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Martin Hill-Wilson

Martin is a leading customer engagement and digital business strategist. Also an author and international keynote speaker. Working under my own brand, Brainfood Consulting, I design masterclasses and transformational change helping clients evolve their social and digital capabilities. Current topics include omni-channel design, proactive, low effort customer experience, social customer service and customer hubs. All themed around service innovation.

Using customer hubs  as a milestone towards full digital competency
Even service organisations that consider themselves advanced in their omni-channel capabilities face the barrier of internal silos and competing agendas. This remains a strategic weakness in terms of real time responsiveness.

Digitally empowered customers have reset the bar on acceptable customer experience. Organisations that want to prosper in this new regime have to adopt a new mind-set and leadership capabilities. But how to escape the days of siloed customer engagement and the idea that the service organisation was solely responsible for customer experience.

Today, market leadership means taking a fresh approach to continuous improvement and service innovation: re-energised through new partnerships with customers and employees. Customer hubs provide a low risk evolutionary path.

The hubs draw together a number of competencies into a new form of working relationship. This includes the front office (sales, marketing, service), analytics, change management and collaboration. Together they become a hub of innovation, improvement and competitive responsiveness for the rest of the organisation.

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Dr Nicola Millard

Dr Nicola Millard heads up Customer Insight & Futures in BT’s Global Innovation Team.  Despite working for a technology company, Nicola isn’t a technologist and combines psychology with futurology to try and anticipate what might be lying around the corner for both customers and organisations (sadly, her crystal ball is broken).

Nicola has worked for BT for 25 years. She has done a number of jobs around the BT business, including user interface design, customer service and business consulting. She was involved with a number of BT “firsts”, including the first application of intelligent systems into BT’s call centres and BT’s initial experimentation with home working.

Nicola got her PhD from Lancaster University in 2005 on motivational technologies in contact centres, published her first book in 2009 and now spends most of her time doing research, writing blogs, articles and white papers. Nicola has appeared on both the BBC (Radio and TV) and Channel 4 in the UK, as well as TV and radio in Australia, South Africa, Turkey and Dubai. She has done a TED talk about why people accept or reject technologies and is also a judge on a number of award panels, including the Institute of Customer Service awards.

When she’s not doing all that, Nicola travels around the world presenting at conferences and running workshops with an assortment of BT’s large global corporate clients including banks, travel companies and retailers, to name but a few

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Steve Morrell

Steve Morrell is the Managing Director of ContactBabel, which was founded in 2001 to provide high-quality research and analysis to the UK contact centre industry. He has written hundreds of research reports and his opinion on contact centres has been featured on the BBC, ITV, Sky, the Guardian. Forbes and the Financial Times.

He has recently become Managing Director of AboutMatch.co.uk, which helps UK contact centres find the right suppliers for them.

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Louise Locke

Louise Locke has been the Site Director of Customer Service at Booking.com for the past 3 years

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Nicholas Cockerill

Nick joined Sky Betting and Gaming a little over 4 years ago as Product Manager for payments and customer data products.  Following the phenomenally rapid growth of the organisation over that time, Nick has recently created a new ‘OpTech’ (Operations Technology) team at SBG with the goal of delivering tools that transform how Operations achieve their goals through the use of technology, as well as better serve customers on the front end.

Nick has previously been responsible for the Northern European P+L for Performance Footwear at the Adidas Group and the online white label portfolio at Asda Walmart, including the multi-million-pound development and launch of Asda Tyres. Nick also has experience of founding his own business designing and manufacturing sports footwear and fitness equipment and has previously had experience in working with external investors from the Russell Group and Yorkshire Forward as well as through private equity.

Outside of work, Nick is an endurance athlete, 2-time Ironman triathlete and more recently (very slowly) put a couple of ultramarathons under his belt in the Lake District and along the Calderdale Way.  When he’s not outside you can normally find him at a piano attempting to play a bit of jazz.

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David Rowley

David has been with Direct Line Group for 3 years and is the Artificial Intelligence Programme Manager with responsibility for owning the AI strategy, implementation and optimisation.

