Celebrating the 2024 CX Customer Hero Award Winners 

The time of year, when Cisco customers and partners converge for a week at Cisco Live, has come again! This is also a time for Cisco Customer Experience (CX) to celebrate the successes of our customers publicly with the Cisco CX Customer Hero Awards. I am always excited to recognize our CX Customer Hero Award winners, and even more so when our customers’ achievements become more and more impressive each year, all while building a better future with help from the Cisco Customer Experience (CX) team.

Yesterday, we presented our Cisco CX Customer Hero Awards to seven outstanding EMEA customers who demonstrated excellence in a specific category. These customers were selected from a large pool of nominations across multiple industries.

Now let’s reveal the winners!

CX Customer Hero of the Year: Saudi Telecom

The CX Customer Hero of the Year is the top award, for the customer who has achieved the most impressive outcomes through collaboration with Cisco CX. Saudi Telecom (stc) is a leading service provider in the EMEA region, with an international presence in 34 countries serving more than 20 million customers. The company was among the first in the region to launch 5G networks and was considered one of the fastest in deploying 5G networks globally. As part of their digital transformation strategy, stc partnered with Cisco to enhance their existing transformational projects and co-develop new industry-leading initiatives. Working together, stc and Cisco CX have increased agility, digitized, improved end customer experience, and bolstered cybersecurity threat capabilities. stc innovation continues to set the bar for many other service providers.

Digital Transformation Trailblazer: HSBC

The Digital Transformation award highlights a customer that has achieved impressive outcomes with digital transformation through a partnership with Cisco CX. HSBC is one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organisations, with offices in 62 countries and territories. HSBC is innovating at speed and scale – through its Vision 27 technology strategy – to deliver digital-first banking for its customers across its global network. Our hero Petek Ergul, Managing Director, Global Head of CTO Service Management at HSBC, has partnered with Cisco on a 2-year agile transformation program which is driving automation across the enterprise, resulting in reduced costs and contributing to HSBC’s technology goals.

Cybersecurity Excellence Award: O2 Czech Republic

This award recognizes a customer that has strengthened its security posture to proactively protect and defend its IT infrastructure, through partnership with Cisco CX. O2 Czech Republic is the largest provider of telecommunications services in the Czech market. Currently, it operates almost eight million mobile and fixed lines, making it one of the leading providers of fully convergent services in Europe. Our hero Petr Havíček, Senior Network Specialist at O2 Czech Republic, and his team partnered with Cisco to strengthen cybersecurity capabilities, configurations, and foundations. As a result, network reliability has strengthened, improving the end customer experience. O2 has also realized time savings and improved operational skills.

Exceptional Innovation Award: adidas

The Innovation Award celebrates a customer that has achieved amazing innovations through collaboration with Cisco CX. The largest sportswear manufacturer in Europe, adidas sells its products in more than 160 countries through their approximately 2,000 retail stores spread across three significant segments, 15,000 mono-branded franchise stores, 150,000 wholesale doors, and more than 50 e-commerce sites. This, along with its huge partner ecosystem, created a highly complex environment. Hero Sandra Huber, VP of ÎT Infrastructure at adidas, collaborated with Cisco CX to improve visibility into hardware and software lifecycle for more than 20,000 devices through CX Cloud. In addition, the adidas and CX teams worked together to implement Catalyst Center as part of the adidas network automation strategy. Now, with better visibility into their assets, the adidas team can be more proactive to operate their IT network automated and more efficient.

Operational Excellence: H&M

This award recognises a customer that is innovating through the use of Cisco Success Tracks/CX Cloud and has achieved tangible improvements as a result. H&M Group is a global fashion and design company with over 4,700 stores in 76 markets and 56 online markets. H&M’s global networking team has two primary focus areas: efficiency and data-driven decision making. Our hero Anders Baer, Global Networking Lead for H&M, and his team, wanted to improve the process for managing and tracking their network assets, with a particular emphasis on their SD-WAN portfolio. H&M joined the CX Cloud Beta program to accelerate their usage and adoption of CX Cloud and gain early access to new CX Cloud features. As a result, they now have a clear view of their global installed base and can proactively stay on top of any security threats that could potentially put their global network (retail, warehouses, and offices) at risk.

Outstanding Automation: Du Telecom

This award celebrates a customer who has joined forces with Cisco CX to dramatically transform IT operations through automation. Du Telecom, one of the two main telecom operators in the United Arab Emirates, embarked on an automation journey with Cisco four years ago. Hero Fatima AlDaghar, Director of Transport Network Planning at Du, and her team, partnered with Cisco CX to ensure operational efficiency and effective management of the delivery of more than 40 automation use cases. Through Cisco’s automation services, Du has achieved remarkable outcomes, including improved operational efficiency, reduced service delivery times, and reduced risks associated with manual processes. Network reliability has also improved, leading to fewer network incidents and greater customer satisfaction.

Sustainability Excellence: Expo City Dubai

The Sustainability award recognizes a customer achieving their sustainability goals through working with Cisco CX. Expo City Dubai was selected to host the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in 2023. COP summits are typically built on a greenfield because of their unique requirements for robust, seamless, and secure networks. Expo wanted to reuse the existing network infrastructure to show commitment to a sustainable solution. Our hero Eman Al Awadhi, Vice President of Network and Cyber Security at Expo City Dubai, and her team partnered with Cisco CX for the design, implementation and network operations of the full COP28 network (based on the existing Expo City network) covering WIFI, Core, SDA and cybersecurity, successfully repurposing and utilizing more than 90% of the existing network infrastructure.

Celebrating Our Heroes

The CX Customer Hero Awards recognize the incredible work our customers are achieving in their industries, celebrate their excellence, and inspire others with their success. We thank our EMEA 2024 winners for their continued support and partnership with Cisco CX, and we’re looking forward to seeing what else can be accomplished together.

To explore more CX customer hero stories, visit our Customer Stories Index – a library of stories highlighting how Cisco services customers are transforming and innovating to drive impact in their organizations and across the world.

See some of our most recent stories here:

• Coles – Successfully helping to ensure a stable and proactive network environment at Coles.
• Aerolineas Argentinas – Increased visibility to proactively manage and secure the network at major Argentinian Airline
• BT – Automating and delivering new buildings faster and enabling hybrid working at UK service provider.

If you are interested in sharing your own customer story, connect with us at cxcustomerstories@cisco.com. We’d love to showcase you! Stay tuned and follow @CiscoCX on Twitter for more CX updates!

Don’t have a story to tell just yet? We can help you build it, right along with your network!