LG

- On April 4, 2023, 1,500 participants, including 768 award winners, customers, and LG employees, took part in the LG Awards in person or remotely.
  
- The event has evolved into a festival for employees, including a range of fun activities such as a treasure hunt, photo zone, and stamp tour, and the previous year's winners presented the awards instead of executives.
 
■ Judges this year also included members of the MZ generation, some of whom attended the ceremony.
 □ Customer-centric criteria were introduced to evaluate nominated products and services based on the values they create from a customer perspective. Awards were also renamed: the ‘Best LG Award’ became the “Customer Impression Grand Award”, the ‘Excellence Award’ became the “Customer Satisfaction Award”, and the ‘Special Award’ became the “Customer Empathy Award.” 
 
■ The “Customer Impression Grand Award” was given to innovations that create essential values beneficial to customers and the community, even though they may not generate significant profit. 
 □ Among the winners was a bio-based pest control method developed by the Farm Hannong Team, which helped farms hit hard by fire blight. Fire blight, a contagious disease that arrived in Korea in 2015, has wrought havoc on Korean farmers. Once infected, trees must be destroyed, often resulting in the closure of entire farms.
“It’s more rewarding to bring smiles back to customers than see improved statistics like sales and profits.” said Oh Tae-hyun, Team leader of Farm Hannong Team.
 
■ LG Corp. Chairman and CEO Kwang Mo Koo spoke glowingly of the winners: “We take so much pride in the world that you have made to create customer value with your outstanding ideas and innovations.” 
 □ "The goal of the innovations that LG Awards promotes is not about making major technological or business achievement. It’s more about creating small, meaningful experiences for individual customers that create new values and lead to recognition of the work LG is doing,” added Koo. “Our overall corporate performance is a natural reflection of such customer-oriented efforts.”
 
 
On April 4, 2023, the 2023 LG Awards were held at LG Academy (LG’s Corporate University) in Icheon City to acknowledge innovative technologies, products, and services that created greater customer value over the past year. Since taking office, LG Corp. Chairman and CEO Kwang Mo Koo has promoted the idea of “creating customer value” as one of the company’s key business principles, and has refined it every year. 
 
The LG Awards have followed suit, evolving into an event that recognizes innovative products, services, and technologies that bring more value to customers. This year’s Awards saw many changes, from the judging process and award categories to award names, and the way the ceremony was conducted. Careful consideration from a customer’s point of view was given throughout the judging process. The event was also designed as a festive celebration for LG employees who are at the center of the Awards. Around 1,500 people attended the event virtually or in person, including 768 winners.
 
At the ceremony, CEO Koo congratulated winners and expressed his appreciation for groundbreaking ideas. “We take so much pride in the world that you have made to create customer value with your outstanding ideas and innovations,” he said, adding that "the goal of the innovations that LG Awards promotes is not about making major technological or business achievement. It’s more about creating small, meaningful experiences for individual customers that create new values and lead to recognition of the work LG is doing. Our overall corporate performance is a natural reflection of such customer-oriented efforts.”
 
■ Judges this year also included members of the MZ generation, some of whom attended the ceremony.
 
This year’s LG Awards were even more meaningful than ever, with 17 members of the MZ generation taking part as judges after applying for the position through announcements posted on college websites. They actively participated in the judging process and freely expressed their opinions. One remarked about the great care that LG employees took saying, “I was very impressed by how they found pain points in the smallest details and resolved them.” Another applauded the respect given to LG customers, saying that “from the customer's perspective, small but careful consideration plays an important role in selecting certain products or services.”
 
Two of the judges attended the ceremony and had a chance to present the “Customer Impression Grand Award.” “The categories and stories are different, but I think they are the same when it comes to putting customer value first before others,” said Park Sung-hyun, a second year student from Korea University while presenting the award. They were thanked in person by Chairman Koo. 
 
Some of the award names and categories were changed to highlight the purpose of the LG Awards, which is to acknowledge value created from the customer’s perspective. The ‘Best LG Award’ became the “Customer Impression Grand Award”, the ‘Excellence Award’ became the “Customer Satisfaction Award”, and the ‘Special Award’ became the “Customer Empathy Award.” The changes reflect LG's renewed emphasis on providing creative products and services that resonate with customers, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and truly touching their hearts.  
 
The awards categories were also revamped: Future Innovation (formerly known as Market Leadership) recognizes R&D activities that create innovative customer value; Experience Innovation (formerly known as Customer Contact) recognizes activities that revolutionize customer experience with new products and services; Foundation Innovation (formerly known as Foundation Process) recognizes foundational activities that innovate customer experience with new systems and materials; and Customer Satisfaction Practice (unchanged) recognizes activities that realize customer value at customer contact points such as physical stores and call centers.
 
