ScaleAround sponsored the Specialist Team of the Year award at the 28th Cnect Wales Awards on Friday 25 September 2026, and I had the job of presenting it on stage at Cardiff City Stadium. More than 500 people from Wales’ customer contact and customer experience industry filled the room, Judi Love hosted, and the standard of the shortlists was a reminder of how much serious operational talent sits in this country. Here is why we backed it, who won, and what stayed with me from the night.
The event
The Cnect Wales Awards have been running for 28 years, which makes them one of the longest-standing industry awards in Wales. They recognise the people and teams behind customer contact and customer experience, an industry that employs tens of thousands across south Wales and that most of the country deals with every week without thinking about it. The bank you ring, the utility you query, the retailer you chase, the public service you book. Somewhere in Wales there is a team on the other end, and these are their awards.
The 2026 ceremony was a black-tie evening at Cardiff City Stadium with more than 500 guests, hosted by the comedian and presenter Judi Love. The categories run from individual awards for advisers and team leaders through to the big team and organisation awards, and the shortlists this year ran deep.
Why we sponsored
We joined Cnect Wales this year because customer operations is where AI is arriving fastest and where the decisions about it are hardest. Sponsoring the awards was the obvious next step. It puts a Cardiff technology consultancy in front of the leaders who run those operations, and it backs an event that has spent nearly three decades recognising the people who do the work rather than the people who talk about it.
Specialist Team of the Year was a good fit for us. It recognises the teams that support customer operations or internal colleagues from behind the scenes, the people whose work is felt everywhere and seen almost nowhere. Fraud teams, complaints specialists, people service desks, the teams that fix the thing before the customer notices it was broken. That is a fair description of good technology leadership too, and it is the kind of work we respect most.
The winners
The category was split in two this year, one award for teams supporting customers and one for teams supporting colleagues.
Specialist Team of the Year, Customer, went to Pepper Money, with SSCL’s Overpayment Hub taking silver.
Specialist Team of the Year, Colleague, went to Deloitte’s People Service Desk, with Legal & General’s Customer Operations Business Optimisation Team taking silver.
Congratulations to all four. Reading the shortlists beforehand, what struck me was how much of the best work was about removing friction for other people, quietly and measurably. A team that took a painful process and made it disappear. A team that turned a backlog into a service. None of it was glamorous. All of it was the kind of work that makes an organisation better in ways the customer never sees and always feels.
Presenting the award
Presenting an award is a small job with a large audience. You walk up, the room is loud, the envelope is gold, and you have a few seconds to say something that does the winners justice. Specialist teams are the ones who make everyone else look good, and the industry runs on them. That is what the award recognises, and it was a privilege to hand it over.
What stayed with me
Two things.
First, the operational discipline in the room. Contact centre and customer operations leaders measure everything, know their numbers cold, and are used to being held to them. Every conversation I had at the table came back to a metric, a process, a measured improvement. That is a culture technology teams could learn from, and it is why AI adoption in this sector, done properly, has such a strong chance of actually paying off. The people who already measure their processes are the people who will know whether AI improved them.
Second, how many of those leaders are now carrying AI decisions they were never trained for. Which tools to allow, what data can go where, how to answer a client’s questions about it, whether the supplier’s claims are true. Nobody at the table had a bad instinct. Most had nobody senior and technical to check it with. That gap is the reason we joined, and it was visible all evening. Our piece on where AI agents actually save time in the back office is the kind of straight answer those conversations needed.
What it says about Welsh business
An industry that fills Cardiff City Stadium on a Friday night to celebrate its specialist teams is an industry in good health. The customer contact sector in Wales has grown from a cost centre into the place most businesses compete on experience, and the quality on display reflected that. We have written about where Welsh technology leadership is heading, and this room was a good reminder that the operational talent is already here. What it needs is the technology leadership to match.
Next
We will be at Cnect Wales events through the year, including the Senior Leader Conference in November. If you were at the awards and want to pick up the conversation, or you lead a customer operation and have an AI or technology question you would rather ask quietly, our contact page is the place. We have also written about why we joined Cnect Wales.
Frequently asked questions
When and where were the Cnect Wales Awards 2026 held?
Friday 25 September 2026 at Cardiff City Stadium, the 28th year of the awards, hosted by Judi Love, with more than 500 guests.
Which award did ScaleAround sponsor?
Specialist Team of the Year, presented on the night by Oliver Smith, ScaleAround’s founder, in two categories, Customer and Colleague.
Who won Specialist Team of the Year 2026?
Pepper Money won the Customer category, with SSCL’s Overpayment Hub taking silver. Deloitte’s People Service Desk won the Colleague category, with Legal & General’s Customer Operations Business Optimisation Team taking silver.
What does Specialist Team of the Year recognise?
Teams that support customer operations or internal colleagues from behind the scenes, such as fraud, complaints, people services and process improvement teams, whose work is felt across the organisation.
Why does a technology consultancy sponsor a customer contact awards event?
Because customer operations is where AI is being adopted fastest, and where the leaders making those decisions most need honest technology advice. Backing the awards puts ScaleAround alongside the people doing that work.
Will ScaleAround sponsor again?
We intend to stay involved with Cnect Wales and its events. The awards were the right place to start.