Rob Ettridge

Rob is a partner at customer communications consultancy Red Lorry Yellow Lorry. The lorries help organisations improve customer experience through better communications. He’s managed customer engagement, cultural change and tone of voice communications projects for leading financial, retail, utilities and manufacturing clients. He has a background in public relations, branding and communications gained in technology companies in the UK and USA.

Donna O'Toole

Donna O’Toole is an experienced awards expert who has helped hundreds of household brands, businesses, and leaders to grow their profile through winning prestigious industry awards. As founder of ‘August’ a unique recognition agency that helps business leaders and their companies to raise their profile, Donna has proved her expertise through an outstanding success rate in The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise competition. Donna has now launched a unique digital training platform designed specifically to help small businesses, comms teams, and entrepreneurs to win the awards they enter.

Ian Golding

Ian is an internationally renowned leader in customer experience. Speaker, blogger, consultant, adviser and featured columnist and now also non-executive editor of CXM.co.uk in his role as Chairman of the Awards Ian will assist us to ensure the CXA has a clearly articulated role in relation to promoting CX best practice. Ian will also be an advocate for the UK Customer Experience Awards. A highly influential freelance Customer Experience consultant, Ian advises leading companies on Customer Experience strategy, measurement, improvement and employee advocacy techniques and solutions. He has worked across multiple industries including retail, financial services, logistics, telecoms and pharmaceuticals and has deployed Customer Experience tools and methodologies all over the world.

Michelle Ansell

Michelle Ansell is a Director and Managing Partner of Douglas Jackson, a specialist recruitment consultancy. Douglas Jackson offer Executive Search and Recruitment. We work in partnership with our customers to help solve their resourcing challenges, recruiting executive level, senior/mid management and skilled practitioner appointments for; Operations, Sales, Service, Experience, Strategy, Journey, Loyalty, Acquisition, Customer Contact, CRM, Digital, Planning, Programmes, Insight and Analytics. Michelle has over 20 years’ customer recruitment experience, working with a variety of organisations, offering professional advice and consultancy, whilst partnering with clients to identify, attract and recruit the most appropriate talent and individuals for their business.

John Barr

John Barr is Customer Experience Director at Optivo (Housing Association) managing 44,000 homes in S.E. England & the Midlands.

John has 27 years’ experience in the housing sector and 5 years providing English language services to global businesses in Italy. John is passionate that social housing is as much a necessity as good healthcare and education. He’s driven by the idea that (increasingly vulnerable and disadvantaged) customers should enjoy a positive customer experience as professional as anything offered by the commercial sector.

Maggie Colman

Maggie brings over 25 years’ experience in the Telebusiness and Contact Centre sectors. Her enthusiasm and drive energises those who work in these fields so that they want to excel, and her ability to pass on her expertise ensures they have the skills to do so. As a result, sales teams bring in significantly higher levels of new business and customer service teams drive up satisfaction across the existing customer base, increasing both customer retention and customer loyalty.

Paul Weald

Paul is a consultant and a multi-channel contact centre specialist. Having worked in the industry for 25 years, his experience covers all aspects of people, process, technology, digital operations and customer experience.

Last year Paul received the Major Contribution to Judging accolade recognising his support for awards in the pursuit of customer excellence. He believes that every organisation can excel in how it serves its customers – how well you deliver customer service is a true differentiator.

Basia Szumska-Hare

Capita is the largest business process outsourcing and professional services company in the UK, and has clients in central and local government and the private sector. We focus on unlocking value by designing and delivering services which can solve challenges and enhance services for our clients and their end customers. Capita is one of the most advanced software and service providers in the customer experience market today. Our spirit of innovation makes us a future-proof platform to our customers, and to maintaining our leadership as we strive to become a world class Digital BPO. Basia is a senior consultant with a passion for great customer service. Most interactions into a business come into the contact centre, the heart of the business operation, my professional aim is to help businesses transition from good to exceptional.

Hina Sharma

Hina is a seasoned communications and marketing expert at Pitney Bowes working with teams to deliver on the challenges of company transformation, reputation management & building a strategy to achieve business goals. She helps shift company perceptions to build business reputation & grow brand awareness. Her business & commercial insight ensures a heightened focus to lead, shape and build on client needs across various geographies and markets, both internally and externally of an organisation. Hina believes different and diverse experiences add to personal learning and building company culture.

Gary Jackson

Gary Jackson, Group Director of Communications & Customer Success for Mears Group, has delivered award winning customer experience training. Gary has a successful background developing and implementing customer and communications strategies, transforming business orientation from operations to customer centric, changing culture, leading high performing teams and improving business results. Previously, Gary has worked in the utilities, sportswear and manufacturing industries.

Ash Cripps

A Companion Member of the Institute of Customer Service and having been a Chair Judge at both the UK Customer Experience and UK Digital Experience Awards, Ash has worked for the AA for over 9 years. Fired up about CX, change, lean, agile, culture, continual improvement and the innovative use of technology, Ash leads Change Readiness Managers, and is responsible for ensuring change lands smoothly, on time and on budget. Ash previously had operational leadership responsibility within Contact Centres.

Caroline Tan

Caroline’s passion and expertise lies in CX transformation. This was inspired and developed during her career within Nationwide. Following roles in Senior Management with a remit to propel the organisation towards delivering a World Class customer experience, Caroline set up Inspiring People, a consultancy and training company aiming to help people do ordinary things extraordinarily well. Caroline is also a speaker and writer and feels privileged to be a judge, able to watch the very best service professionals in action.

Harsha Anand

Harsha is a utilities industry thought-leader with over 20+ years of international consulting experience across Europe, Asia and Australia. Harsha believes that the stage is set for disruptive and transformative change to enable customers of Energy & Water companies to obtain affordable, sustainable and secure provision of Electricity, Gas and Water.

He has a track record of successfully delivering multi-million-pound transformation programmes including leading a variety of industry separation projects, as part of the de-regulation of the Energy & Water industry.

Harsha has held several executive and senior management positions and built successful multi-million Energy & Utilities consulting businesses. Harsha believes in nurturing and building talented teams that can deliver tangible business outcomes to customers, while delivering exponential growth to their organizations.

Harsha was awarded the prestigious Leadership Award by UK’s Utilities and Services Industries Trust (USIT) in 2016.

John White

John is a Customer Experience Transformation expert, with over 10+ years’ experience focusing on how you can orientate your organisation around the customer and drive targeted change initiatives across channels focused on the customer. Areas of expertise include; Customer Experience measurement, Customer Transformation Design, Customer Experience design, Customer and Channel segmentation In the last year, John has led programmes helping clients develop their customer experience approaches across channels, products and customer propositions – with exposure to Executive and Board level executives.

Ray Harrison FCIPD, FLPI

Ray has worked for over 30 years in a number of senior Learning and Development roles within a number of large Financial Services organisations. He is passionate about people development but gets frustrated when L&D functions measure their effectiveness based on the number of people trained and the score on the ‘happy sheet’. Ray believes that Learning professionals should hold themselves just as accountable for the business metrics as the operational managers they support and it is through this belief that he and his teams have built a strong reputation as business enablers capable of ‘moving the dials’

Rob Dermott

Rob has over 20 years’ recruitment experience into the Contact Centre and Customer Experience sectors, making him one of the leading recruiters into the industry. Over this time he has seen the industry change into the dynamic sector it is today. With a specialism in Senior to Executive levels he has helped numerous clients shape their customer focussed functions. He has also met 1000’s of industry professionals across all aspects of customer delivery, customer experience and innovation. This is Rob’s 5th year Judging at the CX Awards.

