Copernican Awards announced for Companies that Orbit their Customers

Creative Good, the New York-based customer experience consultancy, has announced 12 leading companies and organisations as finalists for the new Copernican Awards. The Copernican Awards are to be awarded annually to top companies and organisations that 'succeed by putting customers at the center of their "business universe."'. The 2005 Copernican Award winners will be announced at the Rainbow Room in New York City later today.

Creative Good selected the 2005 Copernican Award finalists from nominations put forward by the executive members of the Customer Experience Councils: executive forums, run by Creative Good, of over 80 senior decision makers in marketing, product management, and customer experience across a range of industries.

The companies nominated for a 2005 Copernican Award participated in an evaluation of their strategy, financial performance, organisational design and, most importantly, key customer metrics like satisfaction and retention. The results of that evaluation process determined the finalists.

The 2005 Copernican Award finalists:

--- LARGE CATEGORY ($1B+ in annual revenue or budget) ---

* Amazon (AMZ)
* JetBlue (JBLU)
* Staples (SPLS)
* Westin Hotels (HOT)

--- MEDIUM CATEGORY ($100M+ in annual revenue or budget) ---

* ING Direct (ING)
* New York State DMV - License Express
* Netflix (NFLX)
* Uline

--- SMALL CATEGORY (Less than $100M in annual revenue or budget) ---

* Blacksocks
* Chambers Street Wines
* Flickr (recently sold to Yahoo!, YHOO)
* Sigalert.com

Creative Good CEO Phil Terry said, 'Like the misguided early notion - debunked by Copernicus - that the universe revolves around the earth, many businesses today still think that they, not their customers, are at the centre of the business universe. The Copernican Awards recognise companies that put customers first. Customer experience will be as important in the 21st century as advertising was in the 20th century.'

One Copernican Award winner will be named in each of the three categories above, based on a vote of Customer Experience Council members.

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