The Awards methodology has been developed and designed by Professor M. Janakiraman of IIM Lucknow, a well known name in the area of business management. Professor Janakiraman created a unique questionnaire for the Awards, which was distributed among participating organizations by AC Nielsen.

The survey form, which was self administered by companies, was taken up for evaluation, after which Ernst & Young and a Jury of three eminent persons helped draw a shortlist of firms that would go through to the second round.

AC Nielsen then administered a second questionnaire for the customers of the organizations short-listed by E&Y. The surveys helped measure the organizational readiness of the participating companies to address customer needs. It also brought out the key strengths of organizations and the areas where they needed to improve their customer orientation. Finally, it created an index for companies to plot future strategies for Customer Responsiveness.

During the second stage of the Awards procedure, besides customer interviews, a Reader Poll was also announced through The Economic Times, to invite the opinion of the “common man” on the short listed companies. Over 5,000 responses were received from the Reader Poll!

The Economic Times and Professor M. Janakiraman worked closely with the tabulators and auditors to measure the performance of companies on parameters such as responsiveness, intelligence generation, intelligence dissemination, customer education, top management emphasis, innovation and learning.

At the end of the evaluation, data tabulation and data validation process, a seven-member Jury voted on the rankings, based on the final score of the company applications, the customer interviews and the Reader Poll.