One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is to focus on the outcome rather than becoming constrained by the problem in front of you. It’s important to understand the root cause of an issue and what you’re ultimately trying to achieve before deciding how to make improvements. 

Early in my career, I had the opportunity to work for Mercury Communications, the first direct competitor to British Telecom, during a significant period of change in the UK telecommunications market. Mercury was challenging the established market by targeting customers with high volumes of long-distance and international calls. 

What stood out to me was the company’s commitment to delivering “world-class customer service” and its belief that great service retains the right customers. That philosophy has stayed with me throughout my career. 

Since then, I’ve worked with organisations that have successfully put customers and their emotional journey at the heart of how they design and deliver services. When businesses genuinely understand what customers experience and how those experiences make them feel, the results can be transformational. 

For me, great customer experience starts with understanding the outcome you want to achieve and working backwards to make it happen. 

I liked the insight6 story and, more importantly, the approach. 

Throughout my career, I’ve used customer experience assessments to identify opportunities for improvement and strengthen trust between businesses and their customers. I’ve seen first-hand how valuable it can be to understand what’s really happening across the customer journey rather than relying on assumptions. 

The insight6 approach really appealed to me because it combines mystery shopping and customer insight with practical support to make meaningful changes. 

It’s not simply about identifying where things could be better. It’s about understanding why, developing a clear plan and helping businesses achieve measurable improvements. 

I’m particularly looking forward to building relationships with organisations across Manchester Central and demonstrating how the right customer insight can add real value to their sales, marketing and service delivery. 

I think there’s an important distinction between making customers feel understood and delivering the best possible experience. Ideally, you want to achieve both. 

Empathy is essential, and that starts with recruiting, training and rewarding the right people. Customers want to feel that the person they’re dealing with understands their situation and genuinely wants to help. 

But there’s also a bigger picture. Businesses need to understand who their customers are, what they want and how to create an environment that meets those needs. 

That means working proactively to identify and remove potential problems before customers experience them. 

My mantra is simple: be easy to do business with. 

Every unnecessary step, complicated process or frustrating interaction creates friction in the customer journey. The more of that friction you can remove, the better the experience becomes. 

Of course, things will occasionally go wrong. When they do, customers should be able to raise their concerns easily, feel heard and have confidence that someone is taking ownership. 

Ultimately, the best customer experiences are often the ones where businesses have made things so straightforward that customers barely need to think about the process at all. 

I think one of the biggest mistakes is putting all the effort into getting things right but failing to pay enough attention to what happens when they go wrong. 

Businesses need to understand what good customer experience looks like, but they should also be asking what great could look like. 

That requires a clear customer experience vision that runs throughout the entire organisation. Everyone needs to understand what the business wants customers to experience and the role they play in delivering it. 

It’s also important to regularly test that vision against real customer feedback. What a business believes it delivers and what customers actually experience aren’t always the same thing. 

The days of putting up a poster declaring that “the customer is king” and assuming the job is done are long gone. 

Customer experience needs to be embedded into everyday business decisions, processes and behaviours. It should be considered just as fundamental to building successful commercial relationships as the products or services an organisation sells.

There are so many opportunities, and that’s what makes the role particularly exciting. 

Manchester Central has an incredibly diverse business community, from leading law firms and internationally recognised professional services organisations to luxury retailers and innovative technology businesses challenging established markets. 

I’m looking forward to building relationships across these sectors, understanding the different challenges organisations face and helping them identify opportunities to improve. 

Every business will have its own priorities, but the principles of great customer experience remain remarkably consistent. 

For me, the opportunity is to become a trusted partner to businesses that recognise the importance of CX and want to take their performance further. 

By helping organisations understand the voice of their customers and translating that insight into clearly defined action plans, we can strengthen their customer experience while uncovering opportunities for profitable growth. 

That’s what I’m most excited about: delivering improvements that make a genuine difference to both customers and businesses. 

Start by listening. 

Speak to your customers and, just as importantly, your frontline teams. They’re often the people who have the clearest understanding of where customers encounter problems and what could be done differently. 

Ask where customers are experiencing unnecessary friction. Is something taking too long? Is a process more complicated than it needs to be? Are customers having to repeat information or chase for updates? 

Then choose something you can improve and act on it. 

Not every improvement requires a major investment or a complete overhaul of your systems. Sometimes a relatively small change can make a significant difference. 

The important thing is to recognise customer experience as a strategic priority while taking practical steps to improve it every day. 

Successful customer experience is everyone’s business. 

The organisations that consistently deliver great experiences are those that listen to their customers and, critically, their frontline teams. These are the people who often have the ideas and insights that can take a business from good to great. 

There are five principles I always come back to. 

Make it easy to do business with you. Look at your processes and technology and actively remove anything that creates unnecessary friction. 

Recognise that every interaction matters. Understand the customer journey and where each customer is within it. Every touchpoint is an opportunity to strengthen the relationship. 

Show customers you know them. Use the information they’ve already shared to personalise their experience wherever possible. Customers shouldn’t have to keep telling you the same things. 

Enable your people. Give your teams the training, support and technology they need to do their jobs well. If you make life easier for employees, you’re more likely to make life easier for customers. 

Keep learning and improving. Understand what information you need to measure the customer experience and use that insight to make improvements in real time. 

For me, great CX isn’t a one-off initiative. It’s an ongoing commitment to listening, learning and making things better.