Amanda Riches

I love judging the Awards because you meet so many inspiring people. For many years, I headed up the Quality, Guest Insight and Customer Services function at Whitbread, and established the successful service formula that sits behind Premier Inn, the award-winning leading hotel chain. I now help organisations operationalise their customer feedback programmes to deliver real business impact and engage senior and frontline teams to deliver excellent experiences. Previous clients include Selfridges, Fidelity Investments, Dimension Data, Al Tayer Retail, Travelodge, Spirit Pub Company, Unilever, Generali, Vodafone, and Philips. https://www.medallia.com/

Emdad Rashid

Emdad has been designing customer experiences for over a decade in various industries ranging from gaming to telecommunications, chemical to retail in the UK and abroad. Emdad has worked with major brands including Vodafone, Tesco, BT, Rolls Royce and Selfridges. With a background in Product Design and having also worked in retail stores and call centres gives Emdad the ability to understand the holistic customer experience

Helen Wilson

A highly experienced executive with extensive experience in driving Customer Success within the Cloud Industry both at Microsoft & within the partner community. Delivering exceptional results through operational excellence and a strong ability to rally people to realise a vision & goal. On both a personal and business mission to use my values of gratitude, zest and honesty to inspire all I encounter to lead a life where they thrive with passion and compassion.

Homayoun Dayani-Fard

Dr. Dayani-Fard is a business consultant and coach helping clients with development and implementation of growth strategies. He has over 30 years of international experience spanning technology R&D, strategy consulting and large scale strategic transformation across financial services, technology and governments. He also provides business coaching for SMEs. He can be reached at homy@ywhltd.com.

Joe Cahalane

Joe Cahalane is the CEO, of Arise who design and deliver award-winning Customer and Technical Support services on behalf of clients. Along with being the Chairman of the CRIOS GROUP, a cluster of key Business Process Outsourcers (BPO) Joe is a board member of the CCMA (Contact Centre Management Association) in Ireland.

With more than 30 years’ experience at Management and Director level with North American, Asian, and European multinationals, Joe is passionate about strategies to develop exceptional customer experiences.

Olga Wormald

Olga has over 15 years experience working with businesses like Asda, Hallmark, EasyJet and Bourne Leisure, leading the delivery of customer focussed change programmes, where customer experience is key. She now has her own consultancy company specialising in guiding businesses through strategic change - interpreting their vision into structured delivery plans that gets results.

Tracey Roberts

Tracey is a highly experienced and successful Director within Capita Customer Management, being responsible for strategy, proposition development and shaping client solutions. Specialising in complaint handling for over 10 years, Tracey understands the value of staying one step ahead and keeping a sharp eye on the market. Covering many industry sectors, she provides clients with insight and practical solutions to ensure they are aware of regulatory and other market pressures which may affect their complaint handling and business review operations.

Carole Campbell

Carole is a creative, positive and passionate customer service manager focused on delivering a world class customer engagement. Extensive experience in customer service across the automotive and banking sectors covering the end to end customer journey, cross function integration programmes and internal brand engagement. Adept at building strong working relationships with a ‘One Team’ approach ensuring everyone knows how they contribute. Carole brings personality and positivity in all situations and believes people are the only differentiator in today’s market.

Christina Dolding

Christina is the Head of Customer Experience at LV Financial Services. She has worked in the financial services sector in the customer experience world for nearly 25 years. Her unique, unconventional and creative thinking has brought the customer to life in the most unexpected but impactful way. She has won a series of internal and external awards for her work and was awarded the UK Customer Experience Professional of the Year in 2016.

Helen Fennell

Helen is co-founder of lens, a customer consultancy dedicated to helping clients to drive customer-led change. Helen’s passion for all things customer began when she started out as a qualitative researcher and this has grown since working across various consultancy roles. Now, as Director at lens, Helen works with brands across various industries, including Financial Services, Travel, Telecoms, Retail, and Utilities. She supports clients to put the customer at the forefront of business decisions through the development of a customer experience strategy, adoption of a customer journey approach, and a focus on connecting customer insight.

Jo Boswell

Jo advises on customer experience innovation, and supports customer experience leaders with coaching development. She focuses particularly on helping organisations harness customer data, insight and technology to drive customer experience improvements, whilst driving the cultural change needed to unlock value for themselves and their customers.

Jo previously enjoyed a career with British Airways spanning 27 years, where she was the driving force behind the airline’s ‘Know Me’ initiative, a successful transformation programme that embedded personalisation into the customer experience and service strategy.

Joanna Hetherington ( Joanna Owen)

Joanna is a creative strategist, people person & results driven transformation leader having gained extensive experience in several senior roles across different industry verticals she has successfully led many international technology and business transformation programs and large operational teams resulting in optimisation for both growth and consolidation, leading edge technical deployments and organisational transformation in both contact centres and commercial business operations.

Successful programs include global deployment and efficiency programs enabled by Contact Centre & CRM technology and conception & engagement through to front end delivery of key strategic plans to enable transformation in Technology, Target Operating Model, Telecoms Services Integration , Operations Leadership & Customer Experience including the set up and integration of some of the founding customer experience teams within the travel industry.

Laura Bowyer

Laura is a customer enthusiast who has used her infectious passion for creating great experiences to build customer-centric cultures within FMCG & Hospitality businesses over the past 10 years. Working within Customer Service, Experience & Marketing roles, she has helped brands better understand their customers, identified priorities for improvement and implemented change. She’s contributed to the success of well-known brands such as Green & Black’s, Gü Puds and PizzaExpress, and is currently leading the transformation for KFC UK & Ireland.

Marie Cross

Marie is a customer service extremist, with almost 40 years’ experience - passionate about developing the talent of frontline teams and leaders, in order to enhance the customer experience, build brand loyalty and develop employee engagement. An award-winning customer service trainer and entrepreneur, Marie’s expertise and infectious enthusiasm stimulates and educates everyone she works with. Her overall aim is to add real, measurable value to both the individual and the organisation, recognising people as the vital ingredient in the recipe for success.

Marlan Hardie

Marlan Hardie operates as the People Engagement Officer for global service providers at World Wide Technology. With 20 years in the customer care industry and a consulting background, Marlan has worked with many of the largest call centers in the telecom, cable, financial services, media and entertainment organizations. He evangelizes that “the brands that deliver the best customer experience have already provide the best employee experience”. Marlan lives in Dallas, Texas with his wife of 20 years and two children.

Peter Milligan

Peter is a professional speaker and business psychologist with 26 years of international experience in developing business leaders and teams. After moving from Australia to the UK in 2000, Peter became a director of Europe's largest executive coaching firm before establishing his own business in 2005. He has worked with leaders at all levels across a wide range of industries. He brings practical applications of psychology to the workplace so that individuals and teams have less stress, more joy, and greater productivity.

Phil Durand

Phil has worked in customer experience measurement for over twenty years. In his role at Confirmit, he works closely with customers to help define and design global Voice of the Customer programmes that aim to deliver real business change. He firmly believes that insights about the customer experience are only important when a business focuses on what this means, why it matters – and crucially – what they’re going to do about it.

Shadi Jamil Al Swairki

A high Medical and Operational Professional with superb leadership skills, impressive record of growth and success for more than 12 years of the experience inthe healthcare sector,

I firmly believe in passionate and inspirational business leadership which energizes both organizations and individuals. Investment in people is a crucial pre-requisite when embarking on a new opportunity

A Son of Great Parents, husband of a wonderful lady and a father for three angels, Helping people to live their best life is my ultimate goal,and it’s my motivational fuel

Simon Rustom

Simon is Managing Director of Customer Consulting Ltd, a Customer Management Consultancy based in Bath, UK. Simon is a Customer Management expert and qualified Change Agent (MSc CASS) who has specific experience in sales, customer service, marketing, and change management. He is a highly accomplished Leader with over 30 years’ management and consultancy experience, and a strong and successful track record in achieving results. He has led the planning and delivery of high profile projects and business change programmes.

Stewart Pattinson

In his fourth consecutive year judging, Stewart combines a successful career in senior contact centre management with recent service transformation expertise, to offer consulting and interim services to the industry. A seasoned customer experience professional, Stewart has over 20 years diverse experience, across multiple verticals within both public and private sectors. In recent years Stewart has been helping organisations deliver improved customer experience outcomes, through optimising and transforming their delivery of sales and services via digital and traditional voice channels.

