Rob is the co-founder at customer experience 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 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 a 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.

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.

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.

In May 2014, Francesca joined NewDay as Director of Customer Service & Service Delivery where she is a member of the Senior Leadership team running the teams across Customer Service, Digital Servicing, Complaints, Underwriting and Fulfilment. Prior to that Fran worked at GE Capital, Axa Life, Telefonica O2, Cable & Wireless Worldwide and BT.

Fran is an experienced Leader who has led successful transformations and created award winning customer service experiences and teams. Her strengths lie in her passion and customer focus and creating insight to drive actionable outcomes. Fran has driven change that optimises digital adoption, customer and people engagement, great customer experience journeys.

As an experience customer centric leader, Vince heads up a diverse multicultural team centered in the UK with teams in Mexico and Korea supporting both digital and print customers. Vince has a breadth of experience in Customer Experience Transformation, Contact Centre Management and Employee Engagement, cultivated over 20 years of working in different industries. He is focused on delivering first class customer support and exceptional standards of service with a proven ability to nurture a strong culture, underpinned by a solid strategy.

Having delivered award winning programmes during his career, Amjad has been a part of some great names including Centrica, British Gas, HMRC, The AA, Lloyds TSB and more recently HSBC. He has a strong background in customer service leadership, people development as well as human resources both here in the UK and offshore. He is particularly passionate about delivering stellar business performance and exceptional customer experiences through the development and engagement of people.

Bruce has more than 25 years experience within the financial services sector with over 20 of these dealing with complaints. He has worked as a complaints consultant, has worked at the Financial Ombudsman Service and is now a Complaints Manager within the pensions and employee benefit sector. He is passionate about delivering fair outcomes and ensuring that both the customer experience is enhanced and business improvements are delivered as a result of lessons learned from complaints.

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.

Michael is lead complaint management consultant for Civica Digital and has worked on projects, around the world, helping organisations to gain when customers complain. His experience covers a wide range of sectors including insurance, travel, transport, leisure, manufacturing, automotive, consumer lending, mortgages, property management, healthcare and government. He has written two books and many articles on how business benefits can be delivered through the effective handling and analysis of complaints. His other roles include being a committee member for the British Standards Institution's Customer Service Committee (SVS/0) as well as being a participating committee member in the development of international standards (ISO)..

Prerna is the Head of Operations, responsible for both building and running the bank activities for ClearBank®, UK’s first clearing bank in more than 250 years. She is passionate about building agile and well-controlled processes and has dedicated the last 12 years of her career to delivering strategic business outcomes by building customer-centric operating models.  She champions the use of digital channels to service customers and is focussed on leveraging technology to improve end to end customer experience.

Anthony has over fourteen years’ experience working specifically within the complaints and feedback software sector. Having implemented well over 70 complaints and feedback systems across the banking, insurance, government (local and central), travel and transport and social housing sectors, Anthony now helps firms review their current complaints processes and identifies possible areas for system improvements, whether that is in the initial capture, ongoing complaint management, quality assurance checks, identifying root cause analysis/learning opportunities, or the meaningful MI a dedicated system can provide.

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.

Helen Pettifer is passionate about Customer Service, having been a Customer Service Manager in the security industry. She now runs her own training and consultancy company based in Buckinghamshire, specialising in vulnerable customers. She designs and delivers Customer Service training programmes and is a public speaker on the subject. Helen is a Member of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), Toastmasters International and a Young Enterprise Board Member.

Irene is the compliance Manager at ERV and is supporting the development and embedding of sound compliance practices and good conduct across the business units. Irene has a strong background in compliance, having also worked at the Financial Ombudsman Service and as a Risk and Compliance Manager for Home assistance UK and Compliance Leader for Simplyhealth. Irene has a diploma in Law and is a member of the CII.

She's passionate about the customer experience. With 16 years in an ombudsman environment dealing with thousands of complaints about perceived poor customer service, she has 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.

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.

For the last 15 years, Neil’s been helping complaint handling teams to write like real people, not robots. Whether it’s putting empathy into Barclaycard’s responses, helping EE write with personality or creating a human approach to communication at the Ministry of Justice, Neil gives teams inspiring and practical ways to transform their language and their culture. Over the last 18 months, The First Word team has picked up a number of awards, including Gold for Best Training at the UK Complaint Handling Awards 2019.

