A patient reschedules an appointment in seconds instead of waiting on hold. A team walks into a conference room, and the meeting starts in five seconds, not five minutes. An employee finds and books the right room in seconds, with workplace data helping make better use of the office.
These are the experiences our customers are delivering today. And they demonstrate why experience matters.
At WebexOne 2026 in Austin, we announced the winners of our fifth annual Webex Customer Awards. Across industries and around the world, these organizations are bringing together AI, collaboration, and workplace technology to solve real challenges and deliver measurable results.
What stands out to me is how they’re putting technology to work for their people and customers. They’re improving access to healthcare, making everyday collaboration easier, and creating more intelligent workplaces.
Congratulations to all our 2026 Webex Customer Awards winners. I’m proud to share their stories.
Intelligent Workplaces Genius | Winners: Procter & Gamble, Duke Energy
Honors the organizations bringing together Cisco technologies — Webex, Cisco collaboration devices, Cisco Spaces, Networking, ThousandEyes, and Security to deliver more connected, secure, and intelligent workplaces.
Finalists: D. E. Shaw Group, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS, Qiddiya, Wells Fargo
Procter & Gamble: Transforming Workplace Experiences with Cisco’s workplace blueprint
Creating intelligent workplace experiences that lifted workplace experience scores 20%
Procter & Gamble (P&G), a global consumer goods leader with 108,000 employees and brands like Tide, Pampers, Gillette, and Crest reaching households in 180 countries, set out to make its own workplace as intelligent as the operations behind it. Fragmented room management systems had made everyday collaboration a struggle: employees wasted time locating available meeting spaces and once inside, staff hit technical barriers — trouble connecting to meetings, non-intuitive equipment, and mismatches between room capacity and technology. Together, these hurdles stood in the way of seamless collaboration and better business outcomes through human connection.
To reverse that, P&G launched a global meeting room initiative pairing Cisco collaboration devices, Cisco Spaces, and wireless networking with Wi-Fi 7 to create intelligent workplace experiences across every kind of space. BYOD-enabled Cisco Room Bars let employees bring their own devices into any professional space, removing common technical barriers, and the design matched the right technology to every room type, from huddle spaces for quick collaboration to large, divisible conference rooms for major meetings.
Behind that experience is a modernized, data-driven foundation. Cisco Spaces turned room usage into real-time insight, helping P&G identify and prioritize the room types its workforce values most, while Cisco Boards displaying the Cisco Spaces app gave employees real-time visibility that made finding and booking the right space effortless. Nearly 1,500 rooms were upgraded in less than 6 months, resulting in a 20% improvement in scores on the Leesman Index — a leading benchmark of workplace experience — with more room to grow as more use cases are deployed.
P&G’s experience shows how data-driven technology deployments can transform organizational culture and operational efficiency. As it scales these intelligent workplace experiences worldwide, P&G is proving that the right combination of collaboration technology, workplace data, and networking visibility gives employees a more intuitive, connected, and productive place to work — wherever work happens.
Cisco is the blueprint for the modern workplace experience; transforming employee experiences everywhere you look.”
— John Gadsby, Procter & Gamble Meeting Services Director
Duke Energy modernizes its workplace with Cisco collaboration devices, Spaces, and AI-driven operations
Turning days-long room setups into 30-minute deployments
Duke Energy, one of the largest energy holding companies in the United States, delivers electricity and natural gas to millions of customers across six states. As a critical infrastructure provider that prizes reliability, it set out to modernize its meeting rooms — but a labor‑intensive process meant a single conference room could take hours or even days to stand up. Busy meeting rooms—including one next to an active train track with large windows—needed a better way to reduce outside noise and help IT address issues sooner. Because Duke Energy relies on Microsoft Teams, the company also needed high-quality equipment that works seamlessly across collaboration platforms.
Duke Energy standardized on Cisco collaboration devices in Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) mode — keeping its preferred platform while gaining Cisco’s hardware quality and management — and cut room setup from days to under 30 minutes. Cisco Ceiling Microphone Pros solved audio quality problems in the toughest spaces, delivering crystal‑clear sound even with excessive noise outside. With Cisco ThousandEyes and Collaboration Control Hub, the team gained deep visibility into network and device health, keeping rooms online and performing at their peak.
Beyond the devices, Duke Energy is building an intelligent workplace with Cisco Spaces — rolling out wireless networking with Wi‑Fi 7 and wayfinding via Cisco Room Navigators. At the same time, it’s shifting from reactive to proactive operations, feeding data from Collaboration Control Hub, Microsoft Teams Admin Center, and ThousandEyes into Splunk and applying AI to spot trends and resolve issues before they reach the end user.