Tiffany Carpenter

Tiffany has spent over 20 years helping organisations transform customer experience across their sales, service and marketing operations. In her current role at SAS, she guides organisations on the application of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to harness customer insights and deliver relevant one-to-one experiences. Tiffany is also co-founder of Griswold Studios, a boutique fitness concept delivering personalised fitness programmes powered by data and analytics.

Tim Pritchard

Tim leads the CX practice at Kantar UK (a division of WPP plc), working with leading brands from a variety of sectors to define, track and activate their CX strategies. He and his 52-strong team, help to identify the moments that matter most to customers, establishing priorities for improvement action to drive customer engagement and deliver commercial ROI. His expertise transcends NPS/CSat measurement programmes, advanced analytics (fusing and interrogating survey data and social data with behavioural and operational/CRM data), working with best-of-breed VoC platforms (Kantar has global partnership agreements with both Medallia and Qualtrics), and activation/CX consulting services to help clients to embed CX across their businesses and stakeholder groups. Tim is a Board Director at Kantar UK, and also sits on the global Kantar CX Steering Board, which gives him visibility of the CX programmes – and best practice approaches – employed by his colleagues in all 85 countries where Kantar operates.

Aaron Hunt

An experienced Insight Manager, with data analysis and Customer Experience background. I have worked in and around the customer experience domain for many years in the Financial, Retail and Housing sectors.

I have garnered experience from Contact Centres to large scale industry changing projects, bringing structure and detail to reports and insight that helps to bring the voice of the customer to life, allowing for continuous improvement in the customer journey and business strategy.

Ansi Rona-Bayildiran

Ansi has earned her career working in a variety of departments for the leading digital operator, Turkcell (Forbes #1744) in Turkey for almost 15 years. She had several roles in marketing, as well as customer experience. She is a catalyst and change leader with her unconventional ideas and expertise in building digital customer touchpoints, including mobile apps, AI-based chatbots and social media interaction tools, and managing company-wide customer-centric and employee retention programmes. She is a servant leader to her team. Ansi recently moved to London and established her own start-up, Tinderbox Technologies, to excel customer experience practices in consumer-serving industries.

Brian Ford

Brian Ford has been a member of the Samsung UK Board since January 2009. He is responsible for all aspects of Customer Experience and After Sales Support for the full range of products & services in the Samsung portfolio.

His team manages all Consumer & Business client support through Contact Centres in Leeds, Cluj and Manila supporting customers through Voice, Online, Social Media and Remote Services. He also oversees the Samsung nationwide network of retail based Customer Experience Support Centres and further engineer service delivery through a network of 150 Regional and National Service Companies.

Brian started his working life as a qualified technology design draughtsman before moving to Canon. In 2001 he was appointed Canon UK Service Director and then progressed to Head of European Services for Canon in 2005 before then moving to Samsung in 2009.

Catherine Lindsay

Catherine is an operations and customer experience professional with over 20 years of experience across a variety of sectors. She has been with Hitachi Capital Consumer Finance since August 2018 where she is responsible for the operation which includes customer service, complaints and collections, customer experience and the business insights programme.

At Hitachi Capital Catherine and the team are working on delivering outstanding customer experiences and embracing our digital first transformation programme.

Chris Garthwaite

Chris is widely recognised as a leading pioneer of innovative customer experience solutions in an ever changing market. Constantly championing the customer he has delivered measureable and innovative transformation programmes across a range of global organisations across almost every sector.

His career spans over 30 years of senior level board-level experience across a range of companies such as Allied Breweries, Woolworths, Kingfisher, Dorling Kindersley & Digitas, in each instance seeking to put the heart of the business through innovative proposition development. Chris’ visionary approach helps organisations challenge their status quo and shape their future based on customer insight and a deeper understanding of the value of customer experience.

Chris is immensely likeable and is regarded as one of the most exciting and provocative speakers in the industry. He is also the designer of Customer Heartbeat® technology, one of the most successful customer experience methodologies in the industry.

Chris has a Bsc in Sports Science from Birmingham University and an MBA from Bradford University and has worked on a wide range of strategic customer experience projects for national and international clients, including BP, Michelin, Orange (France Telecom), Hyundai, Rio Tinto, Renault, Inchcape, Govia and Coca Cola.

Craig Watson

Craig is an operationally focused, commercially astute and performance driven business leader with over 25 years’ experience in leading Customer Experience teams and delivering strategic change, service transformation and revenue generating programmes. Having developed a proven record in driving business strategies to tangibly deliver improved operational performance, business efficiency, customer delivery and profitability, he launched his own business consultancy - CBM Associates LTD and has spent the last 5 years working with many of the leading utility organisations.

David Gallihawk

David leads the global product and technology teams who develop the digital strategy and roadmap with internal stakeholders & customers, and then pivot to drive the design, build, delivery, support & optimisation of the digital channels, capabilities & platforms which increase business performance, improve employee productivity & engagement with the company's brand, and increase the digital footprint and customer satisfaction across the entire customer lifecycle from interest & exposure through to onboarding, support & use. refinitiv.com

Elke Neuteboom

Elke is Research Director at Beehive Research and has worked on CX programmes for 20+ years – both client and agency side. During that time, she has worked with companies designing practical CX programmes, collecting rich feedback and delivering results in formats suitable to feed into business strategy. While coming from a research background, Elke recognises the need to help companies move from being ‘siloed’ to having a customer-centric culture where everyone knows their role in providing a positive customer experience.

Emma Wardle

Emma is an Operations Professional with over 20 years experience of running large Operations in Financial Services environments. As Senior Director of Operations Delivery at Capital One Emma is responsible for ensuring the right outcomes for customers across general customer service, collections, fraud and complaints channels. Her focus is to ensure well trained, knowledgeable staff are always available to deliver the best outcome for the customer and she does this across an in-house and outsourced model both offshore and in the UK. With a passion for people and delivering great service she relishes the opportunity to recover situations for customers where the expected levels of service may have fallen short.

Giles Owen

An avid lover of improving customer experience my whole career. With over 20 years experience in the redesign and transformation of group level customer engagement strategies, I have seen a myriad of changes happen in the contact centre industry. The constant change keeps the industry exciting. The constant in this ever changing environment is always the customer. Lose sight of them and you have nothing.

I love to see how different companies from diverse industry sectors tackle their own particular set of challenges to improve their offering to the customer.

Gökhan Kara

Gökhan Kara is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP). He’s the first CCXP in Turkey, founder and leads the Customer Experience Professionals Association Istanbul Network, awarded 2018 CXPA Most Innovative CX Day Event. He worked as a CX practitioner in Telecom, Banking and Energy sectors. He’s writing articles for HBR Turkey, CX Magazine and CX Network. He’s an international keynote speaker and spoke many of International Customer Experience Management summits.

Gökhan is Customer Experience Manager at Enerjisa. He is a part time lecturer at MEF University and gives Customer Experience Management course for MBA students. He gives trainings and consultancy to compaines for creating better customer experiences. / https://www.linkedin.com/in/gokhankara16/

Hassan Mohammad

Hassan is a CCXP – Certified Customer Experience Professional and a CXPA (Customer Experience Professionals’ association) Recognised Trainer Provider (RTP). He has also been nominated as a rising 30under30 CX superstar by CX Network. Hassan works at the forefront of innovation and has developed his approach over 7 years working with organisations internationally ie UK and the Middle East across sectors such as Healthcare, Insurance, Engineering and the public sector. He is a passionate advocate of using cross-cultural collaboration to co-design innovative experiences with customers and employees and building capacity within organisations for CX, design and innovation.

Helen Gillett

Helen is an award-winning businesswoman, with wide-ranging experience in operational and strategic leadership, gained over a 25-year career.

