This month we are absolutely delighted to bring you an interview with the wonderful Customer Experience and Change Management expert Michelle Spaul. Michelle is a collaborative problem solver with a catchphrase ‘Not for Tech’s sake’ and a love of strategic planning…. Enjoy the interview!

  • Michelle, you are currently an independent CXM Consultant and Mentor.  Can you tell us what this entails?

How long have you got! I come from a place of believing I would be hypocritical if I had a cast in stone playbook, when I help clients understand and meet customer needs. So I offer ‘styles’ of service. My support can be as low key as a workshop or mentoring or can be a big fat CXM project. Either way it is my goal to give clients skills and confidence as well as results. My clients ask for fixes to CX that are hurting their business, they seek insights into customer experience and how to manage it, they often ask for new capabilities. As an independent, I bring in other consultants and specialists when I cannot do a client justice alone.

As you will see with my answers there is a common theme. I am interested in making CXM a lever for sustainable growth. I believe we can only do that if we get the basics right for customers and for employees. So, I often work with risk, governance, business case, strategic alignment and a bunch of other stuff that many people find a little bit dull ☹

  • You’ve got some fantastic experience across a wide range of sectors. Please can you tell us which role you’ve enjoyed the most and why?

My favourite role doesn’t have a CX label. Though it was almost pureplay Customer Experience Management. I worked with a huge IT project migrating around 5,000 of my colleagues between operating systems, devices and software. I balanced the needs of the project and the business. I love the strategic planning aspect, the logistics and communications, and the personalisation of every single migration. I switched between advocate and advisor, problem solver and cajoler multiple times an hour. It was immensely satisfying. My mantra was ‘no-one left behind’ and we did it.

  • Using Voice of the Customer services to drive continuous improvement is at the core of your approach.  Why is that and how does it work?

VoC really is at the core of my work. And that is because I believe it is at the core of CXM. We can only understand our customers, their needs and perceptions if we listen to them. VoC is also quick to results and can be used to fix, improve, transform and disrupt. It illustrates (underpins?) journey maps, north stars and empathy maps.

 How does it work? I talk about four steps to good Voice of the Customer. Gather, Analyse, Share and Act. The first step is about listening and we can use any listening posts where customers are talking about us. I recommend a blend of solicited and unsolicited feedback, though I feel it is important to start with one listening post and implement the whole process before getting too clever with the data. Analyse is where we turn feedback into insights. Or to be less jargony, where we work out what the feedback is telling us. For individual customers, this might be ‘Fred is unhappy, sort out his service’. Systemically it might be Fred is one of 120 customers who complained about their service and like 86 others he didn’t renew. We always say CXM is a team sport and now the CX team need to pass the baton. Share is where we communicate to create empathy and inspire action. I want to see fewer charts and dashboards. We need more stories and ‘so what’. Finally action. Never ask for feedback if you won’t take action. Action can repair and revive individual relationships, or can resolve a systemic issue that is driving away custom. It can also transform a touchpoint or internal performance and, most excitingly, it can lead to innovation that disrupts our market.

  • What has been your biggest success in terms of CX initiatives in your career to date?

I must be getting old as no project has lived up to the challenges and thrills of my first. In 1992, I worked for Philips as a University intern. My role was to prevent product returns.

 Guess what! I listened to customers, determined issues and opportunities, shared information with my colleagues and drove so many actions I can’t remember them all.

But there were fixes – largely resolving quality issues, thought in one case I worked with purchasing and a supplier to agree a huge cost reduction by sharing my insights and evidence. We made improvements in the near term. These were largely around packaging, communications and other quick wins. But over a longer timescale we changed the colour of an entire product range and massively reduced so-called ‘no fault found’ returns. I also made recommendations implemented as design good practice and introduced in future product lines.

I won the Chairman’s quality award, saved millions and was awarded an MSc by the University of Brighton. I also got to speak with high profile retail customers and helped build stronger relationship. What I learnt on that project has been invaluable. And from a VoC perspective there wasn’t a survey in sight!

  • Not all CX initiatives go to plan! Have you ever had something not be as successful as you may have hoped and what did you learn from that?

I really want to help founders get CXM right. Doing so halves the risk of early life business failure. So, I am involved with several accelerators. In January this year I attended a ‘meet the mentors’ session. We took turns to introduce ourselves and then each mentor hosted conversations in individual breakout rooms. During the introductions I realised I was the only person not talking about finance and funding. During the breakouts no-one visited my room ☹. In fact, the session host put out a request for people to visit me because I was all alone. So I guess I still have a way to go to demonstrate the value of CXM when competing with the lure of funding…

  • What skillsets do you feel people wanting to pursue a career CX now need to really develop?

I think the most important is business acumen. CXM cannot deliver value if you don’t understand what your organisation and stakeholders value. Start by learning about your organisation, its history, what makes your colleagues tick, how things get done… Use these insights to work out how to support and influence stakeholders. The rest falls into place.

I also believe all CX Practitioners need change and communications skills and that some understanding of project management can’t go amiss. These skills help deliver value. Even if you are blessed with a project manager, knowing how to frame opportunities is vital to winning support, building a business case and changing how people act.

When it comes to the CX toolkit I don’t expect anyone to be an expert at it all. So, the skillset is to be open to learning, to asking for support and for recognising there is no such thing as best practice. There are things that work well and less well and the skill lies in choosing the right one for your situation.

  • You are a voluntary NED with The Customer Institute – what does that involve?

Fun! I have a lovely team of three (including me). We are responsible for helping members find the right technology for their needs. I surveyed the other directors to understand their aspirations for this service and designed a knowledge hub structure to give this support. I own the VoC section and will be populating it shortly. My lovely colleagues Rolu Adebola and Gökhan Kaya will be adopting technologies, and we are on the lookout for more volunteers.

  • How important has professional networking been for your career development?  And how much of this has been virtual or in person?  

In CX we come from an array of backgrounds and I think this is our strength. I enjoy nothing more than getting my CX geek on and learning from others. But the sad truth is that networking is also part of Business Development and I am not very good at that. I have to psyche myself up for in person events. So you will continue to see me online and will see me more often in person. So please say hello!

  • How do you see CX evolving in the future?

Oh the big question. I would like to see CXM recognised and managed as a business discipline. The CXPA is moving us in that direction but doesn’t enjoy universal support. We might end up with several bodies like accountants, but I think that would be a shame as I believe we need consistency and transparency in what we do and recommend.

  • How do you see AI influencing CX beyond the call centre?

I’m glad you said beyond the call centre as CX innovation there is too late. Firstly because it is late on the customer journey and secondly because it has a narrow scope. I’m interested to see AI drafting customer descriptions. Whether that is a persona, empathy map or customer journey. But these outputs have to be tested internally and with customers. I am also a little concerned about the biases and assumptions that can be reinforced with these methods. Nonetheless a great deal of work can be eliminated and the quicker we can use these tools to share understanding and evoke empathy the better. I’d also like to see better orchestration of our part in customers’ journeys from marketing to support. Can you imagine a website that is blank except for the question ‘how can we help you today’?

But I’d like to share a cautionary tale. With LLMs we have a serious issue of garbage in garbage out. I am working with a tech specialist to create an AI Agent that can summarise the capabilities of VoC platforms. But all it does is repeat marketing. In fact no matter which platform we test it on, the results are the same. And that is because marketing is similar across all these platforms. To my despair CX colleagues looking for the right platform have to speak to sales to get pertinent information. Multiply that by every question our clients ask of AI and we quickly see why knowledge management is key to AI success in CXM.

  • Can you describe your perfect client?

I have three ‘Ideal Client Profiles’ but their common characteristic is a desire to do better and a recognition that the way we manage customer experience make a huge difference to organisations, their customers and their employees.

For the record. I help CX Practitioners who are stuck, or feel alone. And I support two type of business leader. Those who are managing established organisations and are tired of that sinking feeling when they realise they have let down their customers (again). As I mentioned before I also support founders, helping them build strong CXM foundations.

  • If you were setting up a CX team from scratch for an organisation where budget was no object, and nothing was in place –  what roles would your ideal team consist of? 

I misread this as ‘no budget’. That answer was easier because I answer it so often…

In CXM we spend money in three ways (but if I can also have a gelato cart, I would be happy).

  1. Investing in the CXM team. These people co-ordinate the setting of strategies and roadmaps. They include data analysts and story tellers. There are people setting vision and goals (maybe even managing governance) and those tackling the issues that are in our face right now. If they don’t exist elsewhere in the organisation, I would like some project and change managers too.

  2. Friends of CX. People in larger organisations are used to the idea of ‘buying’ time from other teams aka asking Jamail to be on our project team. In smaller organisations we often battle for resource, as there is so much to do and so little time to do it. So, I would spend a good chunk of my infinite budget on the gift of time for the people who design, make and deliver products, services and touchpoints. Here’s the controversy. I don’t know if journey design, orchestration and management belongs in this group or in the core CXM team. This also includes external spend for design, prototyping, upgrades etc.