The impact is faster deployments that let IT scale meeting room modernization enterprise‑wide, quality audio in challenging spaces, and a reliable, well‑monitored collaboration device infrastructure. Duke Energy plans to convert its legacy rooms and scale Cisco Spaces across more headquarters floors — using real‑time data to optimize energy and room use, and wayfinding. By pairing the latest Cisco audio/video technology with proactive, AI‑driven operations, Duke Energy isn’t just keeping the lights on — it’s lighting the way for the future of work.
This was never just a hardware refresh. Standardizing on Cisco devices in Microsoft Teams Rooms mode cut room deployment from days to under 30 minutes, and together with Cisco Spaces and AI-driven operations it gave us an intelligent workplace that’s reliable, data-driven, and ready for the future of work.”
— Mark Cook, VP, Telecom, Infrastructure, CIOPS & Operations, Duke Energy
Workspace Wizard | Winners: General Motors, Asahi Beverages, and Public Investment Fund
Honors one organization in each region (AMER, EMEA, APJC) that creatively transformed their workplaces through their bold and creative use of Cisco collaboration devices and technology.
Finalists: Conagra Brands, Rutgers University, Western Digital
General Motors delivers a consistent, intelligent hybrid workplace experience across 74 global locations
Nearly 1,000 Cisco devices, centralized visibility, and ~90% of calls on Microsoft Teams
General Motors, a global leader in automotive and manufacturing, has long been at the forefront of innovation — but like many in the sector, it faced real hurdles adapting to a fast-evolving hybrid work environment, amid supply chain disruption, sustainability pressures, and the demand for seamless collaboration across global teams. Giving a distributed workforce a consistent, reliable meeting experience — and IT the visibility to manage it at scale — meant modernizing the room estate itself.
GM standardized nearly 1,000 Cisco collaboration devices across 74 global locations. Using Cisco Workspace Designer for space planning, it is refreshing its fleet with the latest video endpoints running native RoomOS. This gives employees an agnostic meeting experience supporting Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, and Webex.
The breadth of adoption is matched by the depth of insight behind it. GM established its 74 locations as Workspaces in Collaboration Control Hub, using reporting, analytics, APIs, and device alerts to monitor device health, workspace utilization, occupancy rates, and ghosted meetings — a clear picture of how spaces are actually used that guides data-driven decisions on resource allocation and cost. GM is also developing a macro that will allow employees to open ServiceNow tickets directly from room touch panels. Once deployed, the capability is intended to replace paper instructions directing users to call the global IT help desk.
Beyond devices, GM is piloting Cisco Spaces to explore room holds and paths, location analytics, space optimization, and wayfinding — part of a broader program to future-proof its workplaces by combining advanced networking, smart space technology, and analytics to improve efficiency, employee wellbeing, and sustainability. By embracing Cisco’s collaboration solutions, GM has enhanced its hybrid work experience and set a benchmark for the automotive industry.
Cisco has helped us deliver a consistent, intelligent workplace experience across our global sites — nearly 1,000 collaboration devices that just work, and Collaboration Control Hub giving us the data to manage them, understand how spaces are used, and keep improving. It’s changing how our people collaborate every day.”
— Wade Moses, Audio/Video and UC Architect, General Motors
Asahi Beverages reimagines its Southbank HQ as an intelligent, secure workplace on Cisco
APAC’s first Cisco Smart Workspaces Premier re-homed ~1,100 staff into a fully wireless HQ
Asahi Beverages, one of Asia Pacific’s leading beverage companies and part of the global Asahi Group, set out to rehome 1,100 employees into a new six‑floor Melbourne headquarters — a greenfield chance to design the workplace from scratch and draw people back to the office. The incumbent technology gave IT, workplace, and property teams almost no visibility into how spaces were used, and the network needed stronger security. The CIO set one uncompromising line: no cables to any desk.
Asahi became the first organization in APAC to deploy Cisco Smart Workspaces Premier, uniting collaboration, workplace intelligence, and a secure network in one environment. As a Microsoft customer, they wanted a Microsoft Teams experience on best‑in‑class Cisco collaboration device hardware: every space, from four‑person focus rooms to the 24‑seat boardroom, now runs devices in Microsoft Teams Room mode.
Underneath sits a secure, AI‑ready network. Utilising Cisco’s wireless networking, Software-Defined Access, Routers & Switches combined with Catalyst Center — the “brains of the network” — using AgenticOps to flag issues before they escalate: engineers now isolate problematic devices in about a third of the time (from roughly 30 minutes to under 10), and has cut response times by up to an hour.
