to do something a little different this week. Normally we have a guest on and it's amazing. This week we're going to do something different. You see, sometimes you have to mix things up a little bit, and we want to do that this week, and here's why. If you're a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talk just a little bit about Back to the Customer Awards. Now, today's episode's going to be short and sweet, and it's going to be talking about that. Here's why. You see, we believe that it is important to recognize the great work that people are doing, and we think the same players keep getting recognized, and we think that needs to change. So, with your help, please go check this out, backtothecustomerawards. com. Okay? Now, there's three categories. There is the CX Leader of the Year. There's a Frontline MVP Award for those that are doing the work as an agent and rarely get recognized, and then there's a Brand Award. Now, we can't do this without your help, and one thing that we're trying to do with the Back to the Customer Awards is build a community that e- commerce professionals can rely on, trust, and one that's built by members, rather than one that's built by vendors. Now, we're a vendor, of course, and we serve the e- commerce business industry at Flip, but the purpose of this is actually to recognize the great work that people are doing, and that's the reason why the five judges we have selected have actually done the work in these categories. We're talking about the CX leader at Princess Polly, the CX leader at Brooklinen. We're talking about Nate Brown, who is a CX influencer across the globe, one of the fastest growing influencers I've ever seen, and I love him. Jenna Best at Brooklinen, and so many people that are... Jess Cervellon at Feastivals. People that you know and recognize, these are the judges. So excited about this initiative. Again, go to backtothecustomerawards. com, exactly like it's spelled and said, and go take a look at it. I promise this is something that you're going to want to participate in. All you have to do is submit, that's it. Provide some supporting materials, and then once we do this, we're going to launch the winners around the October timeline. The judges are going to take a look at all the material that comes in, and then they're going to announce the winners. Here's the cool thing. There's monetary prizes available for this. Every sponsor that we get for Back to the Customer, they put in$ 500 towards a pot of money, and that pot of money goes towards the winners. Now, that's not all. You'll see this on the website, each winner also gets a monetary cash prize that is in addition to this pool of money, that can essentially fund a CX project of your choice. Why we love this initiative is because we think that this is the type of thing that needs to be promoted more. We are going to continue to do the amazing guests that we've had on this show. We're going to continue to try to find new people, new different ideas, but more importantly, we wanted to just interrupt the flow of the podcast to promote this, because we are just so excited about it and we think it really can fundamentally change the way that the e- commerce industry collaborates with each other. Because one thing is certain, when I talk to people in this industry, most of them don't have a place that they can bounce ideas off of, and that's what we're trying to build, is this community that you can bounce ideas off of others, learn from them, even talk about a vendor that maybe you're not totally enjoying, including us, by the way. So we'd love for you to participate. Again, backtothecustomerawards. com. That's it. That's what this episode's about. Short, sweet, to the point. Please take a look at it. I promise you will not regret it. By the way, we always do really quirky and fun things and these things outside of just the cash prizes. I promise you're going to want to participate. If you're curious about how we've done this in the past, the person who's leading this at our organization, her name's Summer inaudible, and she has been at several organizations with me. I got to give a big shout- out to her because she's doing an incredible job coordinating this. We've also been working with Aircall and customer, and the reason why we're doing that is because Trish and Natasha on their end are also helping a ton to get the word out there. The beautiful thing about this is we have ran a contest like this in different industries and it's worked quite well. If you remember, if you are a CX influencer, you probably remember the Customer Experience Champion, and Nate Brown happened to be the first one to win that. He still uses his belt to promote, and I say belt, you're going to need to ask him about that one, but I promise it's worth it. Again, backtothecustomerawards. com. If you have any questions about the contest at all, what we're going to be looking for as criteria, Flip actually doesn't have any say in it whatsoever. It is 100% up to the judges, and the criteria that the judges have decided is laid out on that website. It's just a one- page website, very simple. You can see it's not branded with Flip because the only association with Flip that it has is we're just trying to promote it and promote people for submitting. So submit your submission. If you're a customer experience leader, submit your submission, or put in a peer submission. If you're a customer experience or customer service agent, also submit your submission, or tell your manager about it so that they can submit your submission. And if you're a brand that you think deserves more recognition than they're getting because you're doing awesome things, yes, there are some crazy awesome brands out there that are doing great things, they continue to get recognized, but if you're one that flies under the radar and you think you deserve some limelight, again, submit your submission. Thanks again. Bye.