  3. Technology. I think I have just coined a phrase – NTS!! Not for tech’s sake. The purpose of tech is to give people more time to do the fun, human stuff. To manage huge amounts of data. To remove or expose biases and assumptions. So, it is important. I would prefer that organisations temper the temptation of IT managers to buy all singing all dancing solutions to build tech stacks using the right technology for the organisation. Oh and a decent data warehouse.

I think remember these three costs is vital, because the business case for each is different and we run the risk of cannibalising our, not infinite, budgets when we justify expenditure. For example, if you say I need to employ a data analyst and the justification is an improvement in CX, churn, costs etc, then any financial person worth their salt will not give you more money to make the changes needed to improve CX, churn, costs etc.

So I like your infinite budget question because the truth is building a team to manage customer experience is largely a leap of faith. Hence my ideal clients…

Kate Baird and Jo van Riemsdijk would like to thank Michelle Spaul for making time to speak to us and sharing her insights and thoughts.

We intend to continue producing these interviews with Senior Leaders throughout 2025. If you have a desire to hear from someone from a specific industry or there is a particular Leader you would love to hear from – please do let us know and we will do our best to accommodate. To subscribe to these newsletters – please do hit the subscribe button to make sure you don’t miss out on future editions.

CX Talent Ltd is the recruitment partner you need for all Customer Experience, Customer Operations, Transformationn, Strategy, Digital Experience and Service Design roles of all levels. We have been trading for over 13 years and are connected with the best and brightest talent. If you want to work with a recruitment partner who supports excellent candidate experience, diverse and inclusive recruitment practices and works with efficiency, integrity and honesty at all times – please do give us a call!

www.cxtalent.co.uk

We are delighted to present our first Newsletter of 2025, and it’s a cracker! Ben Phillips CCXP is a Certified CX Professional (CCXP) with almost 20 years working directly in Customer Experience (CX) roles for worldwide enterprise-grade organisations, both B2C and B2B.

He has held Director, Leader and consultancy positions in CX for market research agencies, financial companies and technology businesses.

He is part of an award-winning CX team and is the author of 3 books on the subject of CX, including “The CX Dictionary”. He is consistently ranked in the top #25 CX Influencers recognised by CX Magazine year on year. Ben presents keynotes, CX knowledge sessions and hosts events for companies worldwide.

He lives in the Midlands, UK with his family and is a passionate musician, Level 3 Personal Fitness Trainer and whisky enthusiast. We are grateful that he has taken the time to answer our questions and hope you enjoy this edition.

  • Ben, you are currently Head of Customer Experience Performance Centre at Fujitsu, can you tell us what this entails?

 

Yes, I am effectively the CX Practice Lead for the European business, so my job is to ensure the company and our colleagues follow best practices and use all of the tools, methods and technologies at our disposal to ensure better Customer Experiences.

  • You’ve got some fantastic experience across a wide range of sectors. Please can you tell us which role you’ve enjoyed the most and why?

 

I think it goes right back to my first role at a Mystery Shopping company where it all began – and the reason was not the subject material, but the start-up, hands-on, tightly knit feel & culture of the business. We all laughed together, cried together and I cut my teeth on market research, people management, account management, sales and a myriad of other things which have stayed with me ever since. Having said all that it was pretty nice travelling the world and learning about global CX culture working for almost 3 years at Nielsen, too 😊

  • You have a lot of experience in Market Research and Customer Insight businesses, how do you think this has influenced your approach to CX as a discipline?

 

Market research & Insights are fundamental to a completely rounded CX experience and remit. Perhaps I didn’t even understand that well enough at the start, but actually as time has gone on I realise that you can’t make business decisions based on whim, anecdote, and supposition. You need data like lifeblood to support business recommendations. Tell the story first and get the interest, then support the argument using empirical data. And anyway, research is just interesting and always surprising.

  • What has been your biggest success in terms of CX initiatives in your career to date?

 

Easily the way by which we set up a collaborative CX Team at Fujitsu, which was empowered to create whatever we needed to accelerate CX change within our organisation. We used untypical methods to create our engagements with country teams, ensuring that CX was not a “we’re going to do it for you” occupation but instead was one of “showing the way”. At the same time we were highly effective, very vocal and often showcased our progress on internal demo calls and Town Halls. We went on to win CX Team of the Year at Awards International’s European event in 2022 – so very happy with that!

  • Not all CX initiatives go to plan! Have you ever had something not be as successful as you may have hoped and what did you learn from that?

 

Learn to fail in CX, I can tell you that on day #1 :-D. Seriously, this is something people don’t get, it really isn’t like any other business discipline. Most of the time you are fighting against disbelievers who can’t see the financial return for the effort and therefore aren’t necessarily interested. But then when the penny drops the rewards are so much more beneficial.

I can remember trying something with AR technology involving Mystery Shopping at Nielsen which didn’t grow any legs, and I can also recall investing time and effort into creating personas at a previous company that got very little traction. But the counter to all of that is that none of it was invaluable – you learn to improve, try something else, re-engage, and get a little bit better at it each time.

  • What skillsets do you feel people wanting to pursue a career CX now need to really develop?

 

Today is always different to yesterday in fast-moving industries and CX is no exception, however I think storytelling is key in this business. I don’t mean making stuff up Hans Christiansen Andersen-style, I mean finding a way to make a business argument stick, and drill home the whole “What if we do, what if we don’t” positioning. You don’t have to be the world’s best presenter or speaker (although frequency of doing that helps a lot with just making it feel like another day on the job). What you need is to be able to look people in the eyes and have the confidence to express your most salient points and ensure sponsorship, budget, advocacy – whatever your goal might be.

  • How important has professional networking been for your career development?  And how much of this has been virtual or in person?

 

This is another one of those things I didn’t realise was important until I was already doing it, but it’s been instrumental in the roles I have secured at all of my previous companies. I’m talking about a spread of activity across professional networking groups. Including using LinkedIn, talking to peers in WhatsApp communities, keeping busy on the awards/reviews/publishing circuit, even sitting down with folks that might have something in mind for you. I did that very thing at a research company and ended up going to work for a digital agency just through sharing similar thoughts on CX over a coffee.

  • How do you see CX evolving in the future?

 

Well, I hope for all our sakes I am not the only one thinking it won’t be just because AI seems incredible and amazing and world-problem-solving. Because it isn’t. As long as AI is deployed as an evolved and complimentary service solution, then I have no problem with it. But I would 100%, any day of the week, expect (and nurture) human-to-human interaction and talent over and above any spend on automation or pseudo-service experiences. You go down that path, just because you think it’s clever and innovative, I think you’re asking for trouble. So – in answer to your question – capabilities for people to have the freedom to serve the customer any way that enhances the experience.

  • How do you see AI influencing CX beyond the call centre?

 

Read my previous question! 😀

  • If you had to describe the ultimate CX role for you – what would that look like?

 

Wow, good one. Okay, one that enables multi-cultural and multi-territory experience management, leveraging real-time data, creating and crafting solutions collaboratively, telling powerful and experience-changing stories, working with a great team and with top-down confidence and support that CX is exactly the right business area to invest in. There, what a mouthful.

  • If you were setting up a CX team from scratch for an organisation where budget was no object, and nothing was in place –  what roles would your ideal team consist of?

 

As I have done more than once 😉. This all depends on context – what is the type of business, who is the customer, what does CX really mean where you are, etc. But I guess my experience tells me I’d build a dream team made up of:

–              Great business networkers (to cross channels & silos in the biggest orgs)

–              Confident storytellers & presenters (to relay key business information effectively)

–              A good number cruncher (statistical background most likely)

–              Great trainers (to embed best CX principles and find ways to do this with different personalities)

–              Creatives (comms, graphics, content, marketing etc – it’s all critical to getting the message out and across)

One of the most important things is to have those individuals report in together as one team; not proxy-managed elsewhere or dotted line into someone else. You lose the imperative sense of team and demands on those people’s time would get split or diluted. So centralised collaborative team-working is best, and you can then create a team culture everyone else will be envious of. And the work is damn fun, too 😊

Welcome to the final newsletter of 2024. Jo van Riemsdijk and Kate Baird have loved bringing you these fascinating interviews from Senior CX Leaders over the course of 2024, which we hope that you have enjoyed reading as much as we have enjoyed asking the questions. We have tried to bring you different views and ideas from Leaders from different sectors and experiences.