Passionate about diversity and inclusion, especially in the realm of mental health. As a leader she believes in role modelling in an open and honest way, not least since her face hasn’t always obviously fitted the environment where she’s worked. Making Affinity for Business the kind of organisation where everyone can do their best, every day, wherever they have come from is extremely rewarding

Jessica Cordery

Jessica is Associate Director, Marketing and Customer Experience at BGL Group, with over 10 years’ experience in Marketing, Communications and Customer Experience within a number of industries including Financial Services and Travel. Currently working within the BGL Group’s Insurance Distribution and Outsourcing division, she is passionate about the delivery of new and innovative customer initiatives that leverage the very best talent and insight.

Karen Swindells

I’m passionate about the customer experience. With 16 years in an ombudsman environment dealing with thousands of complaints about perceived poor customer service I have the expertise and insight to identify a great customer experience.

There are two strands to the customer experience. One involves effective self-service that empowers customers to get what they need, in the format they want it, when they want it. The other strand is far more complex as it relies upon your people providing, without exception, the standard of service expected.

Karma Harvey

I have 20 years working in customer facing and client service environments specialising in financial services, insurance and environmental services industry. As Head of Customer Strategy and Insights, I have a great understanding around customer needs and wants across a mix of channels. I am extremely passionate about the delivery of excellent customer service and making a difference to the way customers engage with our brand.

Kathryn King

Kath is Head of Customer Experience at LV=, a modern financial services business whose core focus revolves around creating value for its members. Kath team of 250 people across the Customer Experience function, deliver a market-leading and award winning service proposition to LV=’s customers and advisers. Prior to that, Kath has succeeded in multiple leadership roles within customer experience, strategic operations and relationship management. A role- model leader, empowering teams to deliver great customer outcomes and to continuously improve the customer journey.

Laura Mullaney

Having worked in Financial Services for over 10 years, I’ve always been most passionate about understanding and delivering exceptional customer experiences. Working with the team across our Insurance Distribution and Outsourcing division, I’m now focussed on delivery of new and exciting propositions, leveraging the best talent and technology to benefit our partners and customers.

Mark Hill

Mark is a Director in the Customer Transformation Team and works within the Telecommunications, Media and Technology sector. He is a Thought Leader in Customer and Commercial Excellence with over 23 years expertise in this area; a regular public speaker on CeX at Conferences and Universities; he also brings vast experience in changing company cultures to be more Customer-focused. Mark drives the space on Sales Excellence bringing in real world sales practices, blending that with the necessary discipline of Sales Management and applying the Sales Force technology to facilitate it. Mark's vast experience in delivering transformational programmes, multi-country engagements, and running a SaaS business brings pragmatism and know-how to all his clients.

Neil Kelley

Neil is an Operations and Process professional with over 15 years experience in the financial industry supporting teams in getting to the right outcomes for customers. In his current role, Neil is responsible for looking at new innovative ways through technology and process design to support customers when they need it most. Neil is passionate about making sure people have the right tools and solutions available to them to allow them to make a difference for customers and the experience they have with organisations.

Nick Lygo-Baker

An accredited member of the MRS and CCXP, Nick specialises in Customer Experience research delivering VoC, Mystery Shopping and Journey Mapping solutions. For over 15 years Nick has helped organisations improve their performance by measuring, understanding and acting on insights; closing the gap between Employee and Customer experiences across the globe. Nick’s experience extends across multiple sectors including Retail, Hospitality, Financial Services and Food Services, driving engagement across all customer touch points, including contact centres, stores and head office functions.

Nick Meinertzhagen

Nick has over 25 years CX and brand experience. This includes creating one of the UKs largest covert customer measurement businesses, which mystery shopped over a million customer touchpoints. He sold this business in 2018 and now his new CX Consultancy delivers creative, personal and strategic customer experiential advice and thought leadership to organisations in the UK and Europe.

Olga Potaptseva

Olga is a Founding Director of European Customer Consultancy, supporting major brands across the globe in their customer-focussed business transformation. With a strong research and insight background she helps clients to ensure understanding of their customer needs is used effectively to fuel value creation and growth. Olga is experienced in leading projects in the UK, Europe, Middle East, Far East and Russia, often pioneering CX adoption in new markets.

Patricia Stone

An experience design enthusiast at heart, Patricia is also a customer-driven transformation and change disciple. She is convinced that great CX is built on great EX and has extensive experience in building and organisationally embedding customer/ employee experience-centric mindset, teams, and operating model. She is leading a multi-disciplinary team composed of CX and UX Designers, Customer Engagement and Change Managers and Customer Insights & Analytics experts to jointly boost employee experience along end-to-end journeys beyond silos and increase service effectiveness.

Paul Carter

Paul is the Founder & Managing Director of CMR, a boutique international recruitment agency which specialises in mid-executive level roles in Customer Management that offer permanent and interim contract solutions – they are leaders of talent acquisition in AI, Contact Centres & CX, which includes Customer Operations/Contact Centres, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Customer Experience (CX) & Insight, BPO, Change & Transformation.

CMR currently employ 20 consultants internationally and are now on a mission to be the leading and largest agency in this sector across Europe. They recently opened another office in Barcelona which is part of our international growth strategy to tailor a global talent solution to larger brands whereby we can trade locally and continue to build our network within local markets…. We're also doing a lot of work in The Netherlands & Germany and plan to have another subsidiary business open by the end of the summer 2019 in Utrecht.

Peter Hocknell

Co-founder of Outwith that helps businesses and customers grow mutually. Client portfolio includes giffgaff, UPS, Samsung, BP, Microsoft, Camelot and Virgin. Previously co-led Mulberry Consulting to become largest international customer experience consultancy (through to its 2015 sale). Started career leading international research for Unilever at WPP and Procter & Gamble at TNS. Became a lead customer strategist at PA Consulting, delivering performance improvements across EMEA, North America and SE Asia. Held senior executive CX positions at Nationwide and First Utility.

Rachel Percival

An experienced Customer Service Director working across multi/omni channel with extensive success in set up, transformation and project management. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills with a passion for people and people development. A secret geek who loves all things CS tech and has implemented multiple customer experience/CRM tools.

Sara Gorman

Sara is a Director of Portfolio at Liberty Global an international Telecommunications and Entertainment organisation and the parent company of Virgin Media. Sara has over 25 years’ experience of developing & implementing transformation strategies and leading business change. As a customer experience professional, Sara has worked across a variety of businesses within both public and private sectors. Sara is currently responsible for leading the ‘agile’ delivery of the Global Programme portfolio for digital customer journeys, creating a ‘best in class’ customer experience.

Sarah Hart

Sarah Hart is the Customer Experience Program Director at FinancialForce and joined the business in 2018 to drive a program of operational transformation designed to deliver improvements to the Customer Experience across the lifecycle. Sarah is passionate about driving value for our customers and ensuring that they have the best experience with our Products and Services. Sarah comes from a background strategy development and transformation program management across the Financial Services sector.

Sharif-Paul Anton

Sharif-Paul has 19 years of experience in Customer Support and Outsourcing. This gained across numerous senior roles leading operations at one of the main industry outsource providers, then furthermore within his current 6 year tenure at Samsung Electronics. He has worked with a number of leading well-known brands, onshore and offshore, across numerous verticals including Travel, Banking, Gaming, Retail and Consumer Electronics. With a passion for innovation he is constantly focussed on evolving opportunities to enhance and deliver world class customer experiences.

Simon Kitchen

Simon has extensive experience implementing and servicing CX programmes for financial service clients.

Simon has worked across a wide range of market research methodologies and markets in the financial services world over the last 10 years.

Kantar is a recognised leader in the provision of full service CX programmes. With a unique focus on navigating and activating the moments that matter and avoiding those that don’t they are adept at driving effect implementation, engagement, adoption and activation with a monetised approach that drives business growth.

Stephen Hewett

Stephen is a Fellow of the Institute of Consulting & Certified Customer Experience Professional, working with many household names he has experience in a wide variety of industry sectors. Stephen is a founder of iCustomer ltd and creator of the NetCNS metric.

•A customer business strategist, Speaker & Columnist

•A master of the science of first principles and simplicity

•Non-Exec, Board advisor to a number of companies.

