Ancestry, Intuit Quickbooks, BRP, AAA, Bell Canada, and Esri define the power of digital-first customer engagement

The fourth annual Khoros Kudos Awards honors brands that leverage modern digital channels to make customer interactions memorable

AUSTIN, Texas (October 3, 2023) — Khoros, a leader in customer engagement software, today announced the winners and finalists of the prestigious 2023 Kudos Awards. The awards recognize leading B2C and B2B brands going above and beyond for customers, connecting, listening, and providing exceptional customer service in the digital channels people prefer, including social media, messaging, online communities, and more.

Recognizing Customer Engagement Innovators

Every brand wants happy, loyal customers. But not all companies build a vision and commit to making high-value, memorable customer interactions a reality. Each year, Khoros honors a select few top-tier brands that define industry standards for customer engagement. The six awards range from companies that successfully turn customers into loyal followings and communities, to brands using social media marketing to build trust, to companies whose approach to customer service delivers quantifiable results.

The 2023 Award Winners & Finalists

Each year, winners and finalists get determined through a combined process of peer voting and evaluations by a panel of esteemed judges, including independent service and social media industry experts.

Ancestry | Winner, Partners for Life

Heritage and family history shape how you perceive yourself and the world around you. That’s why Ancestry puts its 23 million members front and center. With a customer-first approach, Ancestry continues to be a place for families to craft their story and capture their legacy together. Ancestry uses social media to build meaningful connections with its members through customer care and encouraging them to share their stories. With a revised social strategy and the right technology, Ancestry cut customer support response times, increased brand love, and drove new product innovations. Today, the company's unwavering commitment to its members, product innovation, and modern technology empowers journeys of personal discoveries for its customers.

Award Finalists: STIHL, Virgin Plus, and AAA

Intuit Quickbooks | Winner, Holistic Customer and Digital Engagement

Intuit Quickbooks is on a mission to help small businesses and freelancers succeed. The brand might be known for software and bookkeeping services, but its commitment to customers goes beyond that. Intuit believes in giving business owners the expert help they need, no matter where a customer is located or how they choose to engage. This is how the brand helps owners get back to what matters most - their business. To deliver on its promise, Intuit Quickbooks built a digital ecosystem to seamlessly connect customers to a network of world-class financial experts, from any channel. Today, the brand offers instant customer support across 11 countries, in 4 languages, through every social media channel. Intuit also created 14 online communities, providing another way for business owners to ask questions, get answers, and self-serve, raising the bar for how to offer expert guidance where and when it's needed most.

Award Finalists: SMARTY, Canon USA, and AAA

BRP | Winner, Keep Calm and Carry On

For a brand that produces the recreational vehicles we know and love, like Sea-Doo watercraft and Ski-Doo snowmobiles, its motto centers on reimagining how we access the world. But nothing prepared the 20,000 person company for the unique challenge of reimagining how they would access the world during a vicious cybersecurity attack. At the start of the crisis, BRP took immediate measures to safeguard sensitive data, locking-down most of its systems, including its dealer portal and other key business systems. However, its investment in building a vibrant online community enabled BRP to maintain a lifeline to its employees, dealers, and customers. With a steadfast commitment to transparency and resilience, the brand meticulously kept its dealer network aware of the security landscape, and together, they ensured uninterrupted customer service and support every minute of the crisis.

Award Finalists: Mediacom, NSW Government, and BT

AAA | Winner, Best-in-Class: Social

You might hear AAA and think of a time you benefited from the brand’s roadside services. Yet AAA is more than roadside services. With a network of 32 motor clubs, 1,000+ branch offices, services spanning travel to theft protection, and 63 million members, it’s no easy feat for AAA to connect with its member base. Growing the brand’s Millennial membership also presented a challenge. To drive member growth and increase relevance with a younger demographic, AAA designed a social media program built to scale across all clubs, teams, and departments. With shared processes and technology, AAA enabled all motor clubs and business lines to collaborate on a social media strategy that increased its Millennial following by 25%, created powerful direct member interactions, and led to $11.2M in earned media value for the brand.

Award Finalists: Promega, NSW Government, and Lucky Mobile

Bell Canada | Winner, Best-in-Class: Digital Customer Service

As a brand dedicated to helping people connect, Canada’s largest telecom provider makes engaging with its customers a top priority. During COVID-19, Bell Canada moved its workforce from on-site call centers to remote, work-from-home environments. This disrupted the brand’s ability to handle customer support call volume, reinforcing the need to find new ways to connect customers' questions and issues with answers and solutions, without relying only on agents. Bell Canada responded to the challenge by expanding self-service and broadening its customer support to a new brand-owned digital channel: a customer community. The addition of more channels and a shift to a one-to-many support approach proved invaluable to customers, creating measurable improvements to customer response time and issue resolution rates. Bell Canada also recognized significant savings by deflecting +300K calls/year, and recently won the 2023 People’s Voice webby award for its continued innovation.

Award Finalists: Swisscom, Qlik, and Three Ireland

Esri | Winner, Best-in-Class: Community

This geographic information systems (GIS) tech company is founded on a vision of community. The brand believes that ‘by collectively creating and sharing multidisciplinary knowledge, we can make smarter decisions about managing our world—building a collaborative digital geospatial system for our entire planet.’ To advance the field of GIS, Esri created a way to harness knowledge from a global collective of experts, influencers, and enthusiasts. By building a single online community for customers and experts to connect, Esri accelerates global knowledge-sharing in the field of GIS, and fosters adoption, continued education, idea sharing, and self-service customer support for its 140+ products.

Award Finalists: Intuit Turbotax, Bell Canada, and Zoom

"These companies set the bar for customer engagement,” said Chris Tranquill, CEO of Khoros. “This year’s winners and finalists serve as inspiring examples of how a company’s vision, their creative and caring employees, and the right technology come together to create transformative results.”

Hear these brands share their own story in this video.

About Khoros

Khoros' award-winning enterprise software makes it easier for complex brands to engage with customers at scale across all digital, social, and brand-owned channels. Whether it's for service and support, communications, or sales, the solutions powered by advanced automation and AI unlock more consistent, personalized, and helpful omni-channel interactions between brands and their audiences. Backed by the leading investment firm Vista Equity Partners, Khoros serves 2,000 of the world's most reputable companies, including a third of the Fortune 100, and consistently receives recognition as a Best Place to Work. For more information, please visit Khoros.com.

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