Topic: Customer Service

Alan O’Neill

With over 30 years of experience from the board room to the front line, Alan O’Neill mba, The Change Agent - has supported iconic brands to achieve amazing results. In a dynamic world, he knows what it takes to drive change in a business – from top to bottom... and back to front. It’s about having a Customer-centric Culture, Engaged People, and aSupercharged Sales effort.

One sector in particular that has probably seen more disruption than any other is retail. Alan was the lead consultant that navigated Selfridges through significant change ‘bricks only’ to ‘clicks and bricks’. Up to 2004, Selfridges was a sleeping giant - but is now officiallythe best department store in the world... and one of the most profitable (per m2). Change is all about people and culture and the Selfridges story is one that resonates for all industries.

It’s not just retail, across B2B, B2C and the Public Sector, his clients include global brands like AIB Bank, GAM, Harrods, Lilly, Intel, Lufthansa, Mercedes, Moet Hennesy, Ramada Hotels, Scottish Power, Sherry Fitz, St. Gobain, The UN, Vodafone, etc.

A consultant, trainer, non-exec director and a visiting professor with ESA Beirut, he is also a trusted mentor to many C-Level executives that seek his support. Alan has a reputation for making the complex simple... being down-to-earth and practical... with a commercial focus that brings everything back to the customer. Alan now writes for several publications, including a weekly advice column for the Sunday Independent - Ireland’s leading business newspaper and for Gulf News. He is author of Premium is the New Black – Put the customer at the heart of your decision-making.

It is this unrivalled business acumen that has seen Alan chair and speak at conferences around the world and conduct master-classes with C-Level executives. He asks hard and uncomfortable questions, e.g. Should you refresh your culture to prepare for emerging global challenges? How will you overcome cynicism and resistance to change? How do you overcome complacency and lack of accountability? How will you differentiate with a customer-experience culture? How do you retain the best talent? How do you increase sales in a challenging and disruptive global market?

Robert Tucker

Robert B. Tucker is president of The Innovation Resource, and an internationally recognized leader in the field of innovation. Formerly an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, Tucker has been a consultant and keynote speaker since 1986.

His pioneering research in interviewing over 50 leading innovators was published in the book Winning the Innovation Game in l986. Since then, he has continued to publish widely on the subject, including his international bestseller Managing the Future: 10 Driving Forces of Change for the New Century, which has been translated into 13 languages. In his most recent book, Driving Growth Through Innovation describes the emerging best practices of 23 innovation vanguard companies, and was released in a revised edition in 2008. His latest book, Innovation is Everybody's Business, was just published by John Wiley in 2011.

As one of the thought leaders in the growing Innovation Movement, Tucker is a frequent contributor to publications such as the Journal of Business Strategy, Strategy & Leadership, and Harvard Management Update. He has appeared on PBS, CBS News, and was a featured guest on the CNBC series The Business of Innovation.

The Innovation Resource, based in Santa Barbara, California, is a consulting firm devoted exclusively to assisting companies seeking to improve top and bottom line performance via systematic innovation.

Tucker is a much sought after keynote speaker at conventions, company management meetings, and industry conferences. Clients include over 200 of the Fortune 500 companies as well as clients in Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Australia.

Sahar Hashemi

In 1995 Sahar Hashemi and her brother Bobby founded Coffee Republic, the UK’s first coffee bar chain. Within 5 years they built Coffee Republic into one of the UK’s most recognized high street brands with 110 bars and turnover of £30m.

Hashemi was a lawyer and her brother was an investment banker. They gave up their highly paid professional jobs and staked everything on a dream. They made Coffee Republic one of the main players in the ‘coffee revolution’ that transformed a nation of tea drinkers to one obsessed with ‘triple grande vanilla skinny lattes.’ How they came to build a nationwide coffee chain is a fascinating and inspirational tale of the ups and downs of following your dream.

Hashemi left the day-to-day management of Coffee Republic in 2001 and wrote a book about her journey of entrepreneurship, Anyone Can Do It - Building Coffee Republic from Our Kitchen Table. Anyone Can Do It has become the 2nd highest selling book ever published in the UK on entrepreneurship after Richard Branson’s book - according to Nielsen Bookscan. Hashemi believes that if she can make it as an entrepreneur, anyone can make it.

In 2005, she launched her new business Skinny Candy, a brand of sugar free confectionary, low-fat sweets and chocolates. Skinny Candy was sold to confectionery conglomerate Glisten PLC in 2007.

Her most recent book, Switched On, published in 2010, focuses on 8 habits that foster a more entrepreneurial mindset for employees.  It is based on her experience of the transformation in culture when a small entrepreneurial company becomes big and successful, when the obvious and easy entrepreneurial habits are often forgotten as bureaucracy take over.

In 2011 Sahar was nominated by Director magazine as one of its Top 10 Original Thinkers. The magazine praised her view that “Entrepreneurially minded talent shouldn’t have to leave large corporations in order to achieve fulfillment. Entrepreneurial behaviour, including ideas like bootstrapping, prototyping and celebrating failure, can help turn stuffy corporations into creative environments. They can also transform automatons into valued, engaged employees”.

In 2011 she was invited to join the Entrepreneurs Forum set up by UK Business Secretary Vince Cable to give informal personal advice to the government on enterprise policies.

In June 2012 Sahar was awarded an OBE for services to the UK economy and to charity.

She was also awarded: Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Top 10 original thinkers by Director Magazine, ‘Pioneer to the Life of the Nation’ by her Majesty The Queen, 100 most influential women in Britain by Daily Mail, one of the 35 top women in British business by Management Today and 20 most powerful women in Britain by Independent on Sunday, Top 5 in a Shell Livewire survey of inspirational role models.