I'm pleased to announce the winner of this year's Scheduler of the Year Contest. She won both the raw vote award, as well as the weighted vote award.

The winner is Barbry Booth of Customer Impact. Congratulations, Barbry!

We received an astounding 78 nominations this year. Each and every nominated scheduler is a winner, in my book. They've all worked hard to earn those nominations, and the votes they received.

The top ten, including multiple ties for 10th place, include:

Barbry Booth - Customer Impact
Sally A. Craig – KSS
Barb Harris – KSS
Dante Beck - Integrity Consultants
Ryan Stiffler – KSS
Sonja DeMarco – KSS
Kathy Hart - Clear Evaluations
Daniel Price - Customer Impact
Jackie Jacoby – KSS
Erika Patten Miller - Amusement Advantage
Alan Juarez - KSS
Josh Francy – Mintel
Thomas Gall – Mintel
Dixie Gilmore- Shoppers Critique

It should be noted that KSS schedulers have 6 of the 10 top place spots because they voted for one another. If we do a future contest, we will likely exclude votes employees of mystery shopping companies. However, despite that effort, Barby Booth easily carried the winning vote.

We will be in touch with Barby & Customer Impact soon, to give her our congratulations!

Thank you to everybody who participated.

YAY, Barbry! She is awesome.

Congratulations Barbry! Well deserved!

Congratulations, Barbry!

Oops, I think I never signed up for Customer Impact. Never heard of it before or if I have signed up, I did not know if they had shops in Toronto. Itching to work with Barbry, someday.

Yes, schedulers voting for other schedulers of their own company is unseemly and those votes should be excluded.

@JacobJ wrote:

It should be noted that KSS schedulers have 6 of the 10 top place spots because they voted for one another. If we do a future contest, we will likely exclude votes employees of mystery shopping companies. However, despite that effort, Barby Booth easily carried the winning vote.

Good job, Jacob! And congratulations to Barbry. I agree that it would be a welcome change for next year to exclude the votes employees of mystery shopping companies.

I fully agree, Jacob. Strictly speaking, the shoppers should be the judges in determining who the best scheduler is. Fellow schedulers should have no vote on this. This is not a contest among peers.

Jacob - The challenge in the future will be to know which voters are shoppers, and which are employees of MSCs. I suggest that only posters who had registered a month (or two weeks?) earlier would be eligible to vote - which would work as long as you just announce the contest, not announce that there will be a contest in a month. There is no perfect system.

There is no perfect system, but I m thrilled 2 of my favorite scheduler's made the top 10.

Congratulations, Barbry!

Congratulations! You Rock!

Congrats Barbry! WOOHOO!!!!

Congratulations to Barbry and to Customer Impact. I'd love to hear from them and to know what kind of impact this has on the number of shopper applications they get in the next couple of weeks.

Barbry is truly the best of the best and it's wonderful to see her recognized as such! Congratulations Barbry!

(heart)

Damn, KSS essentially cheated, and they still couldn't pull out the win.

@Mantis wrote:

Damn, KSS essentially cheated, and they still couldn't pull out the win.

That was the reason I didn't participate this year. KSS did the same thing last year and, IMO, made the whole thing into a popularity contest for KSS.

@GMooneyhan MBSC wrote:

That was the reason I didn't participate this year. KSS did the same thing last year and, IMO, made the whole thing into a popularity contest for KSS.

Luckily not all shoppers felt that way or it would have worked. As with many new ideas bugs have to be worked out through trial and error. Thanks to everyone who participated despite the flaws and imperfections of the system.

Exactly!

That is precisely why I did make it a point to participate this year. I wanted the ones I knew to be deserving to be recognized. Declaring a winner was a fun thing to do. But placing all the emphasis on one winner or the process to choose that winner missed the point of recognizing ALL deserving schedulers. Prime examples are schedulers who work for smaller companies that had no chance of winning because not nearly enough forum members were familiar with their work. I'm glad to read about everyone who was nominated. Kern's enthusiasm for the contest and voting for fellow schedulers was certainly a way to stack the deck. But I also recognize Kern battles an unfair prejudice by shoppers against scheduling companies. Personally, I am pleased to be reminded of great schedulers at a fine company I may discount to my detriment. I just have to look at the voting allowing for the source of votes if I choose to do so.

I was hoping for more participation that would allow more deserving schedulers to have a place in this discussion. This forum has value because of the valued contributions by its members. I am disappointed to see some forum members chose to not participate because of flaws in the process and have deprived us all of their contribution to this significant topic. Thanks to everyone who did participate and here's hoping any future contest generates more discussion.

Amen to vlade. The contest had accomplished its major purpose. Way to go!