WABAN, Mass., Jan. 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Temkin Group, a leading market research and consulting firm that helps organizations improve their customer experience, announces the winners and finalists of its 2012 Customer Experience Excellence (CE2) Awards. Organizations submitted nominations for the CE2 Awards during December 2012 and were judged based on two criteria: customer experience transformation efforts and results.

The five winners of the 2012 CE2 Award are EMC, Fidelity Investments, Oklahoma City Thunder, Safelite AutoGlass, and Sovereign Assurance of New Zealand.

In addition to the winners, the following six organizations were also finalists for the award: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Bombardier Aerospace, Citrix, JetBlue, Microsoft, and Oracle.

The wide variety of industries represented by award winners and finalists—including high technology, financial services, auto repair, airlines, health plans, and professional sports—highlights the broad range of customer experience efforts underway across both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) organizations.

The CE2 Awards were judged by five noted customer experience experts: Shep Hyken (Author and Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations), Ingrid Lindberg (Customer Experience Officer of Prime Therapeutics), Aimee Lucas (CX Analyst of Temkin Group), Bruce Temkin (CX Transformist & Managing Partner of Temkin Group), and Bob Thompson (CEO and Editor-in-Chief of CustomerThink).

"I'm extremely impressed with the companies," states Shep Hyken. He goes on to say "Their efforts and results are amazing, and prove that they are both customer and employee centric. All of the finalists are customer experience role models and could be winners."

"All of this year's finalists deserve accolades for their success making Customer Experience a core pillar of their business strategy," states Bob Thompson. "Collectively, they illustrate how customer-centric leadership is the key to driving change throughout the organization, in voice-of-customer programs, experience design and employee engagement. Well done!"

Temkin Group also announces the publication of a new report, Lessons in CX Excellence, which provides insights from the 11 CE Award finalists. The report highlights many examples across Temkin Group's four customer experience competencies: Purposeful leadership, compelling brand values, employee engagement, and customer connectedness. It also includes copies of the submissions from the finalists.

According to Bruce Temkin, one of the authors of the new report: "If you're interested in customer experience, then there's a lot to learn from the CE2 Award finalists. Their efforts provide great examples of how the practice of customer experience is maturing."

The report "Lessons in CX Excellence" can be downloaded from the Customer Experience Matters blog, at ExperienceMatters.wordpress.com as well as from the Temkin Group website, www.TemkinGroup.com.

About Temkin Group: Temkin Group is a leading customer experience research and consulting firm with one simple goal for its clients: increase customer loyalty by becoming more customer‐centric. The company combines customer experience thought leadership with a deep understanding of the dynamics of large organizations to help senior executives accelerate their results. For more information, contact Bruce Temkin at 617-916-2075 or send an email to info@temkingroup.com.

About Bruce Temkin: Bruce Temkin is widely recognized as a customer experience thought leader and is Customer Experience Transformist and Managing Partner of Temkin Group. He is also the author of a very popular blog, Customer Experience Matters® (ExperienceMatters.wordpress.com). Prior to forming Temkin Group, he was a VP at Forrester Research for 12 years. Bruce is a highly demanded speaker who consistently receives high marks for his content-rich, entertaining keynote addresses. He is also the co-founder and Chair of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA.org), a global non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of customer experience management.

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SOURCE Temkin Group