Putting Customers First

By: Jena McGregorWed Dec 19, 2007 at 7:47 AM

You'd think more companies would have gotten it by now. Unfortunately, organizations that put customers at the center of what they do are rare -- so rare that we're celebrating them. Meet the best customer-focused outfits, and learn from them.

Special Section

Customer Experience

The Web extra Customers First package features additional material that didn't appear in the magazine. Weigh in with your own vote. Learn more about Fast Company's advisory panel. Take a closer look at our finalists' scores. And share your own stories about the best customer experiences you've had.

Our Customer Champions

A Baker's Dozen of Experts

Here are the 13 jurors who helped us select the Customers First Awards winners and finalists*:

Leonard Berry
Distinguished professor of marketing, Texas A&M University. Author, Discovering the Soul of Service

Scott M. Broetzmann
Founder and president, Customer Care Measurement & Consulting. Founder, Customer Care Alliance

Stephen Brown
Professor and executive director, Center for Services Leadership, Arizona State University

Lewis Carbone
Founder and CEO, Experience Engineering. Author, Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again

Claes Fornell
Founder, American Customer Satisfaction Index. Chairman, CFI Group, a customer-satisfaction consulting firm

Andy Fromm
President, Service Management Group, a research firm that specializes in restaurant-chain and retail-service management

Bruce Jones
Programming director, Disney Institute, which runs seminars on Disney's customer service

Tom Knighton
EVP, customer-experience practice, Forum Corp.

Kelly Mooney
President, Resource Interactive, an online customer-experience consulting firm

Roland Rust
Director, Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland. Editor, Journal of Service Research

John Timmerman
Vice president of quality and productivity, Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co.

Paul Williams
Project manager, customer care, Starbucks

Valarie Zeithaml
Marketing professor and associate dean of MBA programs, UNC-Chapel Hill. Coauthor, Driving Customer Equity

Our survey results were audited by ForeSee Results, which applies the patented methodology of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a leading indicator of financial performance driven by customer satisfaction that quantifies satisfaction on the Web and predicts future behavior. ForeSee Results has administered more than 23 million online surveys across 22 industries, helping companies scientifically measure and manage customer satisfaction. While the ACSI is based on a random sample, our survey was presented primarily to Fast Company newsletter and Web-site readers and to groups with pertinent interests or demographics. Respondents cast a total of 1,805 votes; response rates varied by company.

*Certain jurors have current or former business relationships with some nominated companies.