The results show where it matters most — in how people feel about coming to work. From zero data on space management, Asahi Beverages now have room insights their property team uses to reconfigure space, repurpose under‑used areas, and plan staff moves, with Cisco Spaces saving hours every day.
To watch the video and read the full Asahi Beverages story, click here for more.
This program demonstrates the value of a strong partnership. Together with Cisco and Alder Technology, we’ve delivered a seamless, intuitive workplace that removes friction and enhances how our people work every day. The feedback from our employees has been outstanding, making the office a place where people genuinely want to be.”
— John Kelvie, CIO, Asahi Beverages APAC
Public Investment Fund
In keeping with the customer’s preference, we are not publishing a detailed story.
Collaboration Champion | Winners: Albertsons (AMER), Orange Business (EMEA), and Toshiba Corporation (APJC)
Recognizes one organization in each region (AMER, EMEA, APJC) that has most successfully harnessed the power of the Webex Suite — Meetings, Calling, Messaging, Video Messaging (Vidcast), Polling (Slido), Webinars, and Events — to elevate employee experience.
Finalists: Deutsche Telekom, Spark New Zealand, Vanguard
Albertsons unifies retail, pharmacy, and corporate support operations on a cloud-first Webex backbone
Breaking free from legacy on-premises constraints to innovate at the speed of modern retail
Albertsons Companies, one of the largest food-and-drug retailers in the United States, is redefining the retail experience through a comprehensive digital transformation. By shifting from legacy, data center-heavy infrastructure to a cloud-first strategy, Albertsons is leveraging the Webex ecosystem to unify its retail, pharmacy, and corporate support operations across 2,000+ stores and 1,700 pharmacies.
To maintain its competitive edge, Albertsons recognized the need for greater operational agility. Its legacy environment, heavily reliant on on-premises data centers, hindered its ability to rapidly deploy new services and scale nationwide. The objective was clear: transition to a cloud-first architecture with the flexibility to innovate at the speed of modern retail while reducing the complexity of physical infrastructure. To bridge retail operations and customer support, Albertsons committed to expand Webex Calling across its footprint over the next few years and built omnichannel support on a Webex Contact Center of roughly 900 agents — spanning internal help desks, HR services, external customer support, and loyalty programs.
The scale of that communications environment is evident in the volume of Webex Calling traffic: Albertsons recorded 27 million calls in 90 days. By transitioning to Webex Calling and optimizing its contact center footprint, the company is reducing reliance on legacy data centers and creating more flexibility to launch new services. Its experience offers a model for organizations looking to simplify communications and build a foundation for future innovation.
A cloud-first Webex backbone freed us from data center constraints, so we now roll out new services at the speed modern retail demands.”
— Aaron Contreras, Manager, Enterprise Network Services and Unified Communications, Albertsons
Orange Business modernizes global collaboration with a cloud-first Webex migration
One cloud-first Webex Suite now unifies operations across 65 countries
As the enterprise division of Orange S.A., Orange Business is a global network and digital services integrator serving more than 3,000 international customers across 200 countries. Its Webex Orange offering serves more than 500 multinational companies in France and international markets. Orange Business also serves more than 2,000 customers through its Workplace Together and Workplace Together Evolution offerings. To support continued growth, the company needed to modernize legacy on-premises systems that limited scalability, slowed service delivery, and made global collaboration more complex.
Orange Business centralized its employee and customer experience on the Webex Suite, including Webex Meetings, Webex Calling, and Webex Contact Center. By moving voice, collaboration, and customer experience to the cloud, the company created a more consistent experience across locations while simplifying management through a single pane of glass in Collaboration Control Hub. More than 250 Cisco video meeting rooms support high-quality collaboration across its headquarters and global operations. Orange Business also embedded Webex capabilities into its own product portfolio through its “Workplace Together” service, extending its cloud-native approach to more than 100 enterprise customers.
The impact can be seen across the business. Orange Business now supports approximately 6.5 million Webex calls each year, while “Workplace Together” serves customers ranging from mid-sized businesses to global multinationals. Centralized management has streamlined internal processes, reduced technical overhead, and made global support teams more agile. Webex Meetings and Calling have also helped bridge geographical and linguistic gaps across international teams. With an AI-ready foundation in place, Orange Business is piloting AI Receptionist for Webex Calling and agentic AI capabilities to further automate and personalize customer interactions. Through its transformation, Orange Business has evolved from a traditional telecommunications provider into a digital transformation powerhouse.
