blueAPACHE Customer and Brand Awards

blueAPACHE Customer and Brand Awards

The blueAPACHE staff awards are announced.

Further to our annual achievement awards presented in December, blueAPACHE offers two additional awards open to all staff — the Customer Recognition award and the Brand Ambassador award.

The two sit deliberately outside the December awards cycle, and they are decided differently. The December awards — covering customer service, engineering, innovation and projects, plus the 'This is IT' award — recognise performance as the business sees it. These two look from the outside in.

The Customer Recognition award

How the winner is chosen

To determine the recipient, we invited clients to nominate a blueAPACHE staff member as part of our most recent customer satisfaction survey.

The purpose was specific: to identify employees who may not be recognised day to day, but who are highly valued by our customers.

That framing is what makes this award useful rather than ceremonial. In any service organisation, some of the people who matter most to clients are structurally invisible internally. A field engineer who consistently arrives when they say they will, resolves the problem and explains it clearly does not generate escalations, does not appear in management reporting, and is noticed by exactly one group of people: the clients they visit.

Sourcing the nomination from the satisfaction survey reaches those people directly, and it produces data the organisation cannot generate any other way.

The response

We received hundreds of responses from a wide array of clients, ranging from large organisations to smaller long-term customers.

Nominations were received for:

Where the nominations concentrated

Team Share of nominations
Field Services Almost 43%
Support Analysts Over 31%
All other roles combined Approximately 26%

The distribution is worth pausing on, because it says something about how clients experience a managed service.

Nearly three quarters of nominations went to two groups: the people who turn up on site, and the people who answer the phone. Not the account managers who own the commercial relationship. Not the engineers who design the architecture. The two roles clients interact with when something needs to be fixed.

That is the practical reality of service delivery. The relationship is built at the point of contact, repeatedly, in small interactions — and it is judged there too.

The result

The award was tightly contested, with only four nominations separating first from second. Following several recounts, Gaurev Goel from our Field Services team was identified as the winner.

He was formally presented with his Customer Recognition award by Chris Marshall, Managing Director of blueAPACHE, at our monthly Town Hall staff meeting.

The detail about recounts is a small one, and telling. A margin of four nominations across hundreds of responses meant the result was checked before it was announced.

The Brand Ambassador award

The second award recognises the blueAPACHE employee who goes above and beyond in promoting our values, services and messaging.

The winner was Mark Perraton from our Project Services team, for his continued advocacy, promotion and commitment to exceeding customer expectations.

The two awards together cover both halves of the same thing. The Customer Recognition award measures how the company is experienced by the people it serves. The Brand Ambassador award recognises the person who most consistently represents what the company says it is — in the work itself, not in the marketing.

Congratulations

Congratulations to both Gaurev and Mark.

A note on the awards calendar

blueAPACHE recognises staff through several channels across the year:

December — annual achievement awards, presented at the end-of-year celebration. Categories cover excellence in customer service, engineering, innovation and projects, plus the 'This is IT' award for the person who best exemplifies the company's values — named after the company's positioning line of the period, "This is IT. This is blueAPACHE."

Customer Recognition and Brand Ambassador awards, decided separately and presented at a monthly Town Hall.

BASKO, the annual sales kick-off, includes an awards night honouring the previous year's top performers.

External recognition, where individual blueAPACHE staff have been recognised through industry programmes — including Jayati Gulati's ARN 30 Under 30 Sales Excellence Award and Shining Star Partner Award, Renata Di Stefano's Shining Star – Partner Award at WIICTA 2023, Rahwa Salew's WIICTA Rising Star recognition, Ellie Sarabi's WIICTA 2026 Partner – Technical finalist placement, and Richard Bradley's peer-nominated Technical Excellence VCSP Award at the 2024 Veeam ANZ Partner Awards.

Frequently asked questions

What are the Customer Recognition and Brand Ambassador awards? Two staff awards open to all blueAPACHE employees, decided separately from the December achievement awards and presented at a monthly Town Hall. The Customer Recognition award is nominated by clients; the Brand Ambassador award recognises the employee who most consistently promotes the company's values, services and messaging.

How is the Customer Recognition winner chosen? Clients are invited to nominate a blueAPACHE staff member as part of the customer satisfaction survey. The stated purpose is to identify employees who may not be recognised internally day to day but who are highly valued by customers — people whose good work generates no escalations and so never appears in management reporting.

Which teams received the most nominations, and why does that matter? Field Services took almost 43% and Support Analysts over 31%, with all other roles making up roughly 26%. Nearly three quarters went to the people who turn up on site and the people who answer the phone — not to account managers or architects. The page reads this as evidence that a managed service relationship is built and judged at the point of contact.

Who won? Gaurev Goel of Field Services won the Customer Recognition award, presented by managing director Chris Marshall. Mark Perraton of Project Services won the Brand Ambassador award for his advocacy and commitment to exceeding customer expectations.

How close was the Customer Recognition result? Four nominations separated first from second across hundreds of responses, and the result was recounted several times before being announced.

What other staff recognition does blueAPACHE run? The December annual achievement awards covering customer service, engineering, innovation and projects plus the 'This is IT' values award; the awards night at BASKO, the annual sales kick-off; and external industry recognition for individual staff through programmes such as ARN 30 Under 30, the ARN Women in ICT Awards and the Veeam ANZ Partner Awards.

Related

Knowledge Base

What is the blueAPACHE Customer and Brand Awards article about?

The article announces the blueAPACHE staff awards, describing two additional awards—the Customer Recognition award and the Brand Ambassador award—offered to all staff in addition to the annual achievement awards presented in December.

How was the Customer Recognition award recipient determined?

blueAPACHE invited clients to nominate a staff member as part of their customer satisfaction survey, aiming to identify employees who may not be recognised day-to-day but are highly valued by customers.

How many nominations did blueAPACHE receive for the Customer Recognition award, and from which roles?

blueAPACHE received hundreds of responses from a wide array of clients, with nominations covering Account Managers, Support Analysts, Field Engineers, Service Delivery staff, and Engineers. Field Services secured almost forty-three percent of nominations, while Support Analysts secured over thirty-one percent.

Who won the Customer Recognition award and how close was the contest?

Gaurev Goel from the Field Services team won the Customer Recognition award. The contest was tightly contended, with only four nominations separating first from second place, requiring several recounts.

Who presented Gaurev Goel with his Customer Recognition award, and where?

Chris Marshall, Managing Director of blueAPACHE, formally presented Gaurev Goel with his Customer Recognition award at the monthly Town Hall staff meeting.

What is the blueAPACHE Brand Ambassador award, and who won it?

The Brand Ambassador award recognises the blueAPACHE employee who goes above and beyond in promoting the company's values, services, and messaging. Mark Perraton from the Project Service team won the award for his continued advocacy, promotion, and commitment to exceeding customer expectations.

When was the blueAPACHE Customer and Brand Awards article published, and who wrote it?

The article was written by blueAPACHE and published on March 8, 2016, with a read time of 2 minutes.

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