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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jamie Thorpe

Jamie has extensive experience designing, implementing and servicing CX programmes. He blends his actionable and pragmatic approach with his customer and employee performance improvement expertise to deliver results. 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.

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.

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.

Stephen Parry

Stephen Parry is the CEO of Lloyd Parry International: Adaptive Business Consultancy.

He is a multi-award winning, international strategist and speaker on the design and creation of adaptive enterprises. Stephen has a world-class reputation for passionate leadership and organisational transformation by changing the design and cultures of organisations to create differentiation and long-term profitability.

Stephen has written numerous business publications among them are the Introduction to Adaptive Business Practices and Change Readiness: Planting the Seeds for Change Success. He is also the author of Sense and Respond: The Journey to Customer Purpose written as a follow-up to his award-winning transformations. His work featured in the Harvard Business Review.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Kerry Edwards

I lead our CX Practice that provides service design & delivery capability, underpinned by our CX Improvement Framework, helping our customers to realise the end-user experience ambitions.

Before Capita, I worked in Telecommunications for 20 years in roles spanning Operations, Service, Credit, Sales, Technology and CX Strategy & Transformation. Above all else, I relish the opportunity to connect customer experience with disruptive design and outstanding delivery.

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.

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.

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.

Sara Gorman

Sara is a Programme Director 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Guy Masters

Guy has been recruiting into the Contact Centre industry for over 20 years. Formed in 2003, Cactus Search are a specialist Contact Centre recruitment business who recruit Executive, Management and Leadership roles in addition to running large scale volume resourcing solutions across the UK and abroad. Partnering small and large organisations alike, the team at Cactus Search have a superb record of success.

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.

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.

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.

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 optimization strategist and leader with over 13 years’ experience of successfully delivering enterprise-scale high-quality software through structured QA and delivery practices in top quality organisations In the capital/financial markets, financial 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 since 2017.

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.

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.

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.

Sue Amies-King

Sue Amies-King is a non-executive director for Hastings Insurance Services Ltd and an independent consultant advising on business transformation, operational excellence and customer management. Sue has worked at CEO and Board level across a range of sectors spanning retail, insurance, energy and water. Sue has deep functional expertise in sales, marketing and customer operations, having led large customer facing teams in the retail and service sector for over 25 years.

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.

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.