David has 10 years experience of Programme managing change within the Insurance and Utilities industries, specialising in business process re-engineering and the implementation of new technology, combining to improve customer experience and deliver tangible benefits.

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Peter Finding

I am an international employment lawyer – I support businesses in the UK and across the world with tricky (or potentially tricky) situations involving their people. Clients tell me they appreciate my feel for managing sensitive reputational and commercial issues, not just the legal detail.

I joined Taylor Vinters as a partner in 2018, having practiced employment law and industrial relations at leading firms in London and Melbourne, Australia.

I provide strategic advice to multinational and domestic clients in a range of sectors including technology, the creative world, sport and financial services, with a particular focus on:

• protecting businesses from harm by enforcing post-termination restrictions, and designing holistic retention strategies
• managing difficult exits
• managing domestic, cross-border and multi-jurisdictional restructuring projects and site closures/moves
• dealing with sensitive grievance, disciplinary and performance management issues
• employment litigation in the High Court and Employment Tribunal
• designing innovative employment models suitable for a workplace landscape in flux

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Barry Shields

Barry has worked in the Contact Centre Industry since 2001, beginning his career as an Inbound Customer Service advisor for 121. His huge passion for everything mobile has resulted in him spending 15 of the last 18 years in various mobile networks. Having worked his way through the various Contact Centre management roles, Barry joined Three in 2012 to set up their Business Retention operation in Glasgow. During this time Barry has witnessed many changes in customer behaviour and technology which have changed how Contact Centres operate, however the current transformation programme within the commercial teams in Three UK which puts customer effort at its core, is exciting and is expected to bring significant change.

Outside of work life, Barry’s 2 main passions are travel and football which he tries to combine as much as possible, much to his wife’s annoyance.

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Richard Atkins

Richard joined Fidelity International in January 2018, as Head of Pension Services. Richard overseas the inbound contact generated by all of Fidelity’s pension customers, across both its workplace and retail pension products and from all different mediums.

A strong believer in continuous improvement and customer feedback, Richard is driven as much by Net Promoter Scores (NPS) as he is with traditional time bound SLA’s. Following the formation of a virtual ‘Close the Loop’ team, across the customer front line areas, a number of initiatives have been implemented – to the benefit of the customer as well as Fidelity.

Prior to joining Fidelity Richard managed Legal & General’s Mastertrust Pension Scheme and Independent Governance Committee (IGC) boards. This required Richard to act as an intermediary between the Non-Executive Directors, the employers, pension scheme members and the Service Provider to ensure a scalable, well governed and value for money pension scheme. Richard reported to the independent Chairman of the Trustees and IGC.

Richard has worked in the pensions industry since 2000 where he has held a variety of senior leadership roles in both the defined benefit and defined contribution environments.

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Trish Roberts

Trish joined Fidelity International in November 2014, and is now the Voice of the Client Manager for the UK. Trish supports our End Investor and Workplace Investing Voice of the Client programme, and plays a lead operational role globally for the programme. In 2017, when Fidelity moved to a global Voice of the Client programme, Trish was a key contributor in the creation and roll out of VoC across the UK business.

A strong believer in partnering with the business to achieve client centric initiatives, Trish has helped to increase the NPS of her respective areas over the last four years and continuously works to embed a world class voice of the client programme. She has created and supported a range of new programmes of work to provide a well-rounded view of the customer journey

Prior to joining Fidelity Trish worked on continuous improvement programmes and call centre initiatives at Westpac New Zealand, bringing change that supported the client being at the heart for Westpac.

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Andrew McGuigan

A senior, strategic leader specialising in contact centre operations with an outstanding record of delivering demanding targets and significant change in challenging, complex and fast paced environments. Andrew has been working at Microsoft for the past 2 years.

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Nick King

A consumer psychologist and expert in digital media and marketing, possessing the experience to analyse and interpret trends in consumer adoption of technology and develop strategies for customer acquisition and retention through digital and traditional offline channels. 

Nick joined Auto Trader in January 2007 running Business Intelligence and in 2010 built the retailer insight team running master classes and webinars, He also makes short films to evangelise about data, insight and marketing and speaks regularly at conferences round the world.