■ A festive celebration with a range of fun programs for employees.
 
Another big change was transforming the ceremony into a festival where employees could take center stage and celebrate their achievements. In the past, it was always tradition for executives to present the awards. This year, however, the previous year’s winners took their place, adding significance for employees. Around 400 winners gathered at LG Academy (LG’s Corporate University) and enjoyed a range of fun activities such as a stamp tour, a treasure hunt, and a photo zone. Another 300 winners who were not able to make it in person and 800 employees watched the ceremony online. 
 
During the event, small groups of employees freely explored the venue, participating in a stamp tour. They had six missions to complete: Expressing their thoughts after winning the award, predicting the winner of this year’s Customer Impression Grand Award, snapping a photo at the photo wall, finding treasures in the building, and listening to a special lecture on customer value. Those who successfully completed the missions had the chance to win prizes such as LG Room and TV and LG Gram View through a lottery.
 
“I participated in various programs with teammates that I have worked hard with,” said Cha Jeong-yeon from LG Electronics. “It feels like a college festival, and we made a lot of great memories.”
 
LG AI Researcher Lee Si-haeng spoke about the good feelings everyone got from the event. “I felt proud of what I've done as our work was recognized and celebrated today.”
 
■ First prize went to the teams that created exceptional customer value, not the ones that reported better business results.
 
This year, five teams won the Customer Impression Grand Award in four categories: Future Innovation, Experience Innovation, Foundation Innovation, and Customer Satisfaction Practice. Winners were selected solely from the customer’s perspective, regardless of technology or business performance. 
 
Among them was the Farm Hannong Team, which developed a bio pest control solution that protects fruit trees from fire blight disease. The disease arrived in Korea in 2015 and leaves trunks and leaves turning black as if burnt. It is highly contagious and once infected, the trees must be destroyed quickly. In severe cases, entire orchards are forced to shut down and unable to produce fruit for up to five years. To the end of last year, the disease resulted in damages exceeding 270 billion won and the forced destruction of 10,000 hectares of fruit trees.
 
Until recently, farmers had been resorting to general pesticides indiscriminately due to a lack of specialized products or control measures for fire blight. This often led to further damage to trees, undermining their ability to blossom or produce fruit.
 
To counter this, the Farm Hannong Team developed the first bio pest to control fire blight in Korea and provided advice on when to use it and with which pesticides, thereby helping to prevent further damage. “For farmers, fire blight equals a death sentence,” said Oh Tae-hyun, the Team leader of Farm Hannong. “It’s more rewarding to bring smiles back to customers than see improved statistics like sales and profits or by making a bigger contribution to the national economy.”
 
Another notable achievement is the Customer Impression Grand Award winner for Customer Satisfaction Practice. Senior Researcher Park Se-ra and Senior Manager Kang Seok-hwan from Customer Value Innovation Office of LG Electronics redesigned the product experience for customers with disabilities. They organized an advisory group comprising people with disabilities and listened to their needs so they could address various inconveniences. Ultimately, they came up with Braille strikers for individuals with low vision and user-friendly products whose controls are repositioned so that those with limited motor skills can operate them comfortably from a wheelchair.
 
“There are so many great products revolutionizing the customer experience. Our goal was to address the disparity where people with physical limitations couldn’t enjoy the same benefits,” said Park. “We personally met customers with different physical conditions and worked to create a product that is convenient to use for everyone.” 
 
The LG Display team was honored with the same prize in the Future Innovation Category for a new immersive display with superior image quality, enhanced viewing angles, and lower power consumption compared to the competition. A team from LG Chem team took home the accolade in the Foundation Innovation Category for building a production system that can manufacture recycled plastics of the same quality as general products.
 
Nam Ki-woong from LG Energy Solution’s Small Battery Business earned first prize in the Customer Satisfaction Practice for his proposal of a joint analysis with a laptop maker to improve battery life. Although the given product’s warranty has already expired and LG Energy Solution was no longer responsible for the battery, he took proactive steps to collaborate with the laptop manufacturer and address customer pain points.
 
At this year’s ceremony, a total of 112 teams were recognized with LG Awards: the top five winners of the Customer Impression Grand Award, 65 winners of the Customer Satisfaction Award, and 42 winners of the Customer Empathy Award. LG does not determine the number of awards in advance, and as more employees strive to demonstrate customer value, the number of winning teams has increased over the years (27 teams in 2019, 44 teams in 2020, 50 teams in 2021, 74 teams in 2022, 112 teams in 2023).
 
“We're introducing more rigorous standards every year, but the number of winning teams has more than doubled compared to two years ago,” explained a company representative.