•Author of The Customer Centric You, People Centricity & Customers Are the Agenda

Vicky Smith

Vicky is co-founder of lens, a customer consultancy dedicated to helping clients drive customer-led change. Vicky’s career started out in qualitative research before specialising in customer experience and journey design. Prior to setting up lens, Vicky led Experience Design within one of the leading global consultancies. At lens, Vicky works across a range of sectors with brands such as Shop Direct, PensionBee, Simply Business and Leeds Building Society. Vicky supports clients to put their customers at the forefront of business decisions through development of customer experience strategies, adoption of customer journey and experience design approaches, with a focus on connecting insight.

Waqas Piracha

Waqas joined Bupa Arabia in 2011 as Business Manager of Pre-Authorization and later assumed the role of Head – Pre-Authorization & Customer Service Operations and Service Excellence. In 2015, Waqas lead the project of establishing Hospital Service Operations to manage customer experience E2E.

Implemented Point of Care strategy to drive CX at Point of Care by mapping Customer Journey Touch Points in the hospitals. Implemented the 6 CX Pillars across the Customer Journey Map by keeping Customer in the centre of Heart.

Prior joining Bupa, Waqas worked with Unilever Arabia for 14 Years and worked across various functions i.e. Commercial Finance, Sales Operations, Supply Chain & Distributor Management. Waqas was managing Customer Service Operations and Excellence during the last 5 years of his tenure with Unilever for GCC region.

Agata Krokowska

As former EY Consultant in Customer Strategy, Agata has helped leading UK financial services organisations succeed with large and complex customer-centric transformations. She was involved in core systems implementations, process improvement and re-designing customer and colleague journeys.

Agata has a passionate belief that consumers should enjoy a simple and intuitive journey and robust support at all touch points. She helps her clients transform the customer experience through delivering real value, deeper insight and hassle free journey.

Andrew Clowes

Andy is the Head of Customer Insight and Strategy at South East Water having worked in Customer experience and consultancy roles across the water industry for almost 25 years. Getting it right for the customer or client remains his passion. He is currently transforming South East Water’s Business Insight activities including implementing a new approach to engagement with customers, stakeholders, citizens and communities to create stronger connections alongside leading on the behavioural influencing programme relating to water usage and efficiency.

Ann-Marie Khan

After graduating from a Hotel & Catering management programme, Ann-Marie worked in privately owned boutique hotels and large global brand hotels.

Around 18 years ago Ann-Marie moved into the property sector managing office and residential space. Leading front-line teams delivering for customers day to day provided great insight into what makes a difference for customers.

Most recently Ann-Marie has taken the role of Customer Experience Director at Landsec, the largest commercial property development and investment company in the UK.

Anna Chapman

Anna's career has been in and around developing and implementing customer experiences in both B2B and B2C focussed global organisations.

She has led and been involved in large business transformation programmes in private and not-for-profit sectors with a wealth of experience in using customer insight for designing customer strategies and managing operational delivery. An experienced business leader who drives collaborative working to achieve the best outcome for customers. This has particularly been around digitisation and multi-channel and organisational customer culture.

Anne Sheedy

Anne has spent over 25 years, designing, delivering and transforming the customer experience in a number of different organisations. Her experience has included working at director level with responsibility for both B2B and B2C customer experience. Throughout her career her passion has been to work on both top-down strategies to improve customer experience and to lead expert customer-facing teams, educating, empowering and encouraging them to excel in customer experience.

Anne is also a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and Chartered Manager.

Barrie Brown

Barrie is a Director of CCA Recruitment who celebrated their 20th year of connecting partner clients with the leading talent in the CX and Contact Centre industry. Barrie has worked across a wide client portfolio enabling them to solve the challenges ahead of them through delivering consultancy and people orientated solutions. With over 13 years industry experience he has supported Corporate and high-growth start-up organisations is passionate about how developments in people capability and technology will drive future CX improvements.

Ben Llewellyn

In his role as Global Head of Customer Experience at Ipsos, Ben is responsible for making sure that Ipsos clients are delivered the latest thinking and technology in the Customer Experience space from over 1400 Ipsos Customer Experience professionals. He has extensive experience across multiple geographies and industry sectors focusing on helping clients ensure that a better Customer Experience will drive improved business results. With clients in over 60 markets he has significant insight as to what constitutes best-in-class Customer Experience programs and how they are best embedded through the organisation.

Beverley Stag

Beverley has over 23 years of experience in business, operating up to board level and across multiple functions, with a focus on delivery of outcomes. Beverley has worked for world leading organisations such as Bupa and Amplifon, as well as smaller and public sector organisations. Beverley is accomplished leader of process improvement and developing high performing teams to enhance customer experience and an advocate for the engagement of people to deliver change successfully.

Brendan Dykes

Brendan has spent over 30 years in customer experience delivery roles, both business and technical. He has worked in front-line customer service delivery and designed and implemented customer experience systems in both the Power and Telecommunications industries. At Genesys, Brendan has worked with customers across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to help them to design better customer experience solutions. He’s passionate about how well-designed AI and machine learning will deliver better customer and employee experiences.

Brian Shuttleworth

Brian is a practitioner who moved into recruitment after working as a consultant within the Ember Group. He is a seasoned contact centre professional with 19 years’ experience of providing operational and strategic reviews, project management, process improvement, performance analysis and team leadership. He’s worked with a number of UK organisations including The Post Office and Birmingham City Council. Using his practitioner knowledge, he recruits senior roles aligned to Ember’s specialities in CX management consultancy, training, analytics, Customer Engagement and Digital Transformation.

Caitlin Jones

Caitlin has 8 years’ experience working to improve customer experience for her clients across contact centres and product innovation teams. Most recently she has been leading the implementation of an improved product application experience delivered using a new digital platform for a UK building society. Caitlin champions the use of service design across projects ranging from concept innovation to customer service operations. She’s passionate about developing inclusive experiences and believes this, alongside a large dose of empathy, is crucial in today’s society.

Caroline King

Caroline is an Operations expert with over 20 years’ experience of leading large scale customer support centres, delivering solutions across the end to end customer journey. Passionate about delivering exceptional service to customers, Caroline has led a transformation programme at Ageas, which has the aim of ‘making insurance easy’ for customers, by helping and empowering people to think differently about how they support customers and as a result, revolutionizing the service they provide. Through this work, the Ageas Sales & Service team have seen significant uplifts in NPS/NES scores, as well as unprecedented improvements in employee engagement.

Caroline Pain

Caroline is Senior Vice President, Customer Proposition, at Aetna, a CVS Health company. Her background and passion is in the intersection between analytics and customer insight, and the design and delivery of digital services and propositions that solve real customer problems. Before Aetna, Caroline was Client Services Director for a leading affiliate network, and also, amongst other roles, led the customer experience transformation programme at Aviva UK. Recent professional success includes the launch of a progressive genetics proposition, Aetna DNA.

Charlie Whitworth

Charlie jointly leads the Customer Experience team within Capita Customer Management, who are the UK’s leading provider of outsourced customer management services. The Customer Experience team’s objective is to help our clients improve their customers’ experience by identifying and implementing opportunities to transform customers’ end-to-end journeys. Charlie and the team are currently delivering transformation projects on six of our client partnerships that are delivering step-change improvements. Charlie has over 20 years’ experience in customer experience transformation projects having worked across a range of industries in both the private and public sectors.

Chloe Woolger

Chloe recently joined Kantar from Watermelon Research. Chloe has over 9 years’ experience across the CX and research landscape, advising clients on how to better understand their customers and improve the overall experience. Chloe’s experience spans across marketing, new business and implementation, helping brands build programmes that deliver true ROI. Chloe has worked across multiple sectors including Financial services, Utilities, Travel & Tourism, Retail and Tech. Chloe is a member of the MRS and CIM. She is also a committee member for the &Thrive group, a network dedicated to helping women within research and marketing develop their careers through training and events.

