The Award Winners Transforming Modern Customer Experience

This year’s Medallia Expy and Partner Award winners aren’t just measuring customer experience — they’re using it to transform their businesses from the inside out. 

Experience ’26 marked a defining moment for the future of customer experience. The conversation has shifted decisively from reactive, survey-led programs to a proactive, agentic model where every signal — voice, digital, social, and employee feedback — is converted into measurable business impact.

Central to this transformation is the evolution of experience professionals from scorekeepers to changemakers. Rather than simply reporting on the past through static dashboards, these leaders are now acting as conductors of organizational change, using real-time insights to drive the growth that the C-suite actually cares about. (As Medallia CEO Mark Bishof noted in his opening keynote, “CEOs kind of care about scores and sentiment, but they really care about impact and financial outcomes.”)

Leading the charge are the recipients of this year’s Medallia Expy and Partner Awards. These organizations represent the forefront of what modern experience excellence looks like in practice, driving meaningful gains in revenue, retention, and cultural transformation — proving that a bold commitment to experience is, above all else, a competitive advantage.

These awards celebrate organizations and individuals who are leading the way in this transformation, turning insights into action, empowering employees, and delivering measurable impact. These changemakers set the standard for what’s possible when experiences are truly transformed. 

Medallia Expy Award Winners

CIBC: The Growth Accelerator

CIBC took home the Growth Accelerator Award by proving that CX belongs at the center of the business model. Stephanie Leheta, who leads enterprise client experience strategy for CIBC, shared that their journey began a decade ago when they realized their brand felt fragmented and they were lagging behind peers.

The solution was a massive cultural and operational overhaul. “We built a really mature operating model so that we were listening, learning, and acting from our client insights in a meaningful way,” Leheta said. Crucially, they moved beyond NPS to a “Client Experience Index,” tracking 20 metrics tied to variable compensation for everyone from the frontline to the CEO.

Perhaps the most actionable takeaway for practitioners was CIBC’s governance model. “We actually built CX into our enterprise delivery framework,” Leheta explained. “Projects do not get funded unless they complete this client experience assessment. We get to be at the table, and we’re actually evaluating client risk.”

Vanguard: Insights to Impact

Vanguard was honored with the Insights to Impact Award for their ability to look beyond what customers say to what they actually do.

Aimee Civera, who leads the engagement technology team, highlighted the power of digital behavioral signals. “Prior to us having digital insights, our CX experts really struggled to understand what clients were doing based on our experiences,” Civera noted.

By utilizing session replays and heatmaps, Vanguard could visualize friction points that surveys missed. This shift led to a massive bottom-line win: “We were able to pinpoint and address an issue with why we weren’t converting sales leads. Now we’re seeing double the amount of sales leads from our website.”

Verizon Business: The Power of Employee Empowerment

Verizon Business received the Employee Empowerment Award, proving that a world-class customer experience is impossible without an engaged frontline. Samantha Scott, who leads CX and EX for Verizon Business, shared how they bridged the gap between internal jargon and customer reality.

 “Customers don’t speak Verizon,” Scott pointed out. To fix this, they brought the Voice of the Employee under the same umbrella as CX. They also launched the “Experience Hero” program to drive a cultural shift. “It was a required training for the entire organization, not just the sales and service teams. Everyone needed to know that the work you do on a daily basis eventually produces something that your customer will see.”

Santalucía: Leading Experience Transformation

Paloma Paraja, CX Manager for Santalucía in Spain, was named the Experience Transformation Leader of the Year. 

In the insurance industry, interactions are often high-emotion “moments of truth,” such as a home fire or the loss of a loved one. Paraja recognized that relying solely on NPS was insufficient due to a lack of context and timing. “We were just measuring dissatisfaction, but we were doing nothing to prevent it,” she said. By transitioning to an omnichannel model — listening to 100% of calls and over a million digital sessions — Santalucía moved toward prevention. “We are avoiding 54% of churn risk that we detect over all these patterns,” Paraja shared, adding that “listening is not a project…it’s a discipline.”

Medallia Partner Awards: Celebrating Innovation and Growth, Together

During the Partner Summit, Medallia also recognized the partners that make these large-scale transformations possible. As Medallia CSO Sid Banerjee noted, these partners are “critical in helping drive value across the CX landscape.”

Medallia’s Annual Partner Awards Program celebrates partners who go above and beyond to deliver customer value, drive innovation, and accelerate growth through collaboration. 

Medallia Partner Award Winners

KPMG: Services Partner Award, for the services partner with the highest sourced revenue for Medallia in 2025.

Verizon Business: Technology Partner Award, for the technology partner with the highest Medallia software revenue impact.

New Metrics: Fastest Growing Partner Award, for the partner with the highest percentage growth for sourced revenue year over year for Medallia.

Carahsoft: New Partner Award, for a new partner with the highest sourced revenue for Medallia.

Material: Business Impact Award, for the partner that delivered the greatest overall business impact.

Deloitte Digital: Solution Innovation Award for the partner with most impactful solution innovation built on the Medallia platform.

Accenture Song: EMEA Partner of the Year, for the partner with the highest sourced revenue for Medallia in the EMEA region.

Ipsos in Latin America: LATAM Partner of the Year, for the partner with the highest sourced revenue for Medallia in the LATAM region.

Inji Tech Corporation: APAC Partner of the Year, for the partner with the highest sourced revenue for Medallia in the APAC region.

“Winning together matters. These achievements reflect shared accountability, strong execution, and a deep focus on client outcomes — and we’re incredibly grateful for the partners who make that possible,” said Eric Din, Medallia SVP of Alliances.

Closing Advice from the Award Winners

For experience leaders looking to mirror the success of these winners, our spotlight panelists offered three final pieces of advice:

Prioritize Progress over Perfection: “Momentum matters,” said CIBC’s Stephanie Leheta. “Even if those first few steps aren’t perfect, you’ll actually build confidence.”

Normalize Failure: Verizon’s Samantha Scott urged leaders to “be bold and to normalize failure as a moment to learn.”

Change the Language: As Santalucía’s Paloma Paraja emphasized, when you stop speaking “CX speak” and start speaking the language of business value, you earn your seat at the table.

The award winners of Experience ‘26 proved that CX is no longer a “survey shop.” It is a growth engine, a risk-mitigation tool, and the ultimate differentiator in an AI-driven world.