This month we bring you another differing viewpoint from the amazing Barry Day. Barry has over 20 years of experience redefining how businesses engage with their customers. Drawing on a career that spans Ed Tech, Cyber Security, Telco, Finance, Utilities, and Retail, he works with enterprise technology leaders to create tangible improvements in customer and employee experiences. At the helm of LoveIT Works, Barry applies his blend of consulting and client-side expertise to help organizations embed customer focus into their operations, delivering results that matter. Based in the South East of the UK, Barry is known for his straightforward approach and deep understanding of what makes businesses—and their customers—thrive.

Barry, you work with tech leaders and teams to embed customer focus.  What are the main benefits that this entails?

I’ve recently gone all-in on working with Technology leadership and their teams to embed greater customer-focus. I spotted a trend where technology was coming under greater pressure from a variety of sources to be customer-focused, but were struggling with how to go about it. The why, the benefits of doing-so, have always been clear. Technology is like a mini-business with a purpose, vision and value proposition to its internal, and sometimes external, paying customers. Embedding customer-focus helps build stronger relationships with technology’s key business stakeholders, enhances the department’s reputation and proves technology’s value to the business. It provides data to prioritise key initiatives, empowers your service owners to think and act in a more customer-focused way, and drives continuous improvement across the service offering. These then ultimately contribute to increases in employee productivity and end-user satisfaction, reduce IT support costs, and can boost overall financial performance through reduced churn rates and increased revenue. What’s not to like?

You’ve got some fantastic experience across a wide range of sectors. Please can you tell us which role you’ve enjoyed the most and why?

Well, that’s very kind of you to say so! It’s hard to select one. The ones I rate the most have been the ones I’ve learnt the most from. You know, those moments when you are under pressure to deliver in a new context and you have to think hard on how to achieve the outcomes. I worked for a small consultancy developing a group level customer experience vision, travelling between operating companies in Tunisia and Qatar. In many ways this was my first true CXM role. Prior to that I had been very much in the digital UX space. I learnt so much about executing CX during that time. More recently at bp I have been measuring the value and adoption of an enterprise Generative AI technology, which has been fascinating because it required first getting clarity on how to measure value of such a new technology. Broadly speaking, what I love the most is working with leaders to make sense of the complexity they face, bringing clarity and breaking things down into actionable steps, and this has permeated so many of my roles in the last decade.

What has been your biggest success in terms of CX initiatives in your career to date?

I worked with a workplace technology team for nearly 3 years in a diverse range of activities, from running workshops on purpose and vision, to defining their customers and coaching on how to measure what matters in a technical service. The biggest success came after we developed a global technology survey for employees which we ran every 6 months. In that time we used the data to drive up the main technology experience metric, NPS, by over 40 points, and that happened because we distributed the data to accountable owners, and ensured the analysis and solutions off the back of the data were committed to in the existing governance forums and the annual operating planning process. It became BAU. In one such forum attendees were commenting on the richness of the conversation and content. It’s at this point you know people’s mindsets have begun to shift, and for me that is a great outcome.

How challenging is it to get IT professionals to apply human centred design methods?

Well, IT professionals are not unique in this regard. I would say from my experience IT professionals get the concept of being customer-centric and are motivated to be more customer-centric, but the main challenge to help them overcome is how to be in the context of an IT service. It is important to couch this in the wider context of technology that these IT professionals find themselves in. Technology has not traditionally prioritised the experience they provide their internal and external customers because it hasn’t been a strategic objective. I do believe this is changing. The implications of it not being an objective is that the customer’s experience will always remain an afterthought – a consequence rather than an intention, an add-on at the end, tactical not strategic, not well planned in or budgeted for – and therefore the level of maturity around customer experience practice remains low.

In my experience it’s tough selling customer experience at a leadership team level. It is rare there is wholesale buy-in and funding to transform, and technology is no different. Everything I have tried that has worked has been about taking existing capabilities and existing governance forums and integrating small elements of CX into them and then building on that over months and years. I often think about the double-diamond model and how people come in and sell design thinking as the way ahead. It’s too big a leap. The reality can be found in Zendesk’s triple diamond model, with the third diamond as the execution piece. You have to start in that third diamond on simple CX practices such as collecting experience data on existing products and then work left through the model to introduce more and more strategic components of CX over time as the value is proven. I would also say that often only top customer-facing services get squads with human-centred design expertise funded within them, much less for internally critical services despite these being relied upon by 100s sometimes 1000’s of people in the business. Instead of trying to convince leaders to give more money to hire designers, offer instead practical tools that can be self-administered without too much expertise required, complemented by a small change program to drive attention to and adoption of such tools. This is much more cost effective and the reach and impact will be more significant.

I will say one more thing if I may. We cannot forgot the leadership team. You have to work on this group in parallel, and I’ve seen success come from building relationships and explaining or demonstrating how existing capabilities can be leveraged to better inform prioritisation and business planning. We can arm technology leaders with insights that give them greater clarity and therefore equity in conversations with the business. We can help make them more successful in their roles too.

What skillsets do you feel people wanting to pursue a career CX now need to really develop?

A great, but difficult question to answer. Here’s what I would say:

  • Understand the context of the business and the stakeholders you are working with/for. How does what you do impact the success of what the business is trying to achieve or what the individual is trying to achieve. If you can get close to that, you can begin to determine how to create minimal disruption to existing ways of working and yet maximise the impact of being customer focused.
  • Work hard to dig deep to get clarity on the problem you are really trying to solve. It is linked to the context point above, but my emphasis here is that we all too often get cracking with the day-to-day job and only later come to realise the bigger problem we are a part of.
  • Try to develop skills and tools you can use to help you navigate ambiguity and uncertainty. As I said above, wholesale CX transformation is a rare thing, so this is about adopting CX to fit an existing business context and show value. Having a tool kit you can draw upon to understand and work through problems will help you. I mean tools like being able to carry out research interviews with senior people, to be able to design and facilitate workshops, to understand the relationship between purpose, vision, values, mission, strategy, and operating models. These are all about seeking clarity and structure in what is coming at you.
  • Building rapport and networks at all levels.
  • Patience and tenacity to see it through. It can take a long time.

 

How important has professional networking been for your career development?  And how much of this has been virtual or in person?

Honestly, I’ve never put too much emphasis on networking over the years. I find myself doing more now as I try and validate business ideas and sell services to others in the industry. What I have done in recent times is all online via LinkedIn. Outside of that intentional networking online, my network over the years has tended to develop as a consequence of my roles at different companies – I build those relationships, deliver value as best I can in the context and often win the support of that main stakeholder for future work.

How do you see CX evolving in the future?

That’s a huge question, and not one I have a clear answer to because it is so multi-faceted. Two aspects I would highlight with regards to the practice of CX are:

  • A greater emphasis on doing business with greater purpose alongside profit. This is being driven by the macro trend of customers being more conscious of their choices and the impact they have on people and the planet.
  • The greater penetration of customer-centred practice into the heart of business operations, with technology being just one department where this is already happening. Of course, the role of departments like technology is ubiquitous across the organisation that their impact on the employee value proposition, productivity and the retention of talent almost demands we take a customer-focused lens to it.

 

If you had to describe the ultimate CX role for you – what would that look like?

It would be someone whose job it is to bring greater alignment throughout the business. Stay with me, because this is very much about customers.

Here are the two main problems the role would aim to address:

  • Lack of clarity of purpose, be that of the business as a whole, a department or any team. What follows a lack of clarity of purpose, is an inaccurate vision and inappropriate strategy to deliver the vision.
  • Ineffective cascading of the business strategy down from the management team into the middle layers of the organization and below, leading to diluted and misaligned objectives.

 

So the link to customers is ‘purpose’. At any level in the organization there are either internal or external customers who we ‘serve’ with a proposition consisting of products and services and therefore an experience. For me, purpose equates to:

  • The reason something exists, the ‘why’, the problem it solves,
  • Something bigger than the business and just profit – a contribution to a common good, to improving people’s lives, and agent of wider change.
  • Multiple stakeholders — customers, employees, partners, shareholders, communities, and even the planet.
  • A fundamental human need(s) of the stakeholders being met.

 

Getting clear on who you are serving and why is something I find is often neglected at all levels and yet is key to everything that comes after it – your vision, strategy and operating model. Often, the purpose of an internal department or team is a function of their role in the value stream to the paying customer.

Alongside this process of clarifying purpose is the interpretation of the strategic objectives of the organisation to your department or team. Together, they will drive greater synergy and alignment across the business.

My ultimate CX role would be to develop and apply the tools for arriving at clarity of purpose and alignment to strategic objectives.

Kate Baird and Jo van Riemsdijk would like to thank Barry Dayfor making time to speak to us and sharing his insights and thoughts.

2024 has been a very hard year for recruitment and for CX. For those candidates still looking for roles – keep up the good fight! Something will come! To all of our candidates and clients and those involved in the wonderful world of Customer Experience – we at CX Talent Ltd would like to wish you a very Happy Christmas and a prosperous and successful 2025.