Chris Chipperfield

Chris is Head of Customer Service Acceleration for HSBC UK, focused on accelerating the delivery of programmes and initiatives which will deliver the best possible experience for customers. He has worked in Financial Services for nearly 20 years, having undertaken a wide range of frontline retail banking roles, as well as leading the delivery of numerous Change programmes across the UK.

Chris Little

Chris runs a specialist insight agency which helps clients build customer value, innovate and grow.

Customer Thinking is a frame of mind, it’s about organising so that you develop a deep understanding of what makes customers tick and using that empathy to drive customer centricity and experience.

Chris has a marketing and CX background in financial services, telecom and retail. In addition to consultancy he occupies NED and interim CMO roles in digital start-ups.

Christopher Howe

After a decade of looking after ‘customers’ in Military healthcare, I transferred industries moving into the Telecoms sector. A further 9 years in BT have provided me with the opportunity to drive improved customer experience for Public Sector Clients, multiple Global Conferencing Businesses, brand new network build for Homebuilders and more recently in our Consumer divisions. I am now fortunate to run our Customer Change team, supporting product and transformation deliveries across our BT and EE Consumer brands.

Claire Emery

A dynamic, motivated and highly energetic leader with over 25 years’ experience leading change and transformation in contact centres, Claire Emery is currently Head Of Contact Centres at TUI UK&I. Claire’s priority is driving customer service excellence and her passion is about changing cultures and working environments for highly motivated teams while championing the use of technology and digital solutions. Starting from advisor and progressing to a Senior level across blended multi-channelled sales and service markets, Claire’s professional history includes leading teams at award winning brands such as the AA and Interserve.

Claire Hill

Claire joined Studio Retail Ltd in January 2018 as Customer Experience Director, driving the CX roadmap as well as taking responsibility for the UK and Philippines customer service operations with outsourced services across the globe. Recent benchmarks have demonstrated a 10% year on year improvement in Studio’s net promoter score.

Previous to this role, Claire spent 2 years with boohoo.com as Customer Service Director, accountable for a global, multi-lingual customer service operation, launching Customer Services digital platforms for boohoo, Pretty Little Thing and Nasty Gal. She previously held the role of Director of Customer Services for JD Williams, a FTSE 250 multi-channel retailer with group revenue in excess of £800m.

With over 20 years’ experience in customer service, Claire has delivered transformational projects with significant impact on employees and customers. Her career extends across in-house and outsourced customer service and financial service operations across Afro-Eurasia and the USA.

Damian Burkhill

A passionate, experienced and accomplished Client Director and Contact Centre professional with a proven track record of building exceptional client relationships, account management, contact centre delivery and building customer experience solutions.

With over 25 years in the contact centre industry has held many key and senior roles within account management, client relationship management, operational delivery and operational solution design across multiple sectors. Experienced in set up and management of multi-site accounts, in different geographies, including UK, Philippines, and South Africa.

Debbie Ashton

Debbie Ashton is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Customer Experience and a Founder of FinancialForce. Debbie has been instrumental in the growth and ongoing success of the FinancialForce business. In her current role, Debbie’s mission is to work with our customers to understand their journey, ensure they maximize the value they derive from our solutions and enhance the overall customer experience.

Deborah Green

Deborah is currently Chief Operations Officer for Amigo Loans, having joined in March 2019. For the previous 20 years, Deborah worked at a senior level as a customer experience and operations professional in the financial services sector, most recently holding the role of Customer Operations Director at Cabot Credit Management.

Emily Leadbetter

Emily has worked for National Grid PLC for almost ten years. During this time, she has undertaken a variety of roles working with customers and stakeholders, including on complex topics such as Electricity Market Reform, and the Future Of Gas. She now leads the Customer & Stakeholder team in the National Grid System Operator, working at the heart of the energy industry, seeking to transform the customer experience. Emily has previous experience in automotive, policing and business process outsourcing sectors.

Emma Booth

Emma is a Director in PwC's Financial Services Front Office Transformation practice. Emma works with clients to shape new customer experiences, explore customer insights and deliver new customer propositions. Emma has proven customer experience delivery skills, having worked both in industry within the Barclays Customer Experience team and on client projects across a variety of industry sectors including Banking, Insurance, Higher Education and Local Government. Emma is delighted to be a judge for the UK Customer Experience awards!

Gustavo Morales

Gustavo is a leader that brings his drive, energy and passion into bringing multi-disciplinary people together to deliver and exceed customer expectations.

He has worked in several multinational companies in the IT field.

Gustavo is currently a Delivery Manager of Bairesdev, a company that hires the top 1% IT talent to provide end-to-end delivery of Technology Solutions to organizations of all sizes, from start-ups to top Forbes companies.

He has over 15 years of international experience delivering solutions to customers, including SaaS cloud computing solutions and eCommerce solutions with a wide range of technology stack. All that resulting in $ millions in realized revenue for their customers.

Hannah Foley

Hannah is a B2B customer experience expert, with over 15yrs experience working with FTSE 100 B2B retail & financial organisations such as Wolseley UK (Ferguson) & Barclaycard.

With a passionate belief that B2B customers should get the same great experiences from their business product & service providers as they do from their consumer brands.

An award winning professional & previous CX awards finalist, she has headed up CX teams to develop deep actionable insights and land improvement strategies which have delivered great results.

Now the founder of Yak CX, a B2B CX consultancy. Yaks are resilient, consistent & well respected - Be More Yak.

Hazel Hughes

Hazel is a passionate customer champion with extensive experience of working in travel, retail and healthcare brands. After 18 years of working for British Airways leading large customer facing teams she has specialised in customer experience transformation. She has over 10 years experience of development and delivery of programmes which drive a step change in customer experience. She has an in depth understanding of the challenges and puzzles which need to addressed to ensure that any customer experience represents the brand and delivers on customers expectations.

Idit Aloni

Idit Aloni is Head of Product Marketing in Amdocs, in the division responsible for delighting customers through successful execution of our solutions. Being a passionate CX marketer, Idit has spent over a decade consulting and leading CX transformation initiatives within large organizations in Israel and at Vodafone New Zealand. Her passion is finding new ways to build exceptional customer and employee experiences. Idit holds an MBA in International Business from the University of Auckland and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Human Services.

Ijeoma Okeke

Ijeoma is the Chief Customer Experience Officer at SV Gaming (trading as Betking), a disruptor in the Gaming industry in Nigeria.

Ijeoma has experience spanning across various sectors in building operationally efficient and high-performance contact centre. A thought leader on Customer Experience and a keynote conference speaker in Africa.

James Eyre

James is an experienced B2B marketing professional with twenty years' experience in a variety of blue-chip organisations. At Teleperformance, the worldwide leader in outsourced omnichannel customer experience management, James is responsible for their UK marketing strategy and execution.

He has a background in delivering integrated marketing programmes, with significant focus in BPO, customer experience, technology, in sectors such as retail, financial services, travel, logistics, utilities, government and telco.

Jane Kennedy

Over 20 years’ experience in Financial services , creating, transforming and managing customer service and people teams Jane has always put the customer at the centre of an organisation. She passionately believes this cannot be achieved without the appropriate focus on supporting, empowering and developing people. This led her to step away from COO and HRD roles and create an Executive coaching and business advisory company. Working with leaders , to become more authentic, more dynamic and more effective.

Jenny Betteridge

Jenny has 13 years’ experience in the insight industry and has been with Quadrangle for 8 years. Her expertise lies in developing industry leading customer experience trackers and tracking systems that describe, predict and improve how brands are doing at delivering on the things that matter to customers. She works across telco, retail, public and third sector clients, helping them to use research and data to create and implement customer strategy.

Joe Marshall

Joe leads the Customer Experience practice at Ipsos MORI, a team of insight, advisory and technology professionals who specialise in designing, delivering and maximising value from customer and employee experience programs. A regular speaker at CX conferences, he has a passion for helping clients grow their business through customer centricity and is fascinated by how new technology is shaping how customers interact with and build relationships with brands. He has over 15 years of research and consulting experience, working with global clients from a range of sectors including CPG, telco and financial services.

