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

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 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 […]

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!

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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 Ltd – Jo 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!!