Webex is a very strong cloud solution for deploying employee and customer experience solutions. By bringing Meetings, Calling, and Contact Center together on a single platform, we can support approximately 6.5 million Webex calls each year while simplifying operations for our teams and customers. This foundation also gives us a clear path to innovate with AI, including our pilots of AI Receptionist and agentic AI, helping us create more personalized and efficient experiences.”
— Nicolas Ducrot, Director of Product Management, Orange Business
Toshiba modernizes enterprise calling with cloud-based Webex Calling
Cloud calling expands to 43,000 users while reducing maintenance costs
Toshiba is a diversified Japanese technology group with businesses spanning energy, infrastructure, electronic devices, and digital solutions. Operating across many sites, the company is using Webex Calling to modernize communications across the Toshiba Group.
As work became more distributed, Toshiba needed to move beyond legacy PBX systems and desk phones that tied calling to specific locations and made smaller sites costly to support. By deploying cloud-based Webex Calling, employees can use company phone services from multiple locations and devices. The platform also helped maintain communications during a mobile carrier outage while supporting more flexible ways of working.
Adoption grew to approximately 43,000 users. Toshiba also reduced maintenance costs and simplified deployment and administration across sites of different sizes.
Toshiba views the rollout as an enabler of its digital transformation and sustainability goals. The company is now evaluating AI Receptionist for Webex Calling for virtual front desk automation and exploring AI-assisted contact center capabilities to improve call-handling efficiency and customer experience. These initiatives remain under evaluation.
Webex Calling has enabled us to expand cloud calling to approximately 43,000 users, reduce maintenance costs, and maintain communications during a mobile carrier outage.”
— Katsuhiro Nigorikawa, Toshiba I.S. Corporation, Chief Technical Officer
Customer Experience Extraordinaire | Winners: United Airlines, Community Health Network
Honors the organizations that most effectively leverage Webex Customer Experience solutions to transform the customer journey and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Finalists: Black Hills Federal Credit Union, New Castle County, Terna Rete Elettrica Nazionale, Veterans United Home Loans
United Airlines reimagines customer support with a hybrid Webex cloud
A five-year cloud transformation — anchored by “Agent on Demand” video — scales real-time service across 350 destinations
A global leader in aviation serving 180 million customers a year across 350 destinations, United Airlines is on a five-year cloud transformation to modernize its customer support. Its digital engagement had been tethered to siloed, on-premises systems that lacked the agility and cloud-native scale the high-speed demands of aviation require — creating friction for customers and operations alike. By integrating Webex, United moved to a hybrid cloud architecture built for real-time, high-quality experiences.
At the center of that shift is United’s award-winning “Agent on Demand” service. By embedding Webex video, United lets travelers start a video chat by scanning a QR code at the airport, routing them straight to a gate agent for immediate, face-to-face help — optimizing existing staff while giving passengers a faster path to answers. Around it, United is migrating from legacy on-premises contact centers to a hybrid Webex Suite and Webex Contact Center model, on a global cloud and on-premises calling platform built to support the many customer experience pathways an operation this size demands.
The transformation reaches beyond customer service. With Webex Connect, United streamlined internal communications — including its “Notiflyer” system, which delivers real-time flight notifications to flight attendants and pilots. United is also at the forefront of Webex Contact Center AI, with an active strategy to deploy Cisco AI Agents — starting with the IT Service Desk and expanding into customer care — a Webex AI Agent beta under evaluation, and work to enhance Agent on Demand by integrating Webex Meetings and Contact Center.
The impact is both operational and highly visible: Cisco delivers video at scale across United’s global network, agents have embraced Agent on Demand for faster resolution of complex passenger issues, and the innovation earned a featured segment on the Today Show — positioning United as a leader in using Webex to deliver exceptional, scalable customer experiences.
Agent on Demand video on a hybrid Webex cloud connects our travelers to live agents instantly — support our legacy systems could never scale.”
— Ninos Gabriel, Managing Director, Enterprise Architecture | Strategic Enterprise Platforms | Cloud Solutions
How Community Health Network Uses AI to Improve Patient Access
Webex AI Agent closes 40%+ of appointment calls at a 95% patient-match rate
Community Health Network (CHN) serves Indianapolis and surrounding counties through six acute care hospitals and more than 200 ambulatory sites. Its physician practices manage more than 1.2 million calls each year, making efficient patient access a priority.