Rebecca’s love affair with outstanding service delivery began 30 years ago in the financial sector as a customer champion and complaint handler. Since then she’s worked with a wide range of organisations both in-house and as external learning professional. As an ICF-credentialled coach and experienced facilitator, Rebecca supports frontline professionals with their daily challenges - particularly ‘those’ difficult conversations. She also works with the strategists, leaders and line managers that shape policy, processes and delivery. Her view? Whatever your job title, you’re in customer service.

Jim is a Director at Capgemini Invent and is a seasoned Consultant with over 25+ years of experience of providing support to Banks, Building Societies and other financial services firms facing a wide range of regulatory challenges.

In his career Jim has worked on some of the largest remediation projects which have all included significant elements of customer complaint handling, this has given him a fantastic insight into what good practice looks like.

Katrin is a Business Consultant with almost two decades of expertise in business development, customer relationship management, and digital transformation in the tech industry. She has focused on implementing new customer insight strategies and processes and was responsible for client services and customer experience. Due to her experience, she sees customer expectations not only as a limitation to products and services with functionality but as an experience people love, share, and do business with. Furthermore, Katrin is passionated about evolving customer experience trends and transformations.

As Aptean Respond's Product Director, Martin has spent more than a decade in the customer services and complaints management sphere. He’s passionate to empower organisations of all sizes to adopt innovative technology to enable teams to deliver meaningful outcomes and elevate the customer experience.

Martin ensures Respond retains its disruptive approach to complaint/case management solutions globally. He brings to the market features and functions that deliver excellence in multiple industries, including financial services, general insurance and local government.

Sally is Head of Service Recovery and Quality at United Utilities, an experienced customer service leader in the Utility sector. Sally has driven significant performance transformation and in 2019 won Complaints handling leader of the year at the UK complaint handling awards.

Alex has spent the past decade focused on creating & transforming customer experiences from all parts of the customer experience in the water industry. He’s a previous Gold Award winner and brings a fresh, unconventional perspective to the panel.

Alex has over 20 years’ experience in contact centres, leading complex care and customer support operations across highly regulated industries, including Financial Services, Telecoms and Utilities. She is a transformational leader who brings a diverse range of experiences and a proven record for delivering business results, including redesigns of complaints journeys, operating models, vulnerability management practices, staff training and competency frameworks. In her current role, Alex leads Concentrix operations in the Stephenson’s Quarter, Newcastle.

Aman joined Monzo in October 2019 as Assurance Associate Director, leading the Complaints and Quality Assurance functions across the Bank, and providing Risk & Control support to the operations.

Aman came with over 15 years experience in complaints, quality assurance, customer insight and leadership, gained across various industries. She has a passion for delivering excellence in client services and is an advocate of proactive complaints management.

Aman is also Deputy Chair of the Complaint Handling Working Group for UK Finance.

Amanda is a business consultant with over 20 years’ experience in senior roles, leading teams of up to 1500 people to exceed key performance targets and deliver regulatory governance. She specialises in customer service and complaint handling transformation and in helping organisations deliver improvements to the e2e customer experience. Before setting up her own company, Amanda was a GM in BT where she led the Business and Public Sector team to awards success in 2018, winning Gold in the Complaints Team of the Year category and Silver in Managing People.

Amber’s career in Financial Services has spanned 13 years and allowed her to experience a multitude of customer interactions, both positive and negative. From Call Center Supervisor to Project Manager specializing in customer sentiment and insight analysis, she has a wealth of experience with customer service and complaints handling and has in fact written award entries for previous employers. In 2019, Amber changed specialities and became a Senior Consultant for Boost Awards- the world’s first and largest awards entry consultancy.

Ben is Director of Financial Assistance for Barclays motor, retail, commercial and merchant businesses, as well as having accountability for strategy and analytics.

Ben has over 20 years of experience in the banking industry, having previously worked at MBNA and Lloyds, where he held the position of Head of Customer Services and Head of Collections amongst others. Ben is an experienced leader of UK and overseas sites, overseeing multiple transformational projects designed to improve customer experience, operational processes and colleague morale/performance. Furthermore, Ben is extremely passionate about the importance of maximising good customer outcomes, through championing journey enhancements, process improvements and challenging existing practices to deliver tangible improvement to the customer experience.

