Finalists were announced in the 23rd annual Stevie® Awards for Women in Business, the world’s top honors for women entrepreneurs, executives, employees, and the organizations they run.
Recognition Highlights Jeannie Walters’ Practical Guide for Customer Experience Leaders
October 7, 2026 – The Stevie® Awards named Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations by Jeannie Walters a Finalist in the Book of the Year category of the 23rd annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business.
The Stevie Awards for Women in Business honor the achievements of women executives, entrepreneurs, employees, and the companies they run– worldwide. The Stevie Award has been hailed as the world’s premier business award.
Nicknamed the Stevies for the Greek word for “crowned,” the awards will be presented to finalists at a ceremony in New York City on November 16, where Gold, Silver, Bronze and Grand winner placements will be announced.
The Stevies expect more than 400 women and their guests from around the world to attend the presentations, which the organization will broadcast live.
Organizations and individuals in 56 nations and territories submitted more than 1,500 entries this year for consideration in more than 300 categories, including Executive of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, Company of the Year, Startup of the Year, Women Helping Women, and Women Run Workplace of the Year.
Experience Is Everything gives leaders a practical roadmap for turning customer experience (CX) from good intentions into everyday action. Walters draws on her work with organizations of all sizes to show leaders how to align their teams, build customer trust, and create lasting momentum.
“Every leader I meet wants to deliver better experiences. The hard part is turning that intention into action,” said Walters. “I wrote Experience Is Everything to help business leaders do exactly that. I’m honored to stand alongside so many remarkable women this year. Congratulations to every finalist. Your work shows what’s possible when women lead with purpose.”
Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award finalists will be determined based on the average scores of more than 200 business professionals worldwide, serving across seven judging committees.
Maggie Miller, president of the Stevie Awards, said, “As the Stevie Awards for Women in Business marks its 23rd year, we continue to be impressed by the remarkable accomplishments represented among the nominations. It is especially rewarding to see the significance a Stevie Award holds for women and the recognition it brings to their achievements, careers, and organizations. We congratulate all of this year’s finalists and look forward to revealing the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award placements on November 16.”
Details about the Stevie Awards for Women in Business and the list of winners in all categories are available at http://Women.StevieAwards.com.
Entries for the 2027 Stevie Awards for Women in Business will open in May.
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About Experience Investigators
Experience Investigators, founded in 2009 by award-winning customer experience leader and international keynote speaker Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP, helps organizations shift from reactive customer service to a proactive customer experience strategy. Recognized by LinkedIn as one of the most influential voices in the industry, Walters and her team provide strategic consulting, training, and thought leadership for Fortune 500 companies and SMBs across multiple industries. The firm’s proven CXI Navigator
framework empowers leaders at all levels to drive measurable customer experience outcomes. More than 500,000 professionals have taken Walters’ LinkedIn Learning courses, and her insights on customer experience strategy have been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and The Chicago Tribune. Walters is the author of “Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations.” Visit: experienceinvestigators.com
About the Stevie® Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in nine programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence, and the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations and territories. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.
Your AI just answered a customer. Now ask the uncomfortable question: do they trust it, and do they trust you more or less because of it? We dig into why trust is becoming the defining customer experience metric as automation spreads across chat, contact centers, and self-service. The data is sobering: many leaders believe customers highly trust their brand, while far fewer consumers agree, and that gap is poised to grow as AI gets embedded into everyday service.
We unpack what’s driving the trust slide, including why customers feel more loyal when real people stay visible in the journey and why authenticity matters more than ever. We talk through a practical approach to AI disclosure: when you can treat AI as an internal assist for human agents, and when transparency is non-negotiable because it could feel like impersonation. We also broaden the lens beyond chatbots to AI avatars and video, where the line between real and synthetic can get blurry fast.
Then we get tactical with three questions you can apply to your CX and 2027 planning. Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a review so more CX leaders can build trust before it turns into a crisis.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Experience Is Everything
Learn more about CXI Membership and apply
Enjoyed the show? Leave a quick review to help others find us at ratethispodcast.com/xact.
Want to ask a question about this episode – or another CX issue? Leave your question at askjeannie.vip – and remember to follow her on LinkedIn!
Curious about how Jeannie Walters, CCXP, and the Experience Investigators team can help you Create Fewer Ruined Days for Your Customers? Let’s talk!
CX budgets only grew about 2% this year, yet AI spending inside those same budgets jumped 38%. That math forces a hard question: if the total pool barely changes, where does the new AI money come from? We walk through why the “somewhere” is often customer service headcount, and why that shortcut can quietly create a bigger budget problem later.
We unpack Gartner’s prediction that many companies cutting support roles due to AI will need to rehire by 2027 and beyond, often at a higher cost than keeping and reskilling people in the first place. We also talk about the trust gap showing up in channel value: leaders still rate live chat and phone as most valuable today, even while expecting generative AI chatbots to take the top spot soon. When spending moves faster than trust, customers feel it through inaccuracies, frustrating loops, and a lack of empathy during complex moments.
If you care about customer experience, customer service automation, and making smart generative AI decisions without breaking trust, this one is for you. Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review so more CX leaders can find the show.