We intend to continue producing these interviews with Senior Leaders into 2025. If you have a desire to hear from someone from a specific industry or a particular Leader you would love to hear from – please do let us know and we will do our best to accommodate! To subscribe to these newsletters – please do hit the subscribe button to make sure you don’t miss out!

CX Talent Ltdis the recruitment partner you need for all Customer Experience, Customer Operations, Transformationn, Strategy, Digital Experience and Service Design roles of all levels. We have been trading for over 13 years and are connected with the best and brightest talent. If you want to work with a recruitment partner who supports excellent candidate experience, diverse and inclusive recruitment practices and works with efficiency, integrity and honesty at all times – please do give us a call!

www.cxtalent.co.uk

A very warm welcome to the November 2024 edition of the CX Talent Ltd Newsletter. Kate Baird and Jo van Riemsdijk are very grateful to Vish Patel – currently responsible for the growth, strategy and experience of Meta’s biggest partnership clients in EMEA – for his time and insights in this months’ interview.

  • Vish, you are currently Partner VP, Strategy (EMEA) at Meta. Can you tell us what this entails?

 

In real simple terms, I am responsible for the growth, strategy and experience of Meta’s biggest partnership clients in EMEA. It’s a blend of commercial, partnerships and customer experience packaged into one, really unique!

  • You’ve got some fantastic experience across consultancy, telco, media and tech. Please can you tell us which role you’ve enjoyed the most and why?

 

This is a tough one, but I would say it’s my current role at Meta. Why you ask?

Meta really embraces cross-functional collaboration, allows people to have autonomy on how they work and the tools they use, which makes doing your job so much easier. The other reason is because I have learnt so much from the realm of partnerships which compliments my previous skillsets really well.

  • What has been your biggest success in terms of CX initiatives in your career to date?

 

It has to be the 18pt improvement in Brand NPS which I achieved for CenturyLink within 12 months of joining. When I joined, the business had merged with Level 3 but had a really poor perception amongst customers and high churn. However, with sponsorship from a great leadership team, a solid 2 year-plan, digital transformation and a huge culture shift, we turned customer experience into a differentiator within the B2B Telecoms space!

  • How valuable have professional qualifications been in your career?  You’ve recently qualified for your MBA as well as having Prince 2, Lean and Six Sigma.  Would you recommend any or all of these to CX professionals developing their careers now?

 

You can never learn too much, so I would 100% recommend doing them all. My recommendation for CX professionals would be to go for LEAN or Six Sigma qualifications in particular, as they as building blocks for problem-solving alongside practical execution. And if you want to fast-track yourself into the c-suite, think about doing an MBA.

  • What skillsets do you feel people wanting to pursue a career CX now need to really develop?

 

Nowadays, I think people wishing to pursue a career in CX should focus on 3 things in particular:

Data analysis and insight

Strategy / design-thinking

Stakeholder engagement

Data is really the foundation of everything. Being able to understand, manipulate and tell a story from data is key for CX professionals. Strategy and design-thinking are also super critical because you need to inspire a vision that meets the changing expectations of customers and markets. Finally, stakeholder engagement is your ticket to success. You have to be a catalyst in getting buy-in from senior leaders/sponsors, collaborating with multiple teams across functions and driving customer-centricity internally. It takes a whole organisation to make the step changes in customer experience. Be the master of the orchestra.

  • How important has professional networking been for your career development?  And how much of this has been virtual or in person?

 

It’s a game changer. Professional networking, and personal networking with mentors, capitulated my career upwards in a short space of time. I would say it’s a 70%-30% split in favour of in-person networking for me personally, possibly influenced by the fact that I am a social butterfly.

  • How do you see CX evolving in the future?

 

Over the next 2-3 years, I think we are going to see more around:

Hyper-Personalization with AI and Data: Real-time, predictive personalization using AI and ML will become standard, balanced with privacy.

Multi-Channel Experiences:Integration of physical and digital touchpoints, leveraging conversational AI, chatbots and big shift in native commerce experiences, for example Travel SIMs.

Ethics and Sustainability in CX:Transparency and ESG practices will heavily influence customer decisions, engagement and loyalty with brands

Shift towards Predictive Proactive Support:ML and Predictive-AI application in customer care will push organisations to re-think service SLAs and operating models.

Employee Experience as CX’s Cornerstone:Doubling-down from organisations on improving employee experience (EX) to influence customer outcomes, linking EX directly to CX success.

  • If you had to describe the ultimate CX role for you – what would that look like?

 

My ultimate CX role would be a chief customer officer role at a multi-conglomerate organisation or an industry-leading organisation that oversees strategic, commercial and experiential aspects of customers across the entire journey for all brands. I personally would relish the chance the drive CX across multiple verticals and more importantly be the pioneer who keeps pushing the standards to new levels by innovating. Today is not tomorrow’s future!

  • If you were setting up a CX team from scratch for an organisation where budget was no object, what roles would your ideal team consist of?

 

The key roles I would certainly have in my fantasy dream-team are:

–       Customer Experience Professionals

–       Data Scientists / Analysts

–       Software Developers / Shadow IT

With these 3 roles, you have a holy trinity. A small but complimentary group that have multifarious skills capable of solving problems end-to-end in a timely manner, and could even be spun as a professional service, call it CX-as-a-service.

Kate Baird and Jo van Riemsdijk would like to give our enormous thanks to Vish Patel for making the time to answer our questions. We hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this latest edition of our Senior CX Leaders series.

CX Talent Ltd produces a newsletter monthly where we interview a senior CX Leader on their views and insights about working in CX and the skills and experience that they feel candidates will need for the future. If you do not want to miss out on these incredibly valuable observations and views – do hit the subscribe button!

CX Talent Ltd is the recruitment partner you need for all Customer Experience, Customer Operations, Transformation, Strategy, Digital Experience and Service Design roles of all levels. We have been trading for over 13 years and are connected to the best and brightest talent. If you want to work with a recruitment partner who supports excellent candidate experience, diverse and inclusive recruitment practices and works with efficienty, integrity and honesty at all times – do give us a call!

www.cxtalent.co.uk

#customerexperience #cxtalent #cx #recruitment #cxjobs

A very warm welcome to the October 2024 edition of the CX Talent Ltd Newsletter. Kate Baird and Jo van Riemsdijk are very grateful to Nicola Langley– voted one of the most inspiring women in Automotive and Volkswagen UK’s Customer Experience Strategy Head -for her time and insights in this months’ interview. Nicola, you are […]

Welcome to the September 2024 edition of the CX Talent Ltd Newsletter. Kate Baird and Jo van Riemsdijk are so delighted and grateful to the amazing Sara Chapman – Executive Experience Strategy Director at adam&eveDDB for her incredibly valuable time and insights. We have been increasingly working with agencies in their CX and Experience Design teams and it’s a growing area. We are keen to pass on valuable insights and advice to those in our network who are interested in a career in an agency and what skills and experience you should be looking to get in order to be able to do so and could think of no-one better to ask! We certain that you’ll find Sara’s advice and observations of interest.

Sara, you are currently the Executive Experience Strategy Director at Adam&EveDDB. Please can you tell us what this entails?

In a nutshell, I help our clients to understand their consumers better and partner with creatives, strategists and account leads to make experiences that deliver on those needs. I also look at the technology and new thinking that’s coming down the line and make sure we’re thinking about how we as a CX team need to evolve what we do to make sure we keep our clients ahead of the curve.

What skillsets and attributes do you particularly look for when considering those who will work in your team (in terms of CX and Experience for your clients)?

Mindset is super important for me when I’m hiring new team members. In an industry like CX it’s really important to be entrepreneurial and have that resilience or grit needed to make your ideas a reality.

It’s great if you’re well versed in best practice but if you can’t adapt the theory based on the time, budget and client then you won’t bring work to market. And as CX-ers we only make a difference if we put new experiences or improvements live as that’s the only point the consumer feels the benefit – if our work dies in a slide deck then we haven’t made change happen.

Are there any skillsets you’d particularly recommend candidates honing if they want to pursue a career in CX in an agency that are likely to be in demand in future roles?

I think it’s important to have a great grasp of how the brand and technology influence an experience. Historically CX has focused on empathy and design thinking which is great but it can get you to a sea of sameness where everyone is following best practice and so everything is similar. Adding brand into the mix adds personality and it shows you the places in an experience where a client should be showing up. So when we’re doing experience strategy in the agency we’re not just asking where consumer pain points and gain points are, we’re also really interrogating where does this particular brand have expertise or knowledge that could really help. Then we’re layering in emotion; emotion drives decision making and smart CXers know how to conduct research that reveals how emotion drives decision-making and how to design solutions that use that emotion to create momentum and action.

How do you see AI impacting CX?