With Webex Contact Center, CHN has moved beyond a traditional IVR that primarily routed callers to staff. Integrated with Epic EHR, Webex AI Agent can authenticate patients and complete appointment confirmations, cancellations, and rescheduling without human intervention. These workflows now contain 40% of appointment-related calls, while patient matching reaches 95% accuracy.
When a patient needs live support, agents receive a transfer summary to help them pick up the conversation without asking the patient to repeat information. The cloud platform has also helped CHN scale its rollout: the network onboarded 43 additional medical practices in four weeks after its pilot.
CHN’s experience shows how healthcare organizations can use contact center AI to manage routine appointment needs while keeping staff available for more complex conversations. Read the full Community Health Network story for more about its Webex deployment and results.
The integration with our EHR was a game-changer. It allowed us to automate the mundane, repetitive tasks that were previously tying up our human agents, freeing them up to handle the more complex, high-touch interactions that require empathy and clinical judgment.”
— Shane Woolf, Lead Unified Communications Engineer, Community Health Network.
AI Innovator: Customer Experience | Winner: Estes Express Lines
Celebrates a company that has demonstrated vision, foresight, and innovation to elevate customer experiences with the Cisco AI Assistant or Webex AI Agent.
Finalists: AccentCare, BrokerLink, Chartwell Retirement Residences, Markel, Sally Beauty Company
Estes Express Lines builds smarter customer care with Webex AI and Salesforce
Estes Express Lines, the largest privately held less-than-truckload (LTL) freight carrier in the U.S., faced the constraints of a legacy on-premises Unified Contact Center Express (UCCX) environment. With no integration between telephony and its Salesforce CRM, agents across its contact center were forced to toggle between applications — slowing response times and fragmenting customer data — while tracking logistics inquiries like package status and delivery updates was inefficient. Estes needed to move off on-premises hardware to a scalable, cloud-first architecture.
Estes moved to Webex Contact Center and built a seamless bridge between communications and CRM. A Webex–Salesforce connector triggers screen pops that give agents immediate access to customer records the moment a call begins, delivering a single pane of glass, and workforce optimization manages agent performance and quality assurance across the center. Beneath it, Estes built a secure foundation with the full Cisco stack — ThousandEyes for network visibility, Catalyst Center networking for campus management, and Cisco Secure Access (formerly Umbrella) and Cisco Firewall for enterprise-grade security.
On the AI front — the heart of the award — Estes turned quality management from a blind spot into a strength. Where manual review reached fewer than 2% of calls, Webex AI Quality Management, Cisco AI Assistant-generated summaries, and sentiment now evaluate quality at scale and lift after-call work off agents. Average wrap-up time fell from 15.3 to 10.9 seconds — a 28% reduction — automated quality management activity grew roughly 80% from March to June 2026, unique users of the Agent Performance grid rose 165% quarter over quarter, and near-real-time Topic Analytics surfaced more than 480 customer-contact topics for coaching and process insight.
The single pane workflow measurably cut average handle time by automating record retrieval, freeing agents for high-value logistics problem solving instead of administrative navigation, while ThousandEyes and Cisco’s networking portfolio gave unprecedented visibility that keeps customer care reliable. With a migration to Webex Calling underway and AI-powered quality monitoring extending next to its internal service desk, Estes has a clear, scalable path to keep turning every interaction into insight for the next.
We thought we had a good quality audit program, but we realized we were only scratching the surface of what was possible. Our managers and agents now have real-time access to actionable insights, allowing us to coach more effectively, respond faster, and continuously improve the customer experience.”
— Jill Townsend, Director, Corporate Customer Experience, Estes Express Lines
AI Innovator: Webex Suite & Collaboration Devices | Winner: Sutherland
Recognizes the organization that has most successfully showcased vision, foresight, and innovation to elevate employee experiences with the Cisco AI Assistant and agentic AI across the Webex Suite and Cisco collaboration devices.
Finalists: Akamai, American Eagle, Charter Communications, Grupo Sancor Seguros, Tenaga Nasional Berhad
Sutherland puts AI at the center of how its global workforce collaborates
Cisco AI Assistant turns everyday conversations into insight and action for 86,000 Webex Suite users
One of the world’s largest independent business process and digital transformation firms, with operations across 20 countries, Sutherland is putting AI at the center of its global collaboration strategy — not as a pilot in one corner of the business, but as an everyday layer across how its 86,000 Webex Suite users work. The philosophy is simple: meaningful AI shouldn’t sit apart from the flow of work; it should make each conversation more productive and turn what people say into insight and action.
