The year has barely begun and Ethos Farm, the CX consultancy founded by Sally Alington, has already opened an office in Mexico, upgraded its technology offering and closed a major deal in Saudi Arabia.
But those who’ve met the ebullient CEO of Ethos Farm will know she rarely does things by halves.
Founded at the start of 2017, the firm specialises in customer experience strategies for ‘high density, high footfall, locations’, such as airports, malls, stations and cruise liners. In eight hectic years, it has appeared twice on The Sunday Times’ list of the UK’s 100 fastest-growing private businesses.
Revenue in 2024 topped £35 million and Alington was crowned CX Leader of the Year at the UK Customer Experience Awards.
“My ambition was to always be the ‘go to’ company for CX. I wanted to be there competing against the big four”, consulting firms, Sally Alington told CX Lore, the podcast of Customer Experience Magazine.
The ‘go to’ CX company
“When you don’t even have a business plan, that feels like quite an arrogant statement. But I’m a big believer that if you put a target on the wall, you’ll hit it. I’m also someone who thinks, ‘why wouldn’t you think big?’,” she added.
Alington’s sense of vaulting ambition saw her launch Ethos Farm in the UK and New York. From the very first she was clear the firm would be international.
“With international expansion people put up barriers in their head. None of those things are that difficult. It’s about finding solutions,” said Alington.
From worst to first
The US has proven fertile ground for Ethos Farm. It beat off competition from Deloitte to become the CX partner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates five airports. The firm also transformed LaGuardai’s Terminal B from the worst airport in North America to one of the best in the world.
The LaGuardai project “was a blend of everything we do. It’s our consulting, we trained everybody, we built the service standards, we staffed a lot of it. And we do the data and insights,” Alington added.
Ethos Farm’s deep rooted experience with the travel sector was key to setting the company on its skyrocketing growth trajectory. Admittedly in early 2020, when COVID was sweeping the world, the firm’s focus on high footfall travel hubs and shopping centres left the company looking exposed.
Clients shut their doors
As one by one, Ethos Farm’s clients shuttered their doors, Alington scrambled for solutions.
“It was like, ‘oh my god, there isn’t one of my clients open’. It was genuinely terrifying,” noted the CEO.
It turned out Ethos Farm was in pole position to capitalise on the rebuild of the post-pandemic travel industry. Airlines, airports and other high-density locations had either furloughed or let staff go as the pandemic raged. When the market returned they struggled desperately for staff.
Ethos Farm’s e-training capability, industry knowledge and staffing solutions were the perfect tonic for a travel industry recovering from the pandemic. By the end of 2021, revenue was back to 2019 levels, but in 2022 growth went off the chart.
The firm’s turnover went from £1.5 million to £11.5 million and headcount grew from 48 people, to 650.
“We came into our own. There was our understanding of CX, our capability in learning and development, [and our] customer experience on the people-side,” said Alington.
Airports and airlines had lost crucial CX staff
Travel organisations “had lost expertise in their businesses. There was a huge challenge in customer experience positions that remains to this day”, she explained.
COVID changed Ethos Farm almost beyond recognition. Alington initially envisioned the firm offering three main services — CX consulting, training and technology solutions. Adding staffing solutions to the mix proved to be hugely fortuitous just ahead of the pandemic, and a key differentiator when pitching against the likes of KPMG, Deloitte, PwC and EY.
“We have been in tenders against some of those companies and won. We’re probably cheaper, but equally, no one gets fired for appointing one of the big four,” said Alington.
“Where we have a real edge is the blend of our business. The staffing piece is key because we don’t only advise on frontline CX operations, we run them. And that real world insight gives us an edge on our CX advice,” she explained.
Plans for 2025
For 2025 Ethos Farm is bulking up its technology capability. At the end of January, the firm unveiled its in-house artificial intelligence data and insights tool, which pulls data from ‘hundreds and thousands’ of streams and analyses it for clients.
The CX consultancy uses the data to “underpin learning, staffing deployments, [and] advice, it’s fundamental”, she commented.
According to Alington, most organisations miss a wealth of unstructured feedback from the likes of social media, Google Reviews or Trustpilot. Even if some of those comments are negative, it’s all valuable feedback.
“It is unbelievable how many organisations don’t have a plan in place for reading this wealth of feedback,” commented Alington.
Ethos Farm’s AI tool aims to help organisations corral all the data in one space where they can see a sentiment rating. “You can then understand the core drivers of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction and can put it into a continuous improvement plan,” explained the CEO.
The team at Ethos Farm also expects to expand its footprint in the Middle East in 2025. Although there are no concrete plans for an office, the consultancy has won a “major piece of work” in Saudi Arabia. Although coy on the details, Alington predicted Ethos Farms business in the Middle East “is going to grow and grow this year.”
Another appearance on the Sunday Times Top 100 beckons.
Listen to the full interview here.