We’re already seeing some use of synthetic personas in research (where companies use their consumer data to build an AI consumer who researchers can chat to in order to stress test early thinking). I think the use of these personas will become more wide-spread and help us get to hypothesise for work faster. Of course that means we’ll have to work harder to justify our research budgets but it’s really vital that AI consumers don’t replace testing and research with real consumers!

Do you think that AI will affect how organisations use agencies in the future?

Of course! We’re at the point now where it’s vital organisational leaders to be thinking deeply about where they believe AI will help creativity and productivity and where it will not. Just because we can automate certain things doesn’t mean that we should – one of the most fascinating things I’ve learnt recently is that the brain needs boring tasks to give it down-time. And that if you don’t have that people experience cognitive overload and burn-out. It’s a bit like if you go on holiday and you do ten days of sight-seeing and don’t give yourself time to watch Netflix or read a book on the beach; you leave having had a lovely time but you still need a break! Well human brains are the same – if we remove all the boring admin and give it to AI then we simply won’t function.

Do you think it is essential for candidates for your consideration to have come from a similar agency background? If not – why not? If so – why so

This is one where it depends on the role. If you need to hit the ground running then it’s helpful to have worked in an agency before as you’ll know how the creative process works, who to engage when etc. But some of the most interesting candidates I’ve met have been people who have a real diversity of experience and this means they bring in different perspectives and ways of doing things that can make the team stronger.

Is there anything in your career that you wish you’d done differently? Any organisation you wish you’d had the chance to work at?

No. I’ve always been of the mindset that if you want to try something then go do it. When I started my career I specialised in digital. I remember going to a recruiter and telling them I wanted to work in comms and they told me “You can’t do that, you don’t have any experience”. But by working at it I got a job in a comms agency. Then when I wanted to move out of client services and become a strategist I experienced the same reaction, but I just pursued it because it was my goal and it was something I wanted to do. All this is a long way of saying, if you want something don’t just wish for it, you can make it happen!

What career advice do you wish you had been given in the early stages of your career that you would like to share?

Ask for forgiveness, not permission. A very wise CEO I worked with took me aside once and told me I’d get a lot more done if I trusted my instincts and tried things rather than waiting for people to tell me it was OK to get off the beaten path. Obviously you need to do this with a bit of care, but I find it really helps me experiment and find better ways of doing things when I follow this mantra.

Kate Baird and Jo van Riemsdijk would like to give our enormous thanks to Sara Chapman for making the time to speak to us, we’d also like to give our very best wishes to her as she begins her maternity leave. We hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this latest edition of our Senior CX Leaders series.

CX Talent Ltd produces a newsletter monthly where we interview a senior CX Leader on their views and insights about working in CX and the skills and experience that they feel candidates will need for the future. If you do not want to miss out on these incredibly valuable observations and views – do hit the subscribe button!

CX Talent Ltdis the recruitment partner you need for all Customer Experience, Customer Operations, Transformation, Strategy, Digital Experience and Service Design roles of all levels. We have been trading for over 13 years and are connected to the best and brightest talent. If you want to work with a recruitment partner who supports excellent candidate experience, diverse and inclusive recruitment practices and works with efficienty, integrity and honesty at all times – do give us a call!

www.cxtalent.co.uk

Jo van Riemsdijk and Kate Baird are delighted to bring to you our August edition of the CX Talent Ltd newsletter. We have been over the moon with how these interviews with Senior CX professionals have been received to date. In this latest edition we interview Kirsten Pattie who is the Global Head of Customer Experience and Insight at Collinson . Kirsten has had a very interesting career to date working both in-house, Consultancy and Agency. She has some fascinating insights to share, which we have no doubt you will find invaluable!

Kirsten – you are currently Global Head of Customer Experience and Insight at Collinson – please can you let us know what that entails?

I was brought into the organisation to help put people (customers, clients, partners and employees) at the heart of our product and experience design and innovation efforts.  I was attracted by the dual focus on CX and Insight.

My role involves helping the organisation to build an aligning understanding of our markets, consumer, client and partner needs and innovation and opportunities through research and insight and working closely with our data capability.  In my time at Collinson I have looked to put in place a more holistic approach to plan, collate, analyse and disseminate action oriented insight and then understand the impact of that action on our audiences (through a more structured Voice of the Customer and Customer listening programme)

My role also includes helping the organisation to leverage that understanding to identify our points of ‘meaningful difference’, identify what that means for our customer / portfolio and product strategy and iterate and optimise our current product and service experiences to deliver better customer and business outcomes and identify and ideate new solutions to unmet customer needs.  My team includes researchers, analysts, experience strategists, and UX, service and product designers.

You’ve got an amazing work portfolio – working across a broad and different range of companies and brands, from the BBC to agencies like RAPP , Historic Royal Palaces , Consultancies like CGA Experience and now totravel! How do you feel that having such a diverse range of sector and company experience has helped you progress in CX?

I think in the world of CX and also in Product Development and Innovation it really helps to have experience across a range of industries.  There are two main reasons for this.

Firstly it is important in both CX and innovation to take an outside-in approach, starting with looking to understand your customers, and the broader suite of audiences that you serve, not just as consumers of your products and services but as individuals with a diverse set of needs, motivations and beliefs.  Too many organisations start from the inside out, relying on existing industry knowledge and what has happened in the past.  By bringing in people from outside of the industry an organisation can gain a fresh perspective, challenge to existing ways of doing things, and potentially a broader understanding of your consumers, markets and untapped opportunity.

Secondly many organisations take a ‘me too’ approach to customer experience and product and service optimisation – copying the approaches taken by other industry players. This is a limited strategy as consumers are not judging their experience of your organisation solely against that of your direct competitors but against their experience of all the organisations that they interact.  Their daily interactions with other completely unrelated organisations are continuously resetting their expectations of your organisations product and service experiences and interactions.  By bringing in talent from a variety of industries (and indeed from diverse personal and professional backgrounds) you bring in new skills and experience of having addressed similar emerging customer needs and expectations, albeit in a differet industry category or context.

Of all the companies you’ve worked for, which have you most enjoyed in terms of Customer Experience?

I would have to say working for Historic Royal Palaces .  The organisation had a very clear purpose – to help people engage with the stories of the royal palaces and help preserve those palaces for future generations.  Employees across the organisation were aligned around this purpose and the shared desire to deliver in person and digital experiences that provided all our ecommerce customers, members, donors and visitors with a royal welcome and exceptional experience that went above and beyond.  In my role, first as Head of Customer Engagement and then ultimately as Programme Director of the Customer Experience Transformation I helped the organisation to understand customer needs through the end to end experience and then work together better, in agile and collaborative ways, to deliver seamless and joined up experiences that brought smiles to all.

Can you let us know what have been your proudest moments in terms of CX initiatives to date?

Leveraging customer insight and behavioural change theory to design and deliver a CRM programme for the governments Change4life anti-obesity programme that delivered record sign up, engagement and participation and drove positive social impact.

Helping empower and mobilise local communities to support older and vulnerable audiences to make the switch to digital TV, leveraging CX techniques and approaches to identify barriers and needs and design simple and intuitive experiences.

Helping a number of organisations (both as a consultant and in house) assess their customer centric maturity and shift away from working in vertical functional siloes to working together around the delivery of insight informed seamless and joined up customer experiences that delight and deliver positive customer and business outcomes.

Designing and delivering a Voice of the customer programme for an energy client and helping drive the associated business change and engagement.

You have experience of working on CX initiatives both in Consultancy and Agency as well as in house, what would you say are the main differences? Which do you prefer and why?

I think that I have benefitted greatly from spending time in all three.

In agencies the focus is on the creative ideation and optimisation of core parts of the customer experience through both the development of customer strategy and the creative design and execution of new points of interactions and communications. As a Customer strategist in consultancy you are typically helping the organisation to drive forward bigger programmes of transformation and change; helping organisations become more customer centric and insight led and / or delivering large scale digital and customer capability transformation. This helps to set clients up for future success by introducing new ways of working, new ways of capturing and disseminating data and insight, new ways to identify and capitalise on market opportunity, or designing and delivering new digital platforms and experiences. In both consultancies and agencies one is constantly exposed to fresh and emergent thinking and colleagues with deep expertise in complimentary fields.

In client side roles I would argue that the focus of the CX leader is on helping align the organisation around a common understanding of customers and markets and mobilising, enabling and empowering colleagues across the organisation to work together to deliver more customer centric experiences.

I have enjoyed all the roles I have had in different ways. I enjoy working in house most, in particular for purpose driven organisations; building teams and capability, introducing and embedding new ways of working and operating (such as insight driven, Design thinking and agile approaches) and driving forward customer centric change, ultimately enabling and empowering colleagues to succeed.

If you could have your career all over again, are there any things you would have done differently or are there any skillsets that you feel you wish you’d honed earlier?

