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ISG Star of Excellence™

Recognizing Excellence. Celebrating Customer Experience.

Powered by direct feedback from enterprise clients, the Star of Excellence™ program recognizes providers delivering exceptional customer experiences.
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Star of Excellence

Star of Excellence™ Guide

Explore the Star of Excellence™ program, CX framework, recognition opportunities, eligibility criteria and 2026 timelines.
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CX Research Informs our Quadrant Reports & Advisors

The Star of Excellence program gathers crucial data used to evaluate providers in our ISG Provider Lens™ reports. This information, along with direct advisor feedback, informs ISG Research analysts about customer experiences with various service and technology providers. ISG advisors also use these insights in sourcing and consulting engagements.

To ensure our information about customer experience is up to date, providers can nominate clients to participate, and enterprise clients can register independently to provide feedback.
About Provider Lens

Frequently Asked Questions

How many clients can I nominate?

As many as possible. There is no cap on the minimum and maximum number of clients to be nominated. Every response count and each client response received during the ISG Provider Lens research phase is leveraged by the respective analysts to place the provider on the quadrant. To qualify for the CX Star Performer recognition for the report, a provider must have five client responses. Providers that nominate more clients can present more diversity in their client representation and the ISG Star of Excellence methodology assigns a trust factor while calculating the CX scores that depend on the number of responses.

When can I nominate?

Although providers can nominate any time of the year, nominating clients during the ISG Provider Lens study research phase or before ensures the client responses are considered for the provider evaluation.

What is the validity/duration of client feedback received in one year?

A response remains valid for the ISG Provider Lens study cycle. While evaluating a provider in the respective ISG Provider Lens study, the analysts consider all the relevant responses received since the publication of the previous year’s report. ISG also considers client feedback received for three years for informing ISG advisors as they form their provider long list via the CPQ process. For the Star of Excellence Awards, feedback received only in the respective year will be considered.

Who can participate in the provider evaluation?

Any individual within an enterprise who has experience working with a provider can provide an evaluation. The ideal stakeholder is the champion or key sponsor of the relationship and/or project such as business unit leaders, IT directors or CIO / CTOs.

Can an enterprise authorize the provider to take the survey?

No, we do not allow any evaluations from providers, even when authorized by the enterprise. Only enterprise client representatives can take the survey.

How does the provider get to know about the survey completion of nominated clients?

Providers can access their dashboard which provides regular updates to the providers about their client nominations and status of the survey taken.

What is the data collection and management protocol?

Information and data collected through program will be subject to the following guidelines;

  • All data received from the providers and the survey respondents will be treated as confidential.

  • All information that is published will be in aggregate format only.

  • ISG will not divulge any specific information either about the enterprise, provider or the survey respondents.

  • All data will be archived within ISG.

What is the frequency of Star of Excellence awards?

The CX Star Performer awards, which are IPL study-specific, will be announced throughout the year alongside the study results. The winners of the Overall, Universal, Regional, and CX-specific awards will be announced in October and honoured at an Awards Gala in November.

Will ISG send follow up reminders to nominees?

ISG will send a reminder email to nominees’ id if requested by the provider.

What if there is a tie for the top award?

In an unlikely event of a tie, ISG will compare the final scores up to two decimal points. In the highly unlikely event, there remains a tie at the second decimal point, the winner will be the provider with the most responses for the specific category.

Can a provider nominate the same enterprise more than once?

Yes, but only if:

  1. Each feedback is provided by different stakeholders.
  2. The stakeholders represent different regions, highlighting the diversity of the services provided.

From an enterprise perspective, what is the process to participate?

Enterprises can either participate directly or get nominated by a service provider. Enterprises can give feedback for providers of their choice directly through “Participate” section of Star of Excellence microsite. Alternatively, an enterprise can get nominated by a service provider to give feedback. On nomination, the enterprise will receive invitation with a link to participate in the Star of Excellence survey. Enterprises can give feedback to evaluate multiple providers within their ecosystem.

What if the responding enterprise wishes to remain anonymous?

Enterprises names will not be referenced. There is no intention of using enterprise names for any reports, assessment or internal publication. However, ISG needs the respondent email address to validate the response received.

Can a respondent take the survey more than once?

Yes, the respondent may provide client feedback for a different service line or a different provider.

Why is verification needed after completing the survey?

Verification ensures the authenticity of the feedback provided, helping us maintain the integrity of our survey results.

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If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to reach out to our support team.
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Meet Our Team

Namratha Dharshan

Namratha Dharshan

Chief Business Leader, ISG Research

Namratha Dharshan

Namratha Dharshan

Namratha Dharshan leads Global Content for Services within the ISG Provider Lens® program, bringing more than 22 years of extensive research experience with a focus on BPO, GCC, AI and Analytics and CX. The ISG Provider Lens® program is designed to deliver research on service provider intelligence. As part of her role, Namratha directs a global team of analysts and is responsible for content delivery of more than 50 Provider Lens® research reports. She is also a principal analyst, authoring thought leadership and service provider intelligence reports with a strong emphasis on BPO, particularly CX and contact center services, and GCC. Her portfolio also includes horizontal service line reports such as finance and accounting and industry-specific reports for insurance. In addition to her research leadership, Namratha is a member of the Senior Leadership Council for India Research, representing ISG’s India-based team of over 120 research professionals. She is also a co-speaker on ISG’s flagship quarterly ISG Index call, offering insights into the health of the outsourcing industry, with a focus on BPO and GCC. 

At ISG, Namratha is the product owner of the Star of Excellence program, an initiative that analyzes enterprise feedback on providers. The CX program recognizes providers that deliver exceptional experiences to enterprise clients.  

Namratha is also a strong advocate for women employees. She served for four consecutive years as a judge for ISG’s Women in Digital program and now acts as a regional sponsor. She was instrumental in launching She-Rise, an internship program for women returning to work after childbirth and freshers from college.

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Tarun Nathooram Vaid

Tarun Nathooram Vaid

Lead Analyst, ISG Provider Lens®

Tarun Nathooram Vaid

Tarun Nathooram Vaid

As ISG’s Manager and Principal Analyst Tarun brings his 13+ years of experience in leading various research engagements both in the IT services and software. He offers ISG clients comprehensive insights on latest market trends, provider landscape, in-depth capabilities and market presence analysis of service providers and brings in extensive knowledge of the outsourcing industry. Tarun is also responsible for defining quadrants, formulating key parameters for benchmarking providers, and designing questionnaires. 

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Kiran B

Kiran B

Data Analyst

Kiran B

Kiran B

Kiran works as a Data Analyst and has a professional experience of 7+ years. He has pursued master’s in Computer Vision and has worked in multiple fields such as IT and Hospitality. He has worked on market segmentation, customer segmentation and derived insights from customer data and had used it to generate additional revenue. He is passionate about research and analysis and has done advanced exploratory data analysis. He has also worked on data science projects such as ‘Time Series Forecasting’ and ‘Natural Language Processing’ using Neural Networks, in the past. He is currently responsible for insights derivation and automating several tasks using Python.

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Rajesh MC

Rajesh MC

Lead Data Specialist

Rajesh MC

Rajesh MC

Rajesh is a Lead Data Specialist at ISG.
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Donston Sharwin

Donston Sharwin

Lead Project Manager

Donston Sharwin

Donston Sharwin

Donston Sharwin is a Lead Project Manager at ISG.

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