Meet The judges

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, Complaints, Underwriting and Fulfilment to drive a transformation of the business following the re brand of SAV Credit to NewDay and the acquisition of the Santander UK portfolio of co-branded cardholders. Prior to that Fran worked at GE Capital, Axa Life, Telefonica O2, Cable & Wireless Worldwide and BT.

Fran is an experienced Leader who has lead successful transformations and created award winning customer service experiences and teams. Her strengths lie in customer focus and insight, transforming service experience in a cost effective way, engagement, customer experience and implementing new technologies and applications to enhance the journey.

Michael is lead complaint management consultant for Resolver 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).

Nigel is Head of Service Recovery and Complaints for HSBC UK. He joined HSBC in 2015, and previously held a range of senior public sector roles in financial regulation, strategy, policy and enforcement. He was a Senior Ombudsman with the Financial Ombudsman Service, and a Director of the Office of Fair Trading with responsibility for competition and consumer investigations and enforcement. He has also worked on international and cross-border regulatory and policy development with the European Commission and the OECD.

Ricky is Associate Director heading up E-Commerce for Morses Club PLC. He has held numerous senior positions operating across all customer facing disciplines relating to consumer credit. He has designed and operated multi-site call centre operations and is currently managing all aspects of Dot Dot Loans, an online lender. He has a wealth of experience in ensuring that the customer experience is linked closely to policy and processes, so that high levels of customer satisfaction are embedded within the business.

I have worked in customer services for 34 years. 27 of those years in contact centres. Customers will always generate complaints. As an experienced complaint handler myself, working for an Ombudsman seemed like a perfect way to utilise my skills. What I hadn’t considered, was how challenging it would be when two different parties give you their individual perspective on the same complaint. This requires impartiality and attention to detail. Complaints should be viewed as a jewel not a dual – there is always something to learn.

Michael is the Tenancy Deposit Scheme’s Director of Dispute Resolution. Having trained as a solicitor, Michael has been involved in dispute resolution for over 20 years. His previous roles have included leading the consumer advice service for Hertfordshire Trading Standards; Michael was also the Chief Conciliation Officer for Qualitas, the Furniture Ombudsman, where he took a formative role in its transition to Ombudsman status. Michael has also led a number of key ‘behind the scenes’ innovations at TDS.

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 an external trainer and coach. Rebecca supports service 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.

Helen Pettifer is passionate about Customer Service, having been a Customer Service Manager in the security industry. She now runs her own training company based in Buckinghamshire, bringing advice and support to companies on both internal and external Customer Service. She designs and delivers training, covering a variety of topics on customer engagement 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.

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.

15 Years experience in complaint handling across a number of firms, including 5 years working for the Executive Team at RBS. The last 3 years have been spent ensuring the RBS complaint policy is fit for purpose. Working with the regulators and internal franchises to focus on reducing complaints, overseeing the implementation of various regulations complaint elements. The design an annual pan bank complaint module and other training and competency aspects and a focus on external benchmarking.

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.

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.

John 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.

Global responsibility for complaint handling gives me great diversity. The insights from the customer perspective when somethings gone wrong is a real opportunity to make a difference. I’ve 25 years’ experience driving and leading customer-focused change within operations,10 years in regulation has added great value to my perspective and approach. My mantra has never failed me “always consider the customers perspective at the heart of any decision you make and give your people the empowerment to make the difference”

With nearly 20 years experience in the residential property sector, Marion’s career has grown from front-line administrative roles to director of one of the country’s largest property firms providing residential survey and valuation advice. Specialising in complaints and claims, along the way she qualified as both chartered surveyor with the RICS and customer experience professional with the CXPA. Marion now advises leading property companies, education and training establishments and consumer bodies on customer experience strategy.

Lee Mostari, a previous winner of the UK Customer Experience Awards, is the Consulting Director for Ember’s Insight & Analytics division. Lee has an impressive track record of leading successful projects in analytics, specifically to apply the voice of the customer to improve the overall customer experience as well as deployment of speech and text analytics to deliver operational efficiency and quality & compliance automation. Lee has working in a senior consulting capacity helping organisations get the most from customer data for the last 8 years. Prior to that, Lee worked on the client-side for EE performing a number of customer insight roles in the UK and overseas and within the Santander Group, again focused on delivering projects that significantly improved the customer experience.

Brinsley is a Director in EY’s FS Managed Services Team. He has worked in consultancy for 11 years and in financial services more broadly for 20 years, covering most sectors including retail banking, insurance, stock broking and derivatives trading. Brinsley is experienced in managing and having oversight of complex large-scale regulatory remediation engagements and holds several industry qualifications including the CISI Certificates in Securities, CISI Certificate in Derivatives, CIB Certificate for Financial Advisers, CeMAP and CeRGI.

I have more than 30 years’ experience in Customer Service across a wide range of sectors. I am Head of Group Customer Service at Mulberry Company Design Ltd – the Luxury Retailer and Manufacturer. I have always been passionate about Customer Service and whilst it is understandable that things do go wrong in life, good service is best measured by the power of recovery and how far you are prepared to go over and above for the customer.