After graduating from Loughborough, Nick spent 3 years in advertising and planning at Dorlands and Lintas, 3 years as a rock star with Great Northern Electrics, ran a music production company, was a publisher on High-end HiFi magazines at Petersen/EMAP for 7 years and a Marketing Manager at Superscape for 3 years.

He then spent 4 years, as the Director of Research at Diffiniti / Carat Interactive, responsible for a team of researchers advising a range of Blue-chip clients (AOL, Auto Trader, Coco-Cola, Diageo, Disney, Kodak, Renault, Halifax, Aviva, and Orange) on the development of their marketing and communications strategies in the Digital arena. And from here, joined Auto Trader.

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Sean McMahon

Sean is a CRM specialist and thought-leader in the field of customer contact.

His client portfolio includes RBS, ABN Amro, Barclays Capital and Coutts.  He gained momentum at the height of the personal computing revolution and implemented solutions to create personalised services within traditional business models.

As CRM systems became more commonplace, Sean headed projects in CRM Case Management and Property Maintenance systems for Victim Support, Witness Service and the RCFA.  He is now back on the international trail with Belron, the brand owner for Autoglass, Safelite & Carglass.

Sean’s work is driven by a passion for service perfection.  With a new tool kit afforded by SaaS and of course, the smartphone explosion, he enjoys being at the cutting edge of service transformation.

Customer engagement, enablement and ease of use are his primary focus.  And if the old doctrines look like they may get in the way of customer service perfection, they are ripe for a shakeup.

At present, Sean is driving a global connected-customer approach.  He is forming strategies to keep customer conversations ‘front and centre’ and working with international business teams to raise their thought trajectory around voice, data and contact technologies.

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Zane Rudovska

Areas of expertise – Customer care, direct sales, telemarketing and operations in Fintech companies. Has been in Customer care over 10 years.

Cooperated with several markets to assure Customer care business goal achievement, improving processes for customers and agents, created standards and main KPIs. Launched operations in several markets across Europe, Asia and Latin America. Developed direct sales as a great channel to generate more money by using Customer care teams who can deliver millions across Group markets. Has always found a potential in existing customer portfolio and showed to markets how to utilize it in a smart way!

Believing that Customer care is the key for sustainable business. In love with new strategies, CX improvements and innovative technologies how to drive customer care and make it more effective.

Passionate about challenges ahead & being sure that openness and communication within the team is the best tool to make things happen!

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Gerry Brown

Well seasoned, but not over cooked author, speaker, workshop facilitator and consultant with broad experience in customer service, customer experience, contact centre, & CRM, for a range of market segments in the UK, Canada, EMEA & the USA.

Over that that time I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. I take a unique approach that eschews the newest shiny toys as a starting point and focuses on four fundamental principles that must underpin and drive a successful customer experience strategy, Culture, Commitment, Communication and Community.

As a vocal and demanding customer myself, I truly understand the frustration, anger and disappointment that characterize many customers’​ experiences with businesses. I’ve been involved in the customer service business in one form or another for over thirty years in strategic, operational and logistical roles. I’ve worked with some of the best customer experience “gurus” and some of the best and worst companies, all of whom have been vibrant, creative and life changing influences.

I help customer service directors, customer experiences leaders and MDs to develop actionable insights, drive value and improve profitable customer retention by focusing on Customer Inspired Thinking that will help them in:

• Evaluating what customers really think of them & why
• Quantifying how much bad service really costs them
• Identifying & addressing areas for improvement
• Engaging, involving and inspiring their employees to find their inner customer
• Introducing & integrating the right technology at the right time for the right reasons
• Measuring what matters – to customers

By doing this successfully, and consistently, I hope to avoid undignified impoverishment in my later years and grow old gracefully and gratefully.

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Claire Carroll

Claire joined Coop as Head of Customer and Membership Services in 2015, within 2 years she had transformed a broken operation into an award-winning contact centre at the heart of a revitalised retail giant. She is currently delivering the next stage of the journey, which is to bring together customer facing contact centres across all of the Coop business units as a centre of excellence.