I probably would of chosen to work in consultancy at an earlier stage in my career as it provides such a brilliant opportunity for  on the job training from brilliant people who are experts in their field and early exposure to senior decision makers. It also enables you to try on different industries, areas of focus and challenges for size to see what fits.

I do think that it is beneficial to go in house to build the stakeholder management skills that are critical to driving and embedding customer centric change both within teams and at an enterprise level. I benefitted from early exposure to this in my career, when I worked at the BBC and then for the Digital UK – the organisation responsible for driving the switch to digital TV. We were managing a complex network of both internal and external stakeholders and driving forward a nationwide programme of change.

I have really enjoyed projects where my work is having a positive social impact on the communities and audiences that we serve and would probably dial up that if I had my time again.

Ultimately though, there is not much that I would change about my somewhat ‘wiggly’ career as it has given me a broad perspective, fed my curious nature, enabled me to be creative, learn from great people, and build a wide network and connected skill set that enables me to be a better CX leader.

How do you think AI is going to impact CX as a discipline?

I think that AI will be a huge enabler to CX as a discipline.  It will enable organisations to curate a better understanding of customers current and future needs, proactively identify issues and deliver more personalised and tailored responses in real time. It will empower and enable employees. I am really excited by the opportunity it brings. However, I am also mindful of the need to respect the privacy of audiences and to be responsible in the application of AI.

What aspect of CX do you most enjoy? Strategy? Insight? End to end implementation?

I like aligning colleagues around a common (data and research driven) understanding of audiences and market opportunity. To identify and put in place the customer centric capability that better enables and empowers those colleagues to work  together to design and deliver optimised experiences that delight and drive positive outcomes for both customers, wider society and the business.

I also like helping organisations to connect the dots between identifying the organisations point of meaningful difference in the markets and communities it serves. How that translates into brand, customer, portfolio product and experience design strategy, so that everyone can understand the critical role they play.

What skillsets and attributes would you say that candidates wanting to further develop their careers in CX need?

I would say that curiosity, creativity, empathy, tenacity, and an open minded and collaborative style are the personal attributes that will put CX candiates in good stead to succeed.

From a skillset perspective, I think it is critical to build and understanding of the tools and approaches that enable you and your colleagues to better understand the audiences you serve, your business, market, opportunity and challenges.  In my experience the best insight comes when you bring together the right mix of data, research and existing knowledge to better understand a problem.  You don’t have to be an insight professional but knowing what data, research and stakeholder engagement approaches to apply to any given challenge is a real attribute. It will drive fresh insight and provide a better jumping off point for CX innovation and iteration.  In addition, CX professionals need to be adept at bringing together diverse teams and perspectives to enable and empower colleagues to work better together, to deliver seamless experiences and navigate entrenched organisational siloes.  Stakeholder engagement and good communication skills are important, as are an understanding of design thinking and agile approaches.

Finally, it is absolutely critical for CX professionals to really understand the businesses that they work with or for. To understand the commercial models that underpin them, how the organisation makes money, where there is challenge and opportunity and be mindful of both the commercial and customer impact and outcomes that the organisation needs to deliver and how to monitor and measure this impact.

You have got the CCXP accreditation, do you think that this is a worthwhile qualification for candidates to work towards and why?

I think that the CCXP accreditation is a good way to certify that you have a solid understanding and experience of the cross spectrum of skills that are required of a CX leader.  The accreditation is more widely recognised in the US than the UK but I am really glad that I took the time to gain mine.

What career advice do you wish you had been given in the early stages of your career that you’d like to share?

‘Don’t turn down that marketing executive role for Ebay with share options’ (this was in 2003)!

In all seriousness I have been so lucky to have had some amazing mentors and bosses through my career who have given me great advice.

I think the one piece of advice I wish I had been given earlier in my career is – Driving customer centric transformation and change (or indeed change in general) takes time. Especially in organisations made up of entrenched functional siloes rather than those organised around delivery of the customer experience.

Be prepared to meet colleagues where they are, listen and Empathise, and take them on a journey with you. Communicate in their language and often.

Identify Exec sponsors to sponsor the change and champions across teams to drive it forwards at grass roots level.

Think big but start small and promote small successes building a slow ground swell of support.

On a personal level I wish someone had told me to be eternally curious, keep learning, stay playful and most importantly take time out to do the things that bring you joy (for me this is art and walking in nature) as this in turn will enable you to be more creative and productive in the day job.

Oh and the final thing – take time every now and again to stop and look back at what you and your teams have achieved and celebrate your shared successes, experiences and learning opportunities.

If you could describe the ideal CX role – what would it look like?

For me it would be working for a purpose driven organisation that wants to put customers and the broader audiences and communities that it serves at the heart of everything that it does to deliver a positive impact both for the business, customers and wider society.

There would be an aligned executive leadership team that are unanimously supportive of the imperative to start from the outside in, leveraging insight to align and mobilise colleagues around a common view of the market, customer and opportunity and strategy.

The role itself would be focused on enabling, empowering and inspiring colleagues across the organisation to be more customer centric and insight driven and work together to deliver innovative product and service experiences and interactions that exceed customer expectation and needs.  The Role holder (or their team) would also be responsible for leading and embedding customer centric culture change, engaging and communicating with stakeholders across the organisation, be a continuous champion of the customer, and responsible for monitoring and communicating the holistic impact of this collective effort on both the customer and the business.

Finally I would be surrounded by great people who inspire me, teach me, open my eyes to new perspectives and make me laugh in equal measure.

Jo van Riemsdijk and Kate Baird hope that you’ve enjoyed this latest edition of the newsletter. Kirsten Pattie has given us a lot of food for thought, great insights into her career and some fantastic tips and advice for those looking to continue to develop their careers in this wonderful world! Huge thanks to Kirsten Pattie for her time and professional insights.

If you enjoy reading these newsletters and finding out what the top CX Talent are saying about this discipline and how they’ve got to senior positions – please do subscribe to make sure you don’t miss out!

CX Talent Ltd is the recruitment partner you need for all Customer Experience, Customer Operations, Transformation, Strategy, Digital Experience and Service Design roles. We make it out business to be connected with the brightest and best talent at all levels to make sure we can fill your roles efficiently and effectively with the right people.

To discuss your recruitment requirements in CX, Digital Experience and Service Design please do get in touch!

www.cxtalent.co.uk

Both Jo van Riemsdijk and Kate Baird are so pleased to bring your the July 2024 edition of the CX Talent Ltd Newsletter. This month we are delighted to introduce you to James McGhee Director of Customer Experience at FOOTASYLUM . James has been kind enough to share his thoughts and professional insights with us, which we are certain you’ll be fascinated to read!! So get that cup of coffee and sit back and enjoy!!!!

James McGhee has got some fantastic experience in retail having done not one but two stints AO and most recently at FOOTASYLUMHe is an incredibly accomplished Sales and Customer Experience Operations/Contact Centre Manager with extensive experience in large matrixed organisations. He has achieved record-high customer satisfaction rankings, improvements to bottom line and turnaround of under performing operations to prepare companies for fast growth and profitability.

James – you are currently Director of Customer Experience at Footasylum, please could you let us know what this entails?

I’m responsible for everything that is post purchase and customer affecting. This includes the contact centre, post purchase communications, reviews, feedback, and sentiment analysis. I’m also responsible for the qualitative measurement of our carrier partners.

You started your journey at Footasylum as the Head of Customer Experience but have since been promoted to Director of Customer Experience. How do each of these roles differ from each other?

As Head of Customer Experience, I really focussed mainly on the Contact Centre. The title change came after taking on the wider remit above and being on the Senior Team at Footasylum for a couple of years.

In your career to date what CX initiative that you’ve been involved with have you been most proud?

Two spring to mind. One was a real team effort at AO.com to deliver amazing customer experiences after customers had reported faults with their appliances. We collectively managed to convince manufacturers to take a much bigger role in the resolution, not just the assessment of faults. All were really receptive to it and it meant that there was a combined, concerted effort to delight and, most importantly, fix the customer. At FOOTASYLUM ,the culture of my department makes me proud. The management team understand the importance of customers time and our ethos that it’s about the experience over service.

I tell the teams about service being “dead” and a filing cabinet of options stuck firmly between the customer and ourselves. We choose to approach contact with customers collaboratively.

What aspect of the CX function to you personally enjoy the most?

It’s hard to choose between the front-line customer interaction – especially when you get it right and it’s almost magical in the way that we can turn a customer around and the positive feedback we receive in various places. Reading that is heart-warming and extremely satisfying.

You’ve had two separate stints at AO.com who are reknown for the excellent CX. In your opinion what do you think it is they do different that results in such a strong experience for their customers that other companies could learn from?

It’s a top-down thing that they have going on. John Roberts is obsessed with customer satisfaction, the experience and the difference it has to that business. It permeates all the way through.