Jonathan Mindell

Jonathan has had a career-long focus on improving customer engagement, with sector experience spanning financial & business services, healthcare, employee benefits and travel. He has worked for some of the world’s best regarded service organisations including Marks & Spencer, Prudential, Bupa, Wyndham Worldwide and Citibank and, most recently, Mercer, the global human resources consultancy where he was Senior Partner.

Co-founder of iCustomer, Jonathan is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and is using his experience to help organisations Define, Structure and Measure what their customers’ Need and Want from them.

Julie Stephens

Julie began her career in the Royal Mail group with 8 years in marketing, before taking this deep and diverse customer experience into HR using similar techniques to improve employee engagement and through this customer experience across the Post Office, Royal Mail and Parcelforce.

In moving to Bupa, beginning in Bupa Care Homes before joining Bupa Dental Care in 2018, Julie delivers transformational change through continuing to focus on the delivery of business results through employee and customer experience, Julie is commercially astute with high positive impact, her energy and enthusiasm drive ambitious outcomes in hard to reach areas through visionary people leadership.

Katie Broadbent

Katie advises on customer experience; focusing on using human-centric design to ensure her clients are taking a ‘North Star’ approach to customer experience to deliver real value to the end customer. She believes empathy by all stakeholders forms the basis of good design.

Most recently, Katie has tackled the problem of delivering regulatory compliance for a UK Building Society, using a design thinking approach and agile practices to optimise the end-to-end customer experience.

Katie May

Over the last nine years, Katie has placed talented individuals into the Construction, Travel and Financial Services sectors. Katie now heads up CMR’s RPO offering which provides end to end managed solutions across a range of Customer Contact functions such as: Complaints, Remediation, Operational Change and Multilingual Contact Centre Advisors. Katie consistently delivers high calibre individuals and teams and is committed to delivering a best in class service for both her Candidates and Clients.

Katie Rolfe

Katie has worked in Customer Experience across a variety of roles and brands for the last 8 years. With experience in Operations, Quality and Training, she has the expertise to drive a top-tier Customer Experience - whether running boutique, in-house operations or vast, offshore call centres. In addition to her Ops background, Katie has experience in running Customer feedback programmes, and using them to drive actionable insight across a variety of business streams.

Kevin Rhone

I am passionate about Responsible Business and a key part of this is delivering an excellent experience to every customer, Novus are a Construction company with a proud 100-year history which is built on strong values. Valuing our customers is one of our values, and through an ambitious customer experience programme we have developed a customer focused culture we are proud of! Our moto is ‘It’s our job’ highlighting that every employee plays a part in delivering an excellent customer experience.

Lara Harkins

Currently the UK Client Director for South African headquartered BPO, Synergy International, Lara brings 25 years’ experience of leading operational transformations primarily within the Utilities and Home Services sectors. She has been privileged to work for leading UK brands including the AA, British Gas, Octopus Energy and nPower in a variety of senior leadership roles and has first hand experience of the challenges and rewards of delivering exceptional service in dynamic environments. Lara is very much looking forward to her first time judging at this award.

Lawrence Fenley

Lawrence is Executive Director at Genii Professional Services working with executive teams and operational management to deliver a range of improvement programmes, change initiatives and performance recovery projects.

Genii Professional Services provides experienced support and guidance on specific projects and also engages with organisations more broadly to deliver strategic initiatives.

Lawrence is an experienced business leader and coach who has worked in global contact centre environments for 30 years covering in-house and BPO operations as client and as supplier.

Leticia Bevilaqua

Leticia is the Manger of Client Success (EMEA) for Workplace by Facebook leading the Client Success team in charge of driving business value for large organizations. She is also responsible for the Account Management of some of the largest enterprise customers of Workplace. Prior to joining Workplace, Leticia worked at a number of software companies with over 15 years experience in account management. A graduate of INSEAD MBA in Singapore and France, Leticia speaks Portuguese, Spanish, English and French and lives in London.

Lisa Akeroyd

Lisa has an infectious passion for customer excitement with over 20 years’ experience of putting the customer at the heart of everything across a number of different industries.

A self-proclaimed ‘Travel Passionista’, Lisa has gained a wealth of diverse experience living in the USA, Thailand, France, Singapore, Germany, Australia, Saudi Arabia and the UK.

Lisa is now Managing Director of Growth at Sixt where she is responsible for accelerating the company’s already rapid pace of expansion and is focused on making the customer the hero of Sixt’s story.

Louise Newman

I am experienced in managing and implementing change with over 20 years of working in a variety of industries, including Banking, Insurance and Manufacturing. I am responsible for introducing large scale change within the contact centre environment to benefit our internal and external customer’s journey. With a passion for enhancing the customer experience, my focus is to ensure that I understand how our customers feel and more importantly, understand what needs to be done to improve this.

Lynzi Harrison

Lynzi has over 20 years’ experience in the financial services industry leading multi-disciplined teams in different countries. Until recently Lynzi was at Old Mutual Wealth as Operations Director where her team won multiple industry awards for Customer Experience and Customer Service. Lynzi has a passion and a drive for delivering the best Customer Experience possible.

Lynzi is proud to say that she has recently moved to LV= as Customer Experience Director. LV= is a business that is passionate about the Customer, and places the Customer Experience at the heart of its decision making.

Manoj Mistry

Manoj has worked in the CX industry for over 25 years with some of the world’s most well known brands. As founder and Director of Remis, he specialises in CX Strategy, Contact Centre Transformation, CX Technology and Outsourcing Strategy. He has advised clients in many verticals as well as consulted with some of the world’s most well known delivery and strategy consulting firms. Remis is currently leading the design of one of the UK’s largest public sector transformation programs.

Mark Conway

I started recruiting senior talent within customer contact in 2007 and subsequently setup Contact Centre Partners in June 2010; my team and I immerse ourselves in the brands we support when sourcing talent within our thriving industry, and we represent some of the UK’s best talent within customer contact. We’re incredibly proud to work with so many of the worlds most customer centric brands, and are even more proud of the reputation we have built as a business in the past decade.

Mark Davies

Mark heads PA's work in customer-led transformation – the design and development of customer and organisational strategy, customer experience and better operating models. His knowledge and experience have been gained in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia, working across a variety of financial services, technology, and services markets. Prior to PA Mark held a variety of senior executive positions in marketing, sales and general management with companies that include Three, Reuters, and Xerox.

Mark Rogers

Mark Rogers is the Director of Business Transformation and Insight at Moat, a housing association that owns and manages over 20,000 homes in the South East of England.

Mark has 17 years’ experience in the Housing Sector from leading large Customer Contact Centres to his work now in transformation utilising his skills from previous work in the IT retail sector.

Mark is passionate about improving customer experiences through insight and innovative technology. He believes that by truly understanding customers’ needs you can align your processes and technology to create positive outcomes.

Matt Currall

Matt is a Director at Capita PLC, accountable for all aspects of customer delivery across a portfolio of Partnerships including Tesco Mobile, National Trust and Vauxhall Finance, spanning 4 UK sites and 1000+ FTE.

Prior to Capita, Matt has worked in a series of executive customer roles including Chief Operating Officer at Irwin Mitchell Solicitors, Customer Services Director at VitalityHealth and Head of Global Sales at Barclaycard.

For the past 15 years, Matt has advocated and won industry awards for the creation of people-based cultures that inspire and empower colleagues to drive market leading customer outcomes.

Matthew Addison

An accomplished senior Fintech executive with a successful career in building and developing customer centric organisation across multiple verticals, Matthew focuses on utilising technology to enhance customer and employee engagement. Most recently Matthew’s focus has been on helping organisations adopt cloud and robotic Process Automation to deliver world class customer service. Matthew’s passion is to deliver happy, reference-able clients who receive a rapid return on their investment in Applications.

Miles C. Thomas

Miles leads on customer service and experience for the International Baccalaureate supporting over 5000 schools across 150 countries, he has developed their service and experience strategy and VOC approaches while building a proactive engagement style customer service.

