Congratulations to the 2024 Americas CX Customer Hero Award Winners

For the Customer Experience team, a highlight of Cisco Live is always celebrating our customers’ innovations. Today, we are thrilled to announce our eight most recent Cisco CX Customer Hero Award winners.

These customers have demonstrated excellence in their respective categories. They were selected from nominations received from across industries and the Americas region and we are honored to showcase them today- congratulations to all our winners!

World Class Cybersecurity: Defense Intelligence Agency

The World Class Cybersecurity award is presented to a customer who has partnered with Cisco Services to successfully strengthen security and proactively operate, protect, and defend its IT infrastructure. The winner is Defense Intelligence Agency, a Department of Defense combat support agency. Dr. Jay Phipps and his team collaborated with Cisco Services to enhance security measures and operational efficiencies which contributed to a strengthened cybersecurity posture, ensuring their ability to maintain secure and reliable network operations in the face of evolving cyber threats. They also achieved the distinction of being the first government agency to pass the new compliance and enhanced security framework, showcasing the effectiveness of the collaborative efforts and modernization initiatives.

Please join us in congratulating the Defense Intelligence Agency!

Exceptional Innovation: Michigan Medicine

The Exceptional Innovation award recognizes a customer that has achieved amazing innovations through collaboration with Cisco CX.  The winner is Michigan Medicine, a leading medical facility that has been on a quest to transform the future of health care through leading-edge medical education, groundbreaking discoveries, and extraordinary care since 1848. Ben Crissman and his team worked with Cisco CX to revolutionize the connectivity landscape in multiple facilities with Open Roaming technology. Now, devices truly connect “seamlessly” without user intervention. As a result of the implementation, 400,000 devices are now connected, enabling cellular service for all users, greatly improving the patient and employee experience, and enhancing operational efficiency. Clinicians and staff members no longer have to worry about setting up connections in the middle of critical tasks or procedures. Care remains uninterrupted and clinicians can focus on what matters most. The change has also enhanced ROI of existing infrastructure, improved scalability with Wifi 6E, and strengthened security measures.

Please join us in congratulating Michigan Medicine!

Outstanding Automation: Dish Wireless

The Outstanding Automation Award is presented to a customer who partnered with Cisco CX and dramatically transformed operations by using automation. The winner is Dish Wireless. Mike (Mac) McNamara, VP Head of Network Engineering, and his team partnered with Cisco CX to implement automation solutions such as Intelligent Test Automation Framework (CXTAF), resulting in the rapid deployment of a greenfield, cloud-native, 5G network, connecting 70% of the United States population. Using CX automation solutions and CXTAF, Dish can now generate test cases in just minutes instead of what previously took days to accomplish. The Dish Network Operations team can now perform health checks and troubleshooting across tens of thousands of devices in just minutes, using automation to reduce truck rolls and constant use of field technicians. Now, maintenance windows have been significantly reduced, sometimes by up to 50 percent. Furthermore, CXTAF intelligently identifies patterns of failure, helping to quickly pinpoint the root cause.

Please join us in congratulating Mac and the Dish Wireless team!

Digital Transformation Luminary: Gilead

The Digital Transformation Luminary award highlights a customer that has successfully accomplished an impressive digital transformation through a partnership with Cisco CX. The winner of this award is Gilead, a global biopharmaceutical leader. The company aims to be the biotech employer of choice as they work toward their vision of a healthier world for all people. Transformation for Gilead focused on moving to a Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) model to provide a world-class end user experience through a wireless-first strategy. Through collaboration with Cisco CX, Jim Prass, Senior Director Worldwide Infrastructure & Operations, and his team at Gilead are able to commit to a Service Level Agreement of 99.99% uptime at critical sites. The more secure, more sustainable network environment has streamlined IT operations and optimized efficiencies. In addition, they have enabled secure hybrid work for 18,000 employees across 130 locations in 34 countries. As a result of the transformation initiative, they are also projecting power consumption savings of approximately 20% in support of Gilead’s sustainability goals.

Please join us in congratulating Gilead!

