In today’s increasingly global competitive environment, quality customer service is more critical than ever before.

The Best in Customer Service Award is a national competition developed to reward and recognize organizations that demonstrate excellence in customer service. The purpose of the award is to promote excellence, best practices, leadership and innovation.

Organizations compete against one another and are evaluated against five criteria: (1) Service Leadership; (2) Service Culture; (3) Service Positioning; (4) Service Relationship Marketing and; 5) Service Recovery.

To be eligible organizations must submit a completed application by the 2010 deadline.

All applications are screened by a Pre-selection Committe to determine the organizations that qualify to participate in the selection process.

Organizations that are invited to participate in the selection process distribute an Employee Opinion Survey and an External Customer Opinion Survey to a random sample of employees and customers and visited by a member(s) from the Pre-selection Committee.

The purpose of the site visit is to verify the key elements of the application and to gain an appreciation of the organization’s workplace culture and environment.

An advisory committee reviews the final scores and feedback compiled by the pre-selection committee during the site verification visits and throughout the award process. Based on those results, the advisory committee determines the winners of the Best in Customer Service Award.