Miles is a certified CX professional and believes in the importance of inspiring leadership and employee experience as a foundation to great customer experiences. His experience in technology, service and experience combined with a degree in Psychology has provided a unique lens in humanizing the customer experience.

The IB aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.

Niranjalee Rajaratne

Niranjalee Rajaratne is the Head of Quality Assurance and Delivery at Third Bridge Group Limited, a leading independent financial research company. Niranjalee is a software quality assurance and delivery process optimisation strategist and leader with over 13 years’ experience of successfully delivering enterprise-scale high-quality software through structured QA and delivery practices. Her experience spans across leading organisations in capital/financial markets and research, publishing, e-commerce and telecommunication industries. She is a frequent conference speaker and a member of the judging panel for the European Software Testing Awards.

Patricia John

Patricia has worked as a Director developing and delivering customer service operations transformation and building better customer experiences across a variety of businesses and industries and, has more than 40 years’ experience in this arena. Companies that Patricia has worked for include Marks & Spencer, The AA, Prudential and The Open University.

Patricia has a passion for delivering the best experiences for her customers and also for her teams.

Paul Kavanagh

Paul has spent his career using insight to help brands engage with their customers better and to drive business growth. At Beehive Research his passion for delivering insight that has the power to transform and deliver a return on investment has become the philosophy of the company.

His expertise lies in the rare combination of understanding the strategic use of insight; being a creative thinker to solve business problems; and, having an eye for detail to ensure implementation and delivery meet business objectives.

Pavitra Bhaskar

Pavitra Bhaskar is Global Head of Client Services at INTL FCStone, managing Global Payments client.

With 14 years of experience in business process transformation, building global client management teams and driving innovation towards best-in-class solutions, she has worked in notable companies such as Thomson Reuters, IHS Markit and London Stock Exchange.

As a collaborative leader, she has demonstrated her ability to identify and adapt global teams to the evolving business environment, whilst effectively managing risk and ensuring high quality service.

Pete Evia-Rhodes

Pete is Director of Customer Value for The Times & The Sunday Times. He's responsible for all aspects of Customer Experience and management of 500,000+ subscribers. Over the last three years they've consistently delivered double digit growth through individualised customer segmentation and record retention. His team manages the programmatic customer lifecycle, including award winning A.I content recommendations, Times+ and the Operations. Pete started his working life at BT with highlights including supporting the launch of BT Sport and BT Consumer's period of rapid growth.

Pramod Tiwari

Pramod is part of a rapidly growing Cognizant Consulting team working as a Digital Transformation expert delivering complex business transformation programmes across leading Energy and Utility clients in UK and Europe. With over 23+ years of experience Pramod helps clients set strategies in motion that unify business and digital strategies, generate growth and enable competitive advantage. Programmes delivered by Pramod have not only helped business to achieve the stated objective but also delivered industry recognitions through multiple industry awards.

Rachel Adlard

Rachel Adlard leads the Programme Management Office for the Zebra Technologies’ Professional Services Business Unit. Rachel’s team is responsible for launching new service offerings as well as defining the methodologies and tools for delivering successful customer projects across the globe.

Rachel has worked in the Technology and Telecoms Sector for the duration of her career and has held a diverse set of leadership positions including roles in product quality, software development, new product deployment, customer advocacy and programme management.

Ruth Kinsella

Ruth has worked in the public/private services industry for over 20 years working in a variety of roles including Account Director of a £40m Highways and Design contract. Ruth’s career has steered her towards becoming a Customer Experience professional in an industry which has typically focused on commercial outcomes rather than providing a service to end-users. As co-founder of Co-Creation Partnership, embedding successful customer and collaboration strategies in to service industries is her single-minded focus

Sabrina Gross

Sabrina is the Customer Success Director at Vizolution. Vizolution is a market-leading customer experience technology company that helps enterprises across Financial Services, Telecoms and Utilities streamline complex customer journeys into effortless experiences.

In her role, Sabrina leads a team that engages with the customer from pre-sale stages through to BAU to ensure they are able to maximise the full value of the solution.

Sabrina has a background in customer support, quality assurance training and consulting for organisations in Europe, North America and APAC.

Samantha Statham

Sam has worked in the Tool & Plant Hire Industry for nearly 13 years and now focuses full time on effectively managing strategic as well as ‘hands on’ support, by championing, and improving the customer experience. By collecting and analysing valuable customer insight, Sam has enabled the business to have a deeper understanding of the customer, and as an effective communicator, Sam has been able to share this valuable insight across the business. Recently Sam has designed and implemented a high level CX programme, to enable long term focus of activities to help achieve a customer centric culture.

Sarah Simpson

Sarah is a customer experience expert who has used her infectious passion for creating great experiences to build customer-centric cultures within travel and leisure businesses over the past 16 years. She believes that every company should strive to create a world-class customer experience. Working within Customer Service and Experience roles, she has helped brands better understand their customers, identified priorities for improvement and implemented change. She’s contributed to the success of well-known brands such as National Express, First Group and Jet2.com. She is currently leading the Customer Experience team at Sky Betting and Gaming. The work of her teams has been recognised by industry accolades on many occasions from the National Customer Service Awards to Which?

Steve Elvins

Steve has worked in customer facing leadership roles for over 20 years. Working in both B2C and B2B environments he has helped businesses improve their customer relationships in over 20 countries. An expert in Customer Service transformations he is passionate about creating company wide cultures that put customer experience at the heart of all activities and that deliver first-class service at all touch points.

Stuart Bishop

As Director of Service at leading technology provider CDL, Stuart has extensive experience in the UK insurance and tech spaces. With a passion for developing people and building high performing teams, he believes that a customer-centric culture is central to organisational success. A Companion member of the Institute of Customer Service and former judge of the National Customer Service Awards, Stuart is excited to hear the success stories from this year’s entrants.

Stuart Miller

Stuart joined the board of Newcastle Building Society as Customer Director in 2017. He is an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers and holds the Customer Experience Professionals Association qualification for senior business leaders.

Stuart has more than three decades' customer service experience in the financial services sector, including roles with Virgin Money, RBS International, and NatWest. He is responsible for ensuring Newcastle Building Society members receive an outstanding experience accords all its channels and back office functions.

Tracey Price

As a seasoned Head of Customer Insight & Customer Experience I’ve got a wealth of experience from, retail and call centre environments to housing, for some of the UK's most well-known brands. I’m proud to have delivered some dynamic experiences and solutions. I thrive channelling insights and reporting and bringing the voice of the customer to life, looking for new and innovative ways to improve the customer journey for the mutual benefit of both the customer and business.

Victoria Orr

Victoria has a wealth of global experience directing large scale programs and transformational projects across diverse organizations, including Marriott and Amazon. She is passionate about people and customers and believes that a positive employee experience is absolutely integral to delivering world-class customer experience.

At Parkdean Resorts (a UK holiday company with 67 award winning parks), Victoria is responsible for product innovation and transforming the customer journey through exceptional service delivery and cutting edge technology.

Yvan Goupil

I am the Head of Customer and Marketing Insight at CYBG plc, a UK-based commercial bank made up of four unique brands: Clydesdale Bank, Yorkshire Bank, B and Virgin Money. My role spans across CX insight, brand insight and marketing analytics.

Before CYBG, I held a variety of insights and marketing strategy positions at top blue chip Fast Moving Consumer Goods companies, e.g. the Coca-Cola Company, Danone or PepsiCo.

Besides customer experience management, I have a keen interest in behavioural economics and decision science.

Yvette Wise

Yvette comes with masses of energy, enthusiasm and over 20 years of sales and service operational experience. She has a strong background in coaching and performance management, has managed multi-functional contact centre and field based sales teams and uses this experience when designing performance improvement strategies. Yvette has delivered profitable and sustained results across industry and organisation, with clients including TSB, IBM, AXA, Marks and Spencer, TUI and Nationwide. Yvette has previously judged at the TJ Awards.