Operational Excellence: BlackRock

This award recognizes a customer that is realizing tangible and compelling outcomes through Success Tracks and CX Cloud. BlackRock is one of the world’s leading providers of investment, advisory, and risk management solutions. This fast-growing company strives to inspire innovation and challenge the norm. A secure and stable network and reliable network operations are critical for BlackRock’s success. Visibility into the network helps provide that stability and avoid downtime. When BlackRock was opening a new headquarters in New York, Harpreet Chadha, Global Network Operations Manager at BlackRock, and his team collaborated with Cisco CX to develop a comprehensive adoption plan to onboard CX Cloud and connect telemetry for immediate insights and risk visibility. Now, 85% of their network devices are visible in CX Cloud, enhancing visibility and optimizing operations without incurring additional costs. They also aligned with Cisco product management to provide crucial feedback requests and secured their early access to new features, enabling them to continuously improve network visibility and accelerate ROI.

Please join us in congratulating BlackRock!

AI Trailblazer: Mass General Brigham

The AI Trailblazer award goes to a customer that has demonstrated success in preparing its infrastructure to be an industry leader in AI, in collaboration with Cisco CX. Mass General Brigham is a world-renowned integrated healthcare system, built on the legacy of two leading academic medical centers. The organization has embarked on an initiative using Cisco CX with goals to modernize their network, develop sustainable digital operations that meet the current and future needs of patients, and help optimize efficiency and efficacy for researchers who consume and use large amounts of clinical and other data. The desired results of this initiative will be to drive operational efficiencies, optimize system connectivity, and reimagine the digital user experience. Through the use of AI-powered tools like ambient documentation, Mass General Brigham is enabling doctors to enhance the patient experience end-to-end and is also supporting researchers who conduct deep research with AI to better diagnose and treat diseases. Mass General Brigham’s leadership in the AI space will continue to support the provision of a superior patient, care team, employee, and researcher experience overall.

Please join us in congratulating Mass General Brigham!

Sustainability Leader Award: T-Mobile

This award recognizes a customer that is achieving their sustainability goals through collaboration with Cisco CX. T-Mobile is the first & largest nationwide 5G network. They have the goal of net-zero emissions by 2040 by boosting operational efficiency through reduction in maintenance, power, and space costs while meeting the growing need for 5G and home internet to enhance customer experience. Lori Ames, Vice President of Cloud, IP and Transport Development, and her team partnered with Cisco CX to accelerate the deployment and refresh of the network. The CX engagement accelerated the deployment for T-Mobile, helping accomplish the refresh in half the original predicted time. This migration time savings accelerated the achievement of their Net-Zero emissions goal, through a significant reduction in power consumption and space, resulting in significant cost savings. For their customers, this improved 5G experience with no service disruptions provides the additional benefit of an enhanced customer experience improving customer acquisition and loyalty.

Please join us in congratulating T-Mobile!

Americas CX Customer Hero of the Year: Lowe’s

The CX Customer Hero of the Year award is our pinnacle award, for the customer with the strongest overall outcomes through collaborating with Cisco CX.

Lowe’s is one of the largest home improvement retailers in the world. Shad Aul, Senior Manager of Network Engineering, and his team at Lowe’s strive to put the customer at the forefront of everything they do by supporting the foundational Infrastructure to address the needs of the business and meet customers’ expectations. Toward that end, Lowe’s has leveraged Cisco CX and collaboration services to modernize its technology to improve customer satisfaction with a seamless omnichannel experience, increase online sales, and to attract top tech talent. The revamp focuses on the contact center, reducing costly downtime and lowering maintenance costs. Lowe’s seamlessly moved 25 business units and 8,781 agents from a legacy on-prem solution to one consolidated SaaS platform, Cisco Webex Contact Center Enterprise, without any interruption. This move is saving Lowe’s millions in legacy license fees and cutting IT support costs. The new system has handled 1 million calls in Q1 2024, improving scalability, reliability, and integration with existing Cisco infrastructure, setting the stage for expanded customer engagement, and future enhancements using AI. Now, post-migration, Cisco Lifecycle Services is accelerating time-to-value targeting AI use cases and their corresponding outcomes, while delivering services centered around those outcomes.

Please join us in congratulating Lowe’s!

Explore our Cisco CX Superheroes Today

To learn more about our customer heroes and their stories, visit our Customer Stories Index – a catalog 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:

• ANZ Bank- Enhancing employee and customer experience with network availability at one of Australia’s largest banks
• Deutsche Bank– Enhancing the customer experience through automation at Germany’s leading financial services provider
• Telecom Egypt– Successfully helping to ensure a stable, proactive, and sustainable network environment

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

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

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