At Lush, two separate departments with very different microcultures had been merged to form a new digital customer care team. On paper they were “one team”; in reality they were under-resourced, overrun with emails and calls, and still acting like two separate groups. They were working out of a shared Gmail inbox, with no proper...
STAR Stories Indi
Rebuilt ISO 9001 from scratch and passed external & client audits
When I picked up ISO 9001, the accreditation had expired and, due to a falling-out with the previous ISO owner (a former employee), most of the ISO documentation had been wiped. We had existing key clients who required ISO 9001 and more key clients onboarding who also expected it. Processes were being followed loosely, but...
Automated 60% of enquiries, hit 4.8 Trustpilot & unlocked ~£300k in shipping savings
At a global e-commerce retailer, the customer operation was heavily reliant on temporary staff during peak periods, which was expensive and slow due to time-to-competence. As a global brand with a large customer base in Germany, communication was also clunky – agents were manually copying and pasting into Google Translate to respond. The company had...
Cutting complaints by 80% & halving churn
When I joined a unique BPO organisation, client churn was high and a lot of complaints related to either billing issues (due to excessive call handling times) or quality. Churn was creeping up to around 4%. Key clients were frustrated and trust was low. We’d already reduced average handling time and cut a chunk of...
Global IT Transition, Operations Takeover & Post-Merger Integration
Client: A global technology and manufacturing organisation specialising in mailing, shipping, and enterprise communications Role: Programme Manager / Head of Infrastructure & Application Operations (via global systems integrator) A global technology and manufacturing organisation specialising in mailing, shipping, and enterprise communications had undergone significant diversification and multiple acquisitions. This resulted in a fragmented global IT...
Enterprise Cloud Migration & Data Centre Exit (Global Reach Group)
Global Reach Group, a regulated financial services organisation, operated its entire IT estate from third-party hosted data centres using a traditional infrastructure and cost model. The organisation made a strategic decision to migrate its end-to-end IT services to Microsoft Azure Public Cloud to support an OPEX-based operating model, improve resilience and security, and decommission all...
Telephony, CRM & Secure Payments Transformation (PSTN Exit & PCI DSS)
Bristol City Council operated a large, high-volume customer contact and telephony environment built on legacy PSTN-based infrastructure and Avaya platforms, tightly coupled with council-wide CRM and back-office finance systems. The national decommissioning of traditional PSTN telephony created a fixed, non-negotiable deadline to exit legacy services. At the same time, the council processed a significant volume...
Print & Mail Transformation – Digital MPS, Hybrid Mail & Enterprise Policy
The authority relied on a mission-critical Print and (physical) Mail service supporting over 6,000 staff and all frontline services. A strategic shift had been approved to move from a fragmented, paper-heavy model to a digitally enabled, outsourced service using managed print, digital mail, and a vendor-hosted SaaS platform. Although the contract was in place, delivery...
Catering & Venue Services Transformation for a large UK council
A large UK council had a highly fragmented catering and events operation across parks, civic venues, and museums. Delivery was split between in-house teams and multiple external suppliers, many operating under outdated or non-compliant arrangements. This created operational inefficiency, commercial leakage, and increasing legal and compliance risk. Senior leadership and political sponsors mandated a shift...
Managed resistance to change and adoption of new system to increase data visibility and productivity
Situation: When I joined, Zoho had already been purchased for client support, but the team were still managing onboarding and support queries for four brands through Outlook. There was no meaningful reporting and no visibility of what clients were contacting about or workload distribution. The team were also doubling their work — replying in Outlook,...