When hiring for your team what attributes do you look for in candidates? What makes a successful candidate for a retail CX function?

It may not be popular, but resilience is number one. It’s an odd trait to find in someone who, more often than not, is taking the job as a perceived gap-filler in their career or fresh out of education. The best people I’ve worked with have been able to separate the customers needs from the customers’ frustration and emotion.

What skillsets do you feel that candidates in CX should be looking to develop or hone?

Resilience, Psychological understanding (Cognitive Biases, The Chimp Paradox and Amygdala Hijacking are great starting points) and how to create fun in conversations, where appropriate. Again, the best CX professionals have started from the bottom and could create an incredible, personable, personalised experience with customers.

How are you using AI in your CX initiatives?

We use it to assess customer sentiment, to write canned responses or virtual assistant responses and in virtual assistants themselves. We have a super clever Whatsapp VA where you can track and amend your delivery in Whatsapp and get order updates too.

How do you see AI use developing further in retail CX?

I was always a firm believer in it’s adoption in areas like Alexa and Siri. I’m less confident now and hope that it’s used to do simple tasks that are a frustration for advisors and customers alike. Little things like small compensation, refunds and tracking orders should be able to be automated, or at least 50-60% of them .

You’ve managed large teams of customer facing agents in contact centres in several of your roles. How important is the employee experience to your bigger picture CX strategy?

Vitally important. Richard Branson has been advocating it since the 80’s and, if I’m honest, the best CX led businesses focus on it. Anyone you look up to in CX has an excellent experience for their teams too.

What do you think it takes to be a successful leader in CX?

Influencing skills, a desire to work harder than everyone else and an analytical mind. As a given you should be the best people leader you can be and be kind. I hear horror stories of how people are dealt with in the CX world by their leaders. Those people never last and create a perception that contact centres and front-line retail, for example, are bad places to work.

Are there any CX focused events you attend? Why? Why not?

Not really anymore, I got out of the habit during Lockdowns and, to be honest, the commercialised element of it puts me off. How often are you in market for a new contact centre platform!? I’d love for events to be focussed on making customers lives better, not just SAAS products with huge claims.

What advice do you wish you had been given in your earlier career?

That your time is worth a lot more than you’re currently being paid for it. We can’t all be business owners, and that’s not what I mean. We can all use our free time wisely to enrich and create value for ourselves. Learning new skills, reading, exercising, and spending time with those you love are equally, if not more, important than working late to finish reports or clear your inbox. The problems will still be there tomorrow when everyone else wakes up and replies, you’re better at fixing them if you’re at your best.

Kate Baird and Jo van Riemsdijk would like to thank James McGhee for his fantastic insight and thoughts on the wonderful world of Customer Experience. We hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this latest edition of the CX Talent Ltdnewsletter. Don’t forget to subscribe to make sure you don’t miss any of our interviews with fabulous leaders in CX in the forthcoming months!

At CX Talent LtdJo van Riemsdijk and Kate Baird are so proud to be connected with the brightest and best talent in Customer Experience, Customer Operations, Digital Experience and Service Design at all levels. To discuss your recruitment requirements in this area and how we can add value in finding the right fit for your team – please get in touch as we’d love to hear from you and to get involved!

Jo van Riemsdijk and Kate Baird are delighted to bring you our next edition of the CX Talent Ltd Newsletter. This month we are so pleased that the truly wonderful human being who is Helen Wilson – Global CXO – CX, Channel Performance & Global Service Line Organisation at Ipsos shares her thoughts and professional insights with us.

Helen has significant leadership, CX and research experience and is a frequent speaker, chair and judge at industry events. Helen has been in the industry for over 25 years, and has helped leading brands design, orchestrate, and ensure they are delivering great CX. She has held various ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) leadership roles across Ipsos, and is a trained business coach.

Helen – you’re the Global Chief Experience Officer (CXO) for Customer Experience, Channel Performance and Global Service Line Organisation at Ipsos – what does that entail?

I ‘wear a few hats’ at Ipsos, which means I get to work with our brilliant Ipsos teams across the business, across the world, supporting them to deliver great experiences for our clients; to help drive greater impact in their organisations. In the case of my Customer Experience role, specifically, ultimately we’re about helping our clients deliver a greater Return on their CX Investment (ROCXI); helping them increase customer retention, share of spend, advocacy and doing all of that in an operationally efficient manner.  I get involved in shaping our offer – which spans CX research, technology, analytics, and advisory services,  equipping our people to deliver on our brand promise, and ‘shouting loud’, so thought leadership and marcomms sits with me too.  Needless to say, our Customer Experience teams works hand in hand with our Employee Experience teams!  Channel Performance is about improving the performance of physical, digital and contact centre channels, another key aspect of the Customer Experience, of course!

Having been promoted six times in ten years at Ipsos you are clearly doing something right, what skills do you feel that CX leaders need generally to focus on leading change at this level?

I attended a fantastic Ipsos event many years ago, at which one of the speakers spoke about the skills needed to succeed in the future (and current!) world of work.  If you were that speaker, please do give me a shout – I’d love to credit you and talk more! That message stayed with me and is one I repeat, including to my four daughters as they prepare for their futures. As for those skills – for offspring and CXers leading change alike: empathy, resilience and the ability to orchestrate!  Fundamentally, CX is about building strong relationships with customers – creating emotional attachment that leads to those desired customer behaviours.  Understanding customers is the starting point – empathy rules!

What would you say are you favourite moments in terms of CX in your career to date?

There’s a long list, but I’ll keep it short here: brilliant relationships with brilliant clients; helping to ‘unlock the potential’ of rising stars; being surrounded by people I learn from very day – Ipsos is a ‘talent magnet’, so I get to work with the best of the best; and I do get a buzz out of standing on stage and talking CX! Watch out for our Ipsos LinkedIn Live CX event, on 25 June, 15.00 BST. Marko Ivanovic, Haleon’s Global Consumer Relations Director – Digital Strategy and Innovation, and Ipsos’ Nicholas Mercurio, Helen Bywater-Smith and I, will be exploring how the world of Customer Experience in products is evolving. We’ll consider what brands in this space, including Direct to Consumer (D2C), need to consider to enhance their Total CX management, measurement, design and delivery – to drive those desired consumer/customer behaviours and that ultimate Return on CX Investment (ROCXI).  For more details on the event – see the link at bottom of page.

Ipsos is #1 for CX Insights. What characteristics and specific skills do candidates need to have to be successful in CX at Ipsos?

As well, as being CX experts, we’re researchers, technologists, analysts, advisors, relationship builders, storytellers, data scientists, ethnographers, designers … and more besides.  You get the idea!  Ipsos is in 90 markets, across 220 cities.  There are 20,000 of us, partnering with over 5,000 clients. We need all sorts of characteristics and skills! At Ipsos we aim to recruit, develop and retain the most talented multi-disciplinary employees in the industry – to help them to achieve their career goals, to feel valued for their contributions, supported by technology and engaging leaders.  We’re continuing to grow and would love to hear from great CXers.  I loved a recent comment from our CEO, Ben Page, who said when asked about facing future challenges: “I know we’ll succeed because of the flexibility, adaptability, ingenuity and above all the overall commitment of Ipsos people”.

You’ve been the Chair of Judges for the European Contact Centre & Customer Service Awards (ECCCSA) for the past few years – what insights has that given you into the world of contact centres and customer service?

How long have you got? Seriously, I could write a book! One of the fabulous things about doing this is that I get to see the best of the best; the truly gold standard organisations and their practices, and the same goes for my ‘day job’! But as just a trio of topline insights from the ECCCSAs, I’m delighted to report on ever more:

  • Sophisticated use of customer feedback and data analytics to understand where to focus efforts, including the delivery of tailored experiences, and with what return
  • Intelligent use of AI to better equip agents to meet customers’ needs
  • Recognition of the importance of the contact centre to the business as a whole.

As a recognised thought leader in CX – how do you see CX evolving in the future?

Our world is complex. Our expectations as citizens, employees and customers are shaped by an increasingly diverse range of influences. Advances in technology, including the rise of Generative AI and digitisation, are changing the way people interact with each other. ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) concerns impact what customers expect of the brands they use or consider. Customers want fast, yet personalised and authentic interactions and relationships.  All in all, the pace of change feels quicker and quicker. This challenging and uncertain landscape makes it difficult for businesses to plan and work out how to design and deliver experiences that drive improved business performance.  So what can they rely on to create solid grounds for business success?

Relationships are, and will continue to be, fundamental assets for businesses. Strong relationships ensure loyalty, sustainable revenue and growth. Ipsos’ R&D data clearly shows that emotional attachment, the highest form of relationship strength, is key to driving higher lifetime values. When a customer is emotionally attached, they are:

  • Far more likely to express a preference towards the brand
  • Much more likely to recommend the brand (than if they were just functionally satisfied)
  • Significantly more likely to stay with the brand in the future.