To do that, Sutherland has made Cisco AI Assistant for the Webex Suite part of daily habit, using meeting summaries, recording summaries, message rewrites, and translation to capture decisions, cut manual notetaking, and bridge language barriers across a global workforce. That AI-powered experience operates at significant scale, supporting 127,000 meetings, 7.6 million meeting minutes, and 20 million messages in a recent 30-day period.
Sutherland is making the employee experience more connected by bringing HR and IT resources directly into Webex. With HR live chat and IT service-management tools built into the flow of work, employees can get answers and complete tasks without switching between applications. And as Sutherland expands its AI roadmap—from AI Agents and an AI Receptionist to contact center modernization—it’s demonstrating how Webex AI can help organizations work smarter today while preparing for what’s next.
We’re putting AI at the center of how our people work — Webex AI turns everyday conversations into insight and action, so our teams spend less time on busywork and more on what matters.”
— Chris Koelling, Principal UC Architect, Sutherland Global
Bold Explorer: Healthcare | Winners: Elevance Health, Starkey
Honors the organizations that have demonstrated creativity and out-of-the-box thinking in their use of Webex products within the healthcare sector.
Finalists: NYU Langone Health System, Peterborough Regional Health Centre, Postbeamtenkrankenkasse (PBeaKK), Rotech Healthcare
Elevance Health scales its Virtual Tech Bar into an automated, enterprise-wide IT support experience
A 2022 pilot becomes a repeatable “great software experience” on Cisco collaboration devices, Webex Calling, and automation
Elevance Health, one of the largest U.S. health insurers serving 45M members with 97,000 employees, redefined its workplace experience by tackling a universal frustration: IT support. As return-to-office initiatives expanded, manual, room-bound workflows and aging hardware nearing end of support created a need for a more modern, sustainable, Cisco-native solution.
What began as a 2022 proof of concept became the Virtual Tech Bar, and then a “Next Generation” service built on Cisco collaboration devices, Webex Calling, and device macros. Cisco Desk devices were integrated into soundproof, branded HushHybrid pods — turning physical space into private, professional, high-touch support kiosks — and intelligent call queuing through Webex Calling routes requests so technicians support multiple sites and time zones with agility. Custom macros give associates a single “call button” to instantly reach live IT support, with screen sharing and automatic camera adjustment making troubleshooting faster; the team even engineered the complex call routing and hardware buildouts without dedicated internal DevOps resources.
The results made the Virtual Tech Bar a repeatable, high-impact workplace asset. Automated routing significantly reduced manual intervention and freed technicians from idle room duty, the professional digital experience improved associate satisfaction, and the program scaled from a single pilot to multiple offices enterprise wide. Associates summed it up simply: “It was a great experience. The tech team fixed my issue on the first try.” By turning Cisco collaboration devices into a human-centered support experience, Elevance reimagined a chore into something people actually appreciate.
The Virtual Tech Bar is a strong example of how our teams are using collaboration technology to solve real workplace challenges. By combining Cisco collaboration devices, Webex Calling, and automation into a simple associate-facing experience, we created a support model that is more scalable, professional, and accessible than the manual processes it replaced.”
— Ryan Shapiro, Director, Collaboration Technologies, Elevance Health
Starkey rebuilds its hearing care contact center on Webex with deep integrations and AI routing
Deep CRM integrations and AI routing cut transfers, tickets, and dropped calls
Starkey, one of the world’s leading hearing technology companies and the only American-owned global hearing aid manufacturer, migrated from on-premises Cisco UC and UCCX to cloud-based Webex Calling and Contact Center — building a highly integrated, flexible platform designed to make every interaction faster and more personal. Custom Salesforce and Dynamics 365 integrations give agents customer data in a single workflow, speeding lookups and reducing handling time.
A team-based routing model simplified operations, improved scalability, and cut administrative overhead, and custom Last Agent Routing keeps repeat callers with a familiar voice — rounded out by core Webex features like Call Queues, Callback, and Virtual Lines. To manage it all, the team uses 2Ring wallboards and Calabrio for real-time visibility, quality management, and workforce planning. The technical team uses Cisco ThousandEyes for endpoint monitoring and GraphQL for automated configuration.
The combined effect is a more stable, efficient platform: a rebuilt foundation and better visibility reduced troubleshooting time and support tickets, while richer analytics sharpened operational decisions. Starkey expects further gains as it adopts new Webex features to enhance the environment.
Rebuilding on Webex, with integrated Salesforce and Dynamics access, simplified our operations, provided a lot more flexibility, and enabled increased customer engagement.”