A diligent, customer centric troubleshooter and commercial leader with strong attention to detail. 30 years of service in the energy industry has equipped Bev with the skills required to pivot expertly between Executive, Operational and Customer language, enabling the collaborative generation of solutions to complex problems. Significantly well-versed in risk and navigating regulatory environments, Bev is Director of BK Consulting Ltd, a member of the Customer Engagement Group for Electricity North West and Head of Customer Transformation at Thames Water.

A certified Customer Experience Professional, Chloe has leadership experience in the Hospitality and Financial Services industries and has worked on award winning customer initiatives. Currently, Chloe is responsible for all customer activity that has a regulatory or risk focus. This governance focus is always delivered through a customer lens; Chloe has been an active member of the industry’s work on improving outcomes for Vulnerable Customers for several years and is passionate about achieving great outcomes and experiences for all.

Francesca has worked within the financial services for a number of years, within the debt industry, insolvency practitioners and a credit reference agency.

Francesca is a huge advocate of complaints being key to customer retention, so nailing the excellent service is paramount. Francesca currently works closely with the Industry and Financial Ombudsman Service on behalf of Capital One to ensure everything is awesome.

Ian is an experienced business leader. He has 25 years of experience working with retail financial services companies. His background includes roles in recruitment, consultancy, outsourcing and training. He has considerable experience of working with regulated firms often overwhelmed by complex complaints.

Ian leads Capita's complaints, collections and rectification sales team.

Jack started his journey as part of a regional Electrical Wholesaler's domestic renewables division, tasked with complaints handling. Jack was approached by a retail finance provider to provide expertise in resolving a renewable install dispute under a Section 75 claim. Jacks performance in case handling spurred on an influx of cases awarded to him and subsequently Remedial Solutions UK was born. Jack now manages a team of case management specialists who operate on behalf of major UK lenders, acting as a liaison between customer and lender in order to resolve complex cases across multiple sectors.

Jacqueline is the Managing Director & Founder of Leadership Through Data. LTD are transforming the way people learn about Information Management. Jacqueline was a Complaints Manager for 6 years in the NHS, she was the only Complaints Manager in the country to be selected by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, to be part of the MP Clwyd and Hart review into Hospital Complaints System. Jacqueline’s creative leadership style and proactive approach has led her to be an inspirational leader.

James has 25 years’ experience delivering complaints projects across financial services. He has significant experience working in Banking, Life & Pensions and General Insurance. In his past two roles, James led the transformation of the Customer Relations and QA functions of the businesses he worked in, creating a Customer centric Centre of Excellence. James champions the Customer not being lost in the complaint, as well as changing the mind-set that complaints aren’t just a cost-base, it is a value-adding function.

As head of customer support at Europe’s number one wellness app, Joanna is a passionate advocate of customer-centricity.

Urban’s proprietary apps connect wellness practitioners with local customers for at-home treatments in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Paris. Joanna combines a data-led approach with empathy to put customer feedback at the forefront of decision-making. She’s passionate about learning from mistakes and strategizing, turning difficulties into decisions at every opportunity.

Joanna, who is bilingual, has lived in six different countries, giving her an ability to understand, enrich and translate between groups of people – a skill that she uses daily at Urban’s diverse HQ.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/urbanappuk/

https://urban.co/en-gb/

Jonathan has worked in complaints for nearly twenty years, covering complaint handling, auditing, managing, training, and operational improvement. He has worked alongside some of the UKs leading insurance, pensions, lending, credit and consultancy firms in addition to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Jonathan is the director of CQ&D Solutions, which he set up to help businesses get better at dealing with complaints by offering training and consultancy services that cover all aspects of complaint handling and quality assurance operations.

Lifescan is a global market leader in manufacturing of medical devices for diabetes patients, with a vision to create a world without limits for people with diabetes. Having lead multilingual customer care teams in telecom, healthcare and medical devise sectors for major CX vendors and inhouse, I understand the changing environment businesses are facing from a CX perspective. Currently, I'm making sure that all our customers in 25 countries across the EMEA region get the best experience every time they contact us, and process the insights they provide us with, to make sure that we can provide the best CX in the future and provide the business with another USP.