Of course in many cases the priority will be to reduce customer pain and dissatisfaction. But in parallel, brands need to work out how to design and deliver experiences that create a meaningful connection and ultimately drive positive outcomes.  And that leads us back to where I started – with ROCXI – delivering a Return on CX Investment.  And whilst ROCXI is key, in our current and future environment, it is critical for Businesses to act in a way that benefits themselves andthe wider world.

To help you prepare for the future, keep an eye out, as ‘Ipsos Global Trends’ will certainly be heading your way.  And on that Gen AI front, look out for a paper we’ll be launching later this month, concerned with balancing AI and HI (Human Intelligence), for exceptional Customer Experience. Give me a shout if you’d like a copy.

What advice would you give your younger self in terms of career development?

  • Be bold, be brave, ask yourself what’s to lose?  What’s the worst thing that could happen if you did ‘xyz’ – not too bad, huh?  So go ahead and make it happen!
  • Network, network, network – relationships matter!
  • Be the person people want to be around – positivity all the way …

I’d like to think I took my own advice, but perhaps we could all be that bit bolder, no matter what stage of life …

A massive thanks to Helen Wilson for her time and really useful and interesting professional insight into her world at Ipsosand CX. We hope that you have enjoyed reading her thoughts and opinions. Please do check out the links below to find out more and to sign up to the IPSOS’ LinkedIn Live Event.

Sign up to hear from Helen at Ipsos’ upcoming LinkedIn Live event: Ipsos’ Customer Perspective: The Experience Beyond the Product | LinkedIn

Head here to read about Ipsos’ Forces of CX, and learn more about what it takes to do the right thing by your customers, and your business … and by the world: Embedding ESG in Experience | Ipsos.

Head here if you want to enter this year’s ECCCSA awards: Enter – ECCCSAs (closing date 19th July).

Next month – we have a fabulous guest from a retail background to give their insights into CX and their advice in developing a career in this fantastic world! Do click subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it!!

At CX Talent LtdJo van Riemsdijk and Kate Bairdaer proud to be connected with the brightest and best talent in Customer Experience, Customer Operations, Digital Experience and Service Design at all levels. To discuss your recruitment requirements in this area and how we can add value in finding the right fit for your team – please get in touch as we’d love to hear from you!!

Jo van Riemsdijk and Kate Baird are delighted to introduce our May edition of the CX Talent Ltd newsletter. We are very proud that the amazing Carole Layzell Managing Director & Head of Barclays Local South has agreed to share her thoughts and professional insight with us.

Carole is a highly experienced CX and Business Leader with a successful career spanning over 35 years at Barclays, Nationwide Building Society, Salesforce & Medallia. An experienced international keynote speaker, and has established herself as an expert in digital innovation.

She is currently Managing Director for Barclays UK Local South playing a pivotal role in creating the strategy to deliver exceptional colleague and customer experiences using technology to help inform our decisions and create market leading customer and colleague outcomes.

Carole has led teams across face to face banking, back office operations and customer experience centres of excellence and is well-versed in harnessing the potential of digital experiences within the ever-evolving omni-channel landscape.

You’re currently Managing Director – Head of Barclays Local South.  What does that entail?

My role entails leading an amazing team of colleagues who support our customers f2f in our branches, Locals (which are sites where we work with local councils and communities to offer in-person banking support, helping customers with their everyday finances in places such as town halls and libraries, Pods or Vans) and out in our communities.

This incorporates half of England and Wales and West, with c3000 colleagues. My team are passionate about helping and supporting their customers – and it’s been fantastic in the last 8 months to get out and visit many of our sites and communities to experience the work they have been doing.

You’ve had a really broad career, starting off at Barclays, then at Nationwide and then to some of the SaaS platforms before coming back to Barclays again. How has working at Salesforce and Medallia helped shape your understanding of CX programmes that is beneficial to you in your current role?

Gaining a detailed understanding of how technology can support in delivering great Customer experiences has been key.  Technology can be a really powerful tool to support and enhance what we do, however it is crucial to recognise that technology should complement rather than replace the human touch.  Working with different organisations has enabled me to see the rich diversity in how differing industries approach their CX, some of the commonalities that exist and some of the Market leading innovations and ideas that are shaping the future.

Can you tell us about some of the successes you’ve had in terms of your CX and EX initiatives at Barclays?

One of my career highlights has been leading the Digital Eagle programme across Barclays. The programme started off by developing the digital skills of a small group of colleagues, but when we saw the passion to help each other and to in turn help customers we decided to scale the programme to enable all colleagues to benefit across all our communities. This provided our colleagues with increased skills that they could use personally but also, and vitally, could also share with our customers to enable and improve their digital skills – whether that be linked to banking or in other elements of their lives.  I`m incredibly proud of the huge number of digital tea and teach events and code playgrounds we developed for children that we have provided to our customers and non-customers alike. Also, increasing digital skills helps protect our customers against fraud and scams, and is important that we continue to work together to protect against this.

As a people leader in Barclays what do you see as key to improving colleague experience for the colleagues that you lead/work with?

I believe the most important elements are to be open and transparent, and also to give colleagues the opportunity to share what they think isn’t working and then work really hard to fix this.  This might though sometimes say that we can`t fix / action something at that moment in time and the reasons why. It’s vital to create a culture of speaking out, taking action and accountability to leave the organisation in a better place than you found it.

I have always been passionate about supporting colleagues with their own development and connecting people so they can take ownership of what development looks like for them – whether that be developing in their current role or getting them ready for their future career aspirations.  LinkedIn have recently announced that Barclays are in the Top 10 of their 2024 awards which look at the ‘best companies to grow a career’ – which is great to see and something that makes me feel proud to work for Barclays.

What attributes do candidates need to be able to demonstrate to be a strong candidate to work within the CX/EX team for a financial institution like Barclays?

We would be looking for candidates that are passionate about both colleagues and customers and embrace the concept of wanting to help everyone to thrive. Doing the right thing in the right way is critical and to be driven by our values. Customer Experience is always on our mind to make sure we drive progress for our clients, customers, communities, and fellow colleagues.

How do you think financial services will continue to utilise AI in CX in the future?

We are proud to be a business where personal connection is still important. Our customers tell us that they want to feel as though we know them each, as individuals. The best CX companies are doing this well already – although usually on much simpler use cases than in the banking industry. Our challenge is to harness the power of AI to give our Customers the benefit of all their data to help make money work better for them.

For example, in Chat, there have been many companies who have deployed AI to replace humans and it hasn’t worked well for them. Our vision is to use that channel to enable customers to have conversations with real people – but we’d like to use the AI to give our teams the most helpful insights into how to serve each customer best.

We also want to learn more from our customers about how we can serve them better. Again, AI can take a traditional survey format and instead collect feedback in a really conversational way that picks up on what’s most important to our customers, and explores it in a very natural, conversation.

As a recognised thought leader in Customer Experience, how do you see the discipline evolving in 2024 and beyond?

To deliver great customer experiences you need to ensure you are continually listening to your customers and then act on that feedback. It’s taking that insight and using it to take or suggest the next best action as our customers will not always know what is the best way forward and will rely on our expertise to support them in this. The organisations that truly listens to their customers and takes relevant value add actions are the ones that will thrive in the future.

What advice do you wish you’d been given in your early career?

Buy technology shares!

On a serious note – What has stood me well during my career is that in whatever role you do, continue to walk in the shoes of your customer.  Get out there first hand and experience the process or journey as your customers do, understand where the pain points and friction exist and then be relentless in removing that friction.

Are there any sectors or companies you wish you’d worked in at any point in your career?

I have enjoyed all the companies I have worked in as I have learnt so much from each of them. What I have particularly loved is the opportunity to work with different industries, for example the automotive industry based on how they are using technology to engage their customers and exceed expectations to deliver the wow factor. The hospitality sector is another example.  They are great examples where they are looking to exceed customer expectations based on customers hopes and dreams – and that’s something that gives a really interesting insight to what the art of the possible is!

We’d like to thank Carole Layzell for her time and professional insight into the world of CX and are certain that our followers and network will have enjoyed reading this latest edition of the CX Talent Ltd newsletter.

Stay tuned for our next months’ guest – we have another real treat in store for you! The purpose of our newsletter is to bring you real world advice and insight into CX initiatives from a broad range of senior professionals working in the field and producing great results to help you further your career in this amazing discipline.

At CX Talent LtdJo van Riemsdijk and Kate Baird are proud to be connected with the brightest and best talent in Customer Experience, Customer Operations, Digital Experience and Service Design at all levels.

If you would like to discuss your recruitment requirements in this area and how we can add value in finding the right fit for your team. Please do get in touch as we’d love to hear from you!