She has worked in Contact Centres for over 20 years and is passionate about supporting and raising the profile of the Contact Centre Industry. She has been a Board Member of the Contact Centre Management Association (CCMA) for over 7 years. Claire has worked in the Finance, Insurance, Communications and retail sectors working for organisations such as GE Capital Bank, VirginMedia, HomeServe and BT.

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Scarlett Bayes

Scarlett is dedicated to providing insightful and practical research to the service desk industry through investigating trends, analysing data, and engaging with the IT service community. You can find more of Scarlett’s work on the SDI blog and can follow her on Twitter @SDIScarlett.

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John Mihill

Proven record of change management to improve online service operations, reduce costs and build award winning teams in online retail at Dixons Stores Group, The White Company, T.M. Lewin & Heal & Sons

Experienced in managing high volume, multi-channel retail contact centres, particularly skilled in people management & identifying changes needed to improve performance and build award winning teams

Obsessive and passionate in his belief only great teams can provide a consistent & an outstanding customer experience, Work has to be enjoyable if you want to get the best out of people.

Also passionate that Customer Service must be seen to contribute to the bottom line and the overall success of any business

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Sascha Evans

Sascha is a theatre producer and curator of immersive experiences.  Sascha has worked with some of the UK’s leading theatres companies including Bristol Old Vic, Battersea Arts Centre, as well as leading West End producers.  She has also worked as with immersive theatre companies and in pervasive gaming.

Sascha has raised over £1million for charities and advises charities on donor journeys and communications.

Sascha is currently working in education, bringing creativity and a highly personalised approach to the customer experience.

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Llaura Hughes

Llaura joined Motability Operations in October 2016 bringing with her over 11 years of experience within the financial services sector and eight years as a Learning & Development professional. She manages a team of trainers and communication specialists who are responsible for the knowledge management and communications within the organisation via an internal facing virtual agent (Ask Mo). Over the past 12 months her team have launched an external facing customer virtual assistant combining it with pre-existing live chat functionality and are utilising the findings from speech analytics to ensure that any interaction with a customer focuses on emotional intelligence rather than concentrating solely on business process. Llaura is currently undertaking an MSc in Occupational Psychology with an avid interest in building psychological capital and the prevalence of neurodiversity within the workplace. This has enabled her to consider how her teams can continue to support the organisation to maintain high levels of both customer service and high employee engagement.

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Mark Billingham

Mark is currently a Financial Services Board member & Group Customer Operations Director at Shop Direct Group, the UK’s second largest online retailer which owns very.co.uk and littlewoods.com, he has had a varied career spanning 15+ years across Operational management, Transformation and Customer Experience. In 2018 Shop Direct were recognised as industry leading by the European Call Centre awards for their Customer transformation programmes which in just 12 months improved tnps by 70 points, first contact resolution by 22 points and reduced overall customer contact by 30%.

Previously, Mark has been responsible for major customer changes at British Gas and Vodafone, most notably as Customer Experience Director at Vodafone, improving TNPS by 70 points, first contact resolution by 20% points, reducing complaints by 60% and driving a 40% reduction in call volume. While at Vodafone Mark also led the implementation of AI (Tobi) and the growth of Digital Customer Service through web chat and messaging which now makes up over 40% of overall service.

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Charlotte Forrest

I have worked for good causes for over 13 years and gained a huge amount of experience in a variety of fundraising roles. Prior to taking on my current role at Save the Children, I worked as an innovation consultant at Good Innovation, and ran the Special Projects team at WaterAid where I delivered 2 DFID match funding appeals – the last of which raised £5m, £4m of which was matched by the UK Government.

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Ian Webber-Rostrom

A tenacious leader with a strong track record in managing the end to end lifecycle of contact centre operations: in house and outsourced, onshore and offshore. Ian has been the Head of Outsourcing and International for N Brown Group for over 3 years

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David Craggs

Dave is the Director of Banking Operations at Metro Bank with responsibility for Contact Centres and a number of back office operations.  He has over 20 years of Financial Services contact centre management experience starting with the launch of Barclays very first centres.  He has directed centres servicing products including current account accounts, SME banking, mortgages, savings and specialist lending.