Kiru Raguraman is the Director of Customer and Employee Engagement at Hitachi Capital (UK) PLC, a leading financial services company providing financial solutions to over a million consumers and businesses in the UK and Europe.

Kiru joined Hitachi Capital (UK) PLC in 2013 and held several senior roles before being appointed director in 2019. Prior to joining Hitachi Capital, Kiru’s earlier career included posts based in India and Australia before she joined Centrica where she was responsible for financial planning and reporting. At Group level Kiru has direct responsibility for both Customer and Employee Engagement, Quality Assurance and Group Facilities. Kiru leads the Inclusion and Diversity programme across the business.

Lee has been working in the field of customer experience for over 20 years and has a vast range of experience across multiple sectors. Currently the Consulting Director for one of the UK's leading performance improvement companies, with a track record in helping customers achieve Return on Investment and sustained behaviour and performance change.

Lee has been the Head of Customer Service at TransUnion UK for over 5 years, leading his teams to support the business in their aim of using Information for Good, through great consumer experience and developing fraud prevention controls.

His passion for delivering service excellence was built by 7 years with First Direct and then 11 years working in and leading Telefónica's complaints teams, where his team was a two-time winner of Best Complaint Handling Team at the National Customer Service Awards.

Mark has decades of experience setting up data businesses that have transformed markets through actionable insights. Resolver.co.uk is the largest free to consumer complaints platform in the UK. Using data from Resolver.co.uk, Egeria provides a unique set of insights that help companies benchmark themselves against their competitors to identify areas in their business where they can invest to become best in class. The decider is our market leading Online Dispute Resolution Service which is used by ADR providers, ombudsman and tribunals.

Martin is a Customer Experience Manager at Optivo (Housing Association) managing 44,000 homes in S.E. England & the Midlands.

He’s worked for Optivo for 18 years in Customer Service/Experience; for the past 5 years, he’s led the Kent & Sussex Repairs contact centres.

Passionate about delivering a high quality customer experience, Martin inspires his teams to put the customer at the heart of everything they do.

He’s looking forward to judging at these awards

Matthew is the Director of External Engagement for Huntswood, leading the development of Huntswood's External Engagement strategy, to help position and support our brand and services within the marketplace. 

Matthew has a background in conduct regulation and professional services having worked as a supervisor at the Financial Conduct Authority and 'Big 4' advisory firms, where he led and contributed to work in relation to Conduct Risk. 

Matthew is a Fellow of the ICA and is a member of the CISI.

Michala set up Rutherford's Bailiffs and Collection in early 2017. Having worked in financial debt recovery for many years she knew she could provide better support services to businesses and individuals. Now, as the only collection company offering end-to-end debt recovery, Rutherford's provides debt and collection, credit control to a wide variety of businesses and individuals. A strong belief that every case is unique informs everything Rutherford's does, helping businesses of every size with collection itself, process serving, instructing the in-house High Court Team, CCJ preparation and submission, commercial rent arrears recovery, forfeiture, cleaning sites and securing property, traveller and squatter evictions, UK and international asset searches and more. With two decades' experience in financial debt recovery departments, Michala understands that debt can feel personal and can put a lot of stress on people and organisations. She works closely with people to resolve complaints and problems from both clients and debtors, treating each unique issue with the same determination to do the right thing and do it well, and every individual with respect. The success of Rutherford’s is due to Michala’s very down to earth approach and being a believer in transparency and fairness.

As a product expert and brand guardian, Natalie leads the Customer Relations Team at Amigo Loans, a guarantor loan company with a simple idea – if your friends trust you, so will Amigo. Evidenced during her 5 years with Amigo, Natalie has a passion for service recovery and inspires her team with a problem solving approach, motivating them to seek Continuous Improvement opportunities and root cause solutions. Natalie is very much looking forward to her first time judging this award.

Nick is the Advisory Director for Huntswood, leading the mission to provide trustworthy, value for money Advisory services that drive better outcomes for clients and their customers.

Nick has a background in conduct regulation and professional services having worked as a supervisor at the Financial Conduct Authority and advisory firms, where he has led and contributed to work in relation to improving the effectiveness of complaint handling teams.