— Tim Huenemann, Sr. Director, Technology & Architecture
Bold Explorer: Finance | Winner: Farmers Insurance
Celebrates the organization that has showcased creativity and out-of-the-box thinking in its use of Webex products in financial services.
Finalists: Banco Rendimento, Centennial Bank, First Interstate Bank, First United Bank, Swedbank
Farmers Insurance
In keeping with the customer’s preference, we are not publishing a detailed story.
Bold Explorer: Government & Public Sector | Winner: Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development
Recognizes the organization that has most creatively demonstrated out-of-the-box thinking in its use of Webex products in the government and public sector.
Finalists: James Cook University, Santee Cooper, Toronto District School Board, Weimarer Land District
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development transforms communications with Webex Cloud Calling — led and executed in-house
An independently executed cloud migration strengthens operational resilience, enhances collaboration, and supports digital service delivery across the Kingdom.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development (HRSD) is modernizing communications and collaboration across its operations throughout the Kingdom. To address the challenge of delivering flexible, reliable, and stable communications across a highly distributed organization, HRSD’s in-house technical team independently planned and executed the end-to-end migration from its legacy on-premises environment to Webex Calling, without relying on an external implementation partner.
Keen to adopt the latest collaboration technologies, HRSD is expanding its use of Webex Suite on a unified platform. Since beginning its transformation, Webex adoption has grown from approximately 8,600 to more than 11,000 users, an increase of nearly 28%. From September 2025 through September 2026, ministry users held 662,900 Webex meetings totaling 20.8 million meeting minutes.
HRSD has further extended the value of Webex through in-house innovation. Leveraging Webex APIs, its technical team developed a custom solution for real-time monitoring of collaboration devices across its branches, enabling proactive issue detection, strengthening operational resilience, and enhancing service continuity.
Looking ahead, HRSD is actively testing and evaluating Webex Contact Center in preparation for its local availability in Saudi Arabia, with the goal of further enhancing beneficiary experience and digital service delivery. By combining cloud communications, automation, and in-house expertise, HRSD is building a more scalable and dependable collaboration foundation for its employees and the communities it serves, demonstrating the bold, innovative thinking this award celebrates.
Webex Luminary | Winners: Sijbren Beukenkamp, 3Corners; Pedro Antonio Oñoro, Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
Celebrates standout Webex champions — individuals who advocate for Webex, inspire their organizations, and drive meaningful change by rallying others to embrace innovation.
Finalists: Amr Elsheikh (Booking.com), Emil DiMotta (HD Supply), Marcus Labra (Carnival Cruise Line), Nikki Parsons (Akamai)
Sijbren Beukenkamp champions sovereign Webex collaboration across regulated government
From separate meeting and telephony islands to one Webex platform trusted to stay in the cloud
Sijbren Beukenkamp, a solution architect at 3Corners, works where collaboration is hardest: large, regulated organizations like the
government, where meetings, calling, and messaging had grown into silos — often on different vendors — for what users feel as one need. Meetings ran on on-premises platforms such as Cisco Meeting Server, capacity-limited and left to the organization to scale and maintain, with no single app to join meetings, messaging, and calling and only limited mobile and remote use. The rush to large scale remote work moved many of these organizations to the cloud faster than they could set the rules for staying in control of their own data, raising a hard question: prove they can stay in the cloud safely, or pull the sensitive parts back.
Sijbren became the advocate who helps answer it. He actively champions Webex in regulated environments — including from the stage alongside Webex product managers — showing how the platform holds up where demands on control and compliance run high. He helps steer the direction of role-based access control (RBAC) within Collaboration Control Hub and Webex Contact Center, joins early through beta programs and product evaluations to test new capabilities in a real regulated setting, and feeds that experience back to Cisco before features reach general availability. The results with the government are tangible: separate meeting and telephony islands consolidated into one Webex platform, with sovereign controls that let a regulated organization stay in the cloud with confidence.
His impact shows up across the whole community. He is a Webex Insider Expert and has appeared on numerous Cisco Champion Radio podcasts, carrying the message to a wide practitioner audience; pitched a lighter Contact Center agent concept directly to the business unit to fit how regulated organizations actually staff and work; and filed many product improvement requests, turning real field gaps into concrete product input. Through roundtables, community support, and a driving role in Cisco Insider Champions, Sijbren inspires even the most regulated organizations to adopt new technology with confidence.
