Andrew McMillan
Former Head of Customer Service, John Lewis
Former Travel & Banking CEO
Hamish led brand management at BA before taking over as CEO at Eurostar and Sainsbury's Bank. In his presentation he shows how the balance has shifted from needing information about customers to fully engaging with them - building your entire offering around what you can do for them. He believes that the most powerful breakthroughs come by looking outside your own sector to see how others deal with your problem areas.
JLA Agent - Lizzie CarrAfter proposing Hamish to one client, he immediately put together detailed examples of how he'd address their very exacting brief. He then delivered on it IN SPADES - giving delegates practical ideas for engaging their customers in a much more distinctive way. This has left me with an interesting challenge for the next event: now my client doesn't believe anyone can top Hamish!
Hamish Taylor is founder of the Skills Exchange Network which focuses on enabling organisations to achieve breakthroughs by looking outside their industry. He is also a former brand director for some of the biggest brands in the UK.
Hamish began his career with Procter & Gamble, working his way through the branding ranks to the position of head of brand management for household cleaners. After a spell as a management consultant with PriceWaterhouse, he returned to brands as Head of Brand Management at British Airways.
Staying with travel, Hamish’s next role was as Managing Director of Eurostar, then becoming Chief Executive Officer of Eurostar Group before he was 40. His time at Eurostar was marked by a rapid stemming of losses and return to profit, a success he repeated in his next role as CEO of Sainsbury's Bank.
After a period as CEO of consultancy Vision UK, Hamish set up the Skills Exchange Network. The Network is a management and leadership development organisation which studies people, process and products from a variety of industries and disciplines, and looks to combine and inspire the innovations and techniques from different areas.
Hamish looks at the importance of putting the customer at the centre of everything an organisation does, whether that’s an individual consumer, a business, or another internal department. He provides practical rules and ideas on how this informs not just traditional customer service, but culture, leadership, brand, teamwork and communication. As well as helping businesses operate better, Hamish has also worked with athletics and rugby teams.
“An excellent, thought provoking speaker with a brilliant topic; even though he was talking about a different industry, the messages were still relevant.”
Hamish captivated the room for over an hour, during his inspiring speech and Q&A session. He went above and beyond with managing to integrate our topic of the day with his previous work experience seamlessly, combining Sainsbury's with sustainability and Concorde with customer satisfaction. The delivery of the speech was enthralling and he made sure there was a subject of interest for everyone. As our delegates were leaving, I was approached many a time with, “How do we book him for our upcoming conference?” and that speaks for itself, especially when dealing with the very hard task of keeping people focused after a 4-course lunch! I would thoroughly recommend booking Hamish, and I believe he will have a positive, lasting impression on your event.
Interesting, lively and relevant to the audience. I have never met anyone who could inspire, motivate and stimulate me in the way Hamish did.
A brilliant speaker to start a conference with as he is high energy, funny and insightful. He was with the Avis senior managers the night before (we all had dinner) so dovetailed into their presentations superbly. Hamish was a superb start to the day.
A pleasure to work with, he was very well-received.
Excellent speaker, and a great way to start our thought process. The topic was brilliant and even though he was speaking about a different industry the messages were still relevant.
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