Nick is a Director of the Association of Professional Compliance Consultants.

Ever since his appointment as Luminati Networks CEO Or Lenchner has continued to expand the company’s market base, as a leading IP proxy network operator, dedicated to maintaining the openness and integrity of the online ecosystem.

Among Luminati’s 10,000+ customers, you will find Fortune 500 companies, prominent e-Commerce companies, major travel firms, ad agencies, security firms, financial services and more.

Prior to his career at Luminati, Lenchner founded and managed several web-based businesses, developing digital assets and online marketing programs. Joining Luminati as head of product development, Lenchner’s career and evolvement at the company has been driven by his firm belief in an open, transparent, ethical web-environment benefiting both, enterprises/businesses and consumers.

Luminati Networks’ market leadership in the IP proxy network sector was recently recognized by the research and analyst firm Frost and Sullivan.

A Business Leader with experience across multiple sectors, including Manufacturing, Logistics, Financial Services and FMCG and with direct responsibilities across 13 countries. Pete is a specialist in delivering substantial improvements in financial performance and customer service through innovative solutions provided in senior roles in Operations, Supply Chain and Improvement Leadership.

In Financial Services, in particular, Pete has worked closely with the FCA and FOS through some of the largest issues found in the industry over the last 20 years.

Rebecca is the Founder and CEO of Think Wow Limited, delivering customer experience strategy with a difference. She has led customer experience teams in the outsourcing, estate agency and energy sectors, and designed and spearheaded the customer experience strategy at Purplebricks estate agency during their journey to become to UK’s no.1 estate agency. During that time, she helped them prepare for IPO and developed complaint processes in conjunction with trading standards and the Citizen’s Advice Bureau. She is delighted to be able to judge this year’s complaint handling awards and believes that understanding customer concerns is key to building a brand with both organic ambassadors and exceptional customer retention.

Rob is the Director of Operations for the Barclays UK Customer Relations team. With over 17 years’ experience within the Financial Services industry, Rob has spent the last 10 years leading large scale teams that are responsible for rebuilding trust when customers have had cause to complain.

Rob's teams cover a diverse set of products, from Current Accounts and Credit Cards through to Secured Lending and are committed to delivering fantastic outcomes in order to create advocates of Barclays.

A passionate advocate for Customer Experience, Sam is a Senior Manager at Management Consultancy, Grovelands.

Sam works with regulated organisations predominantly in Financial Services, to transform, augment and enhance the capability of customer facing operations across Customer Experience, Regulatory Compliance and Customer Outcomes.

Sam has worked with FTSE 100 companies, Start-ups, Consultancies and a breadth of firms facing significant regulatory scrutiny; giving him an excellent insight into what ‘good looks like’ and how to get there.

Scott is Commercial Director for QA Support Services who are market leaders in the Home Improvement and Renewables sector. He is responsible for the companies Commercial Strategy, identifying new markets, business growth, client management and risk mitigation.

With over 30 years’ experience spanning senior positions across the insurance, financial services, and construction sector, Scott combines technology, data and collaboration to deliver high performing services. He is passionate about customer outcomes and is currently using his deep knowledge of the insurance and lending space, to develop 3IP, a unique proposition for the home improvement space - Installations, Contractor Accreditation, Job Management, Complaint Services, Alternative Dispute Resolutions and Remedial Works Management.

The development of 3IP follows extensive research with a number of UK financial institutions. Scott said “3IP is designed to disrupt the home improvement and renewables industry, where consumer detriment has existed for many years. Furthermore, the 3IP standard will de-risk the sector for financial institutions and shift the industries focus from one of resolution to risk mitigation. At QASSS we are creating a protected environment for the future, where consumers feel safe and can make Incentivised, Informed and Insured Purchases”.

Sue is Head of Customer Service for NPA24:7 managing a 150-seat contact centre and 140 corporate housing clients’ customers.

Sue has 25 years CX experience in utilities, retail, hospitality, funerals and emergency home repairs. Her passion has been rewarded with awards for her teams in security & cleaning for NEC Group and Concierge for Westfield MerryHill. More recently securing the 1st BSi Kitemark for Customer Service in the UK with her Dignity Contact Centre team.

She is an advocate for service excellence applying this passion to how she manages and develops her teams to deliver the very best.