Customer Experience Magazine is profiling the top 10 Professionals and Influencers from our Top 50 CX Stars list.
Here we look at Number 3 in each category. Jo Mayes of Business Stream is today’s featured Professional, and our Influencer is Adrian Swinscoe.
We welcome feedback on our CX Stars list, and all correspondence should be sent to paul@cxm.world.
Number 3
Jo Mayes
Director of Customer Operations at Business Stream
The award-winning Jo Mayes is coming up to a decade of working in Customer Experience, and having breathed new life into the CX strategy of Standard Life, in 2016 she joined utilities firm Business Stream, where she has spearheaded a hugely successful shift towards customer centricity.
Following her appointment as Director of Customer Operations, Business Stream has enjoyed a raft of industry honours, including gongs at the UK Customer Experience Awards (UKCXAs), the European Contact Centre and Customer Service Awards, and the International Customer Experience Awards, to name but a few.
Jo herself was named CX Professional of the Year at the 2019 UKCXAs, taking the title in what was one of the most competitive years to date for the coveted category.
Her success is down to an instinctive understanding of what customers want from a brand, and she has been an advocate of robust measurement programmes and redesigns through co-creation with end-users from the beginning of her CX career journey. These techniques helped her previous employer appear in the KPMG Nunwood CEE Top 100 list for two consecutive years.
Jo says: “A key element for strong leadership is to set out for your people why delivering CX is important – good context setting and goal alignment create the focus and drive to deliver.”
Her inspiration in recent years include leading consultant and author Ian Golding, and KPMG Nunwood’s Director of Customer Experience David Conway; it’s safe to say that as far as professionals go, Jo Mayes will soon be cited as the inspiration for others as they follow in her footsteps and aim to transform businesses and place the customer at the heart of what they do.
Number 3
Adrian Swinscoe
An experimental CX thought leader and visionary, Adrian Swinscoe has been helping businesses reconnect with customers for 20 years, and is not afraid to take chances when it comes to innovation.
The well-known consultant has a solid business background, and his previous experience as both an economist and a teacher has provided him with the necessary skills to lead others to success, and he has found an eager audience through his in-demand coaching and consultation services, and his writing in blog, article, and book form.
Many CXM readers will no doubt own a copy of his 2016 book How to Wow, which offers 68 precise methods for CX transformation, while his new work, Punk CX, is an unconventional, yet exciting take on transforming CX in the vein of the radical 1970s punk rockers who pushed back against the overblown, over-technical prog rock that had previously dominated the music world.
In true punk fashion, Adrian designed the book to rebel against the mainstream of conventional business tomes, and the end result has an incredible aesthetic similar to the self-published fanzines that fearlessly promoted the punk scene in its heyday.
His methods encourage out-of-the-box thinking that reward businesses for daring to be different, and alongside the colourful new book, Adrian produces a Punk CX newsletter to further stimulate ideas and new wave Customer Experience practices.
Adrian says: “I help people and organisations achieve greater potential and results through building better relationships with those people around them whether they are leaders, team members, or customers.”
Adrian’s global experience has also earned him a regular contributor slot with Forbes, where he brings practical CX insight to a wider business audience.
Click here for profiles of our Number 4 Professionals and Influencers.