Article Mentioned:
Gartner Predicts Half of Companies That Cut Customer Service Staff Due to AI Will Rehire by 2027 (Gartner)
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Experience Is Everything
Learn more about CXI Membership and apply
Enjoyed the show? Leave a quick review to help others find us at ratethispodcast.com/xact.
Want to ask a question about this episode – or another CX issue? Leave your question at askjeannie.vip – and remember to follow her on LinkedIn!
Curious about how Jeannie Walters, CCXP, and the Experience Investigators team can help you Create Fewer Ruined Days for Your Customers? Let’s talk!
$3 trillion in global sales is at risk because of poor customer experience. That number is big enough to change how we think about CX budgeting, because it turns “experience” into a measurable revenue and trust problem. I walk through where leaders should invest now, what trends actually matter, and which shiny “innovations” you can safely stop chasing.
AI is no longer a trend, it’s the weather. It’s in the background of your tech stack and the foreground of your strategy, and it’s already shaping how customers discover products and get help. The real question is whether your AI investment strengthens human connection or quietly breaks it. I dig into why the old contact center metrics may not fit the AI era, and what to measure instead, including AI resolution and escalation quality so you can track outcomes that customers feel.
Then we get honest about a common budget mistake: funding more technology while underfunding the people, training, and services required to make that technology work. When that balance is off, you get bad AI rollouts, frustrated teams, and customers who don’t know where to get a straight answer. We also explore agent-assisted commerce, how AI assistants can become the new storefront, and why conversation analytics and interaction analytics are showing real gains in CSAT and revenue when used with clear intent.
If you want a smarter CX budget and a clearer ROI story for your leadership team, listen now, subscribe, share with your team, and leave a quick review so more CX leaders can find the show.
Resources Mentioned:
Order your copy of Experience Is Everything
Learn more about CXI Membership and apply
Enjoyed the show? Leave a quick review to help others find us at ratethispodcast.com/xact.
Want to ask a question about this episode – or another CX issue? Leave your question at askjeannie.vip – and remember to follow her on LinkedIn!
Curious about how Jeannie Walters, CCXP, and the Experience Investigators team can help you Create Fewer Ruined Days for Your Customers? Let’s talk!
My gut answer is no. A CX Mission Statement is built for your team, not your buyers. It works like an internal North Star, not a customer promise, and if you hand it to customers, they may read it as exactly that. Then they’ll look to hold you accountable when you fall short. We aim to live up to the CX Mission every time, but it may be aspirational, especially when you first create it. But exclusivity changes the math enough that it is worth breaking down when and how sharing it can actually help. I unpacked the whole scenario on a recent episode of Experience Is Everything: The CX Podcast, and here is what I covered.
Clarity Beats Cleverness
When you’re building a CX mission, resist the urge to sound impressive. Skip the corporate speak, the internal acronyms, and the jargon that only makes sense inside your building. Your mission should move beyond your products and services and name what those offerings actually do for customers in the real world.
Watch out for superlatives too. Words like “best,” “greatest,” and “fastest” turn a mission statement into empty marketing or an impossible standard to hit every day. You can still be aspirational. Just make sure it stays realistic enough to guide day-to-day choices, coaching conversations, and prioritization across every journey, channel, and team you have. This is the kind of foundational thinking I walk through in more detail in Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations, if you want to go deeper.
Why I’m Cautious About Sharing It Externally
Here’s my honest answer for why I don’t recommend sharing your CX mission statement with customers by default: customers may read it as a promise, and they will hold you accountable when you fall short. If the language is even a little aspirational or operational, it can create misunderstandings and frustration instead of alignment.
But there are real exceptions. In B2B, you might have an exclusive customer or a distribution partner who effectively serves as your front line, especially in retail environments. When another organization helps deliver your customer experience, they need more than your logo and a product training deck. They need a shared understanding of the experience you intend to create.
Treat Sharing as a Collaboration, Not a Broadcast
If you decide to share your mission externally, do not just hand someone a document. Identify the overlapping moments in the customer journey where your responsibilities and your partner’s responsibilities intersect, then document those “joint points” together.
Translate the mission into practical expectations and examples so your partners can apply it consistently. I like to give partners a simple guide to “mission moments” that shows what the mission looks like in real interactions, how to deliver on it, and how to measure whether it happened. That is what turns a statement into a tool for alignment instead of a document handed down from on high. I go deeper on this idea in CX Mission Moments: 3 Ways to Turn Words into Actions. In some cases, your mission can even show up in annual reports or investor presentations, as long as its intent is clear and responsibly framed.
The Real Goal Is Consistency
At the end of the day, you want consistency, because consistency builds trust. Research on business buyer trust consistently points to competence as the top driver, with consistency and dependability right behind it. That is the customer experience lesson here: the more aligned your organization is, and the more aligned your partners are, the easier it becomes to deliver predictable, dependable experiences.
A CX mission statement is not the transformation by itself. The transformation comes from using it to ask, “Did we live up to this? Why or why not? What do we change next time?” When you operationalize your mission across employees and partners, you create the conditions for trust, better decisions, and stronger B2B relationships over time.
Want the full details? Listen to “Inside vs. Outside: Rethinking Who Sees Your CX Mission” on Experience Is Everything: The CX Podcast.