Pedro Antonio Oñoro unifies Kennedy Space Center on Cisco and Webex — and hasn’t looked back
A single enterprise-grade platform delivered a full year with zero reported device issues
At the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex — NASA’s official visitor center, welcoming millions of guests a year — Pedro Antonio Oñoro inherited collaboration devices from multiple manufacturers that created inconsistent experiences and compatibility issues across meeting spaces. The mixed-vendor environment made troubleshooting hard, since each room needed different management tools and configurations, and technology inconsistencies frequently caused delays at the start of important meetings, interruptions during presentations, and downtime. Employees grew frustrated moving between rooms where the experience varied. Pedro needed a unified, enterprise-grade platform to simplify management, improve reliability, reduce support overhead, and deliver a consistent, high-quality meeting experience across the entire campus.
He transformed workplace collaboration by deploying a wide-ranging portfolio of Cisco collaboration devices and Webex software — Cisco Board Pro and Room Kit systems, Desk devices, Room Navigators, Ceiling Microphone Pros, and AI-powered Webex collaboration tools — for a consistent experience across offices, conference rooms, and shared spaces. The AI Receptionist for Webex Calling streamlines incoming calls, automates routine inquiries, and connects guests, employees, and partners to the right resources faster, while Cisco Desk Phones, wireless mobility, and professional headsets keep staff connected throughout the campus. The combination of intelligent devices and AI-powered communications modernized daily operations and freed employees to focus on delivering exceptional guest experiences.
The payoff is striking in its simplicity. Over the past year, the IT team recorded zero reported issues with its collaboration devices or desk phones — a major reliability improvement — and standardizing on a single platform virtually eliminated the compatibility challenges that once disrupted meetings and demanded frequent intervention. Fewer support requests freed IT to focus on strategic initiatives, end user feedback has been overwhelmingly positive on ease of use and audio/video quality, and staff have greater confidence that meetings start on time.
As an active member of the Cisco Webex Experts community, Pedro also provides product feedback that helps shape the Webex roadmap — keeping a facility that serves employees, contractors, partners, and millions of visitors on the leading edge.
Dynamic Duo: People’s Choice | Winner: Sonova and CX Advanced Solutions
This people’s choice award, voted on by WebexOne attendees, recognizes a Cisco Partner and Webex customer that collaborated on innovative implementations of Webex solutions.
Finalists: IBC Bank & Computacenter, Grant Thornton Australia & Pro AV Solutions, Sonova & CX Advanced Solutions
Sonova and CX Advanced Solutions unify 600+ retail stores on Webex
Webex Contact Center supports 300+ agents, while Webex AI Agent deflects 40% of routine calls
Sonova AG is a leading provider of hearing solutions, including hearing aids, cochlear implants, wireless communication, and audiological care. With approximately 18,000 employees and consumers in more than 100 countries, Sonova operates brands including Phonak, Unitron, AudioNova, Advanced Bionics, and Sennheiser.
Sonova’s contact center environment included multiple vendors but this fragmented setup created data silos and inconsistent service quality, while manual marketing workflows and routine inquiries placed additional pressure on agents. CX Advanced Solutions (CXAS) helped Sonova maximize its existing Webex investment and establish a long-term strategy for Webex and AI innovation.
Together, Sonova and CXAS consolidated more than 600 retail stores onto a unified Webex platform and moved more than 300 contact center agents to Webex Contact Center. This created a common foundation for customer interactions across Sonova’s retail and wholesale operations while reducing shadow IT across business units.
Webex AI Agent now deflects 40% of routine calls, freeing agents to focus on more complex customer needs. Cisco AI Assistant knowledge bots also provide agents with real-time support, helping them resolve complex queries more efficiently. Sonova is now scaling AI-driven marketing automation and analytics across its unified global operations. With CXAS as its strategic partner, Sonova is expanding its investment in Webex AI as it works toward its ambition to improve the lives of 30 million people by 2030. Together, Sonova and CXAS demonstrate the customer and partner collaboration celebrated by the Dynamic Duo award.
Consolidating 300-plus agents onto Webex with an AI Agent deflects 40% of routine calls and frees our people for the conversations that matter.”
— Jeffrey Swim, Regional Director, IT, Sonova
Congratulations to the 2026 Webex Customer Awards Winners
This year’s winners show what happens when innovation starts with a real customer need. Across industries and around the world, they’re helping patients access care, improving customer service, giving employees better ways to work, and creating more intelligent workplaces.
What I appreciate most is how they’ve turned technology into meaningful experiences for the people who rely on it every day. Their results speak for themselves, and their ambition continues to push us forward.
Congratulations to all our 2026 Webex Customer Awards winners and finalists. Thank you for your partnership, for challenging us, and for showing us what’s possible.
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