Chief Operating Officer | UK Energy Sector
I’ve known and worked with Sue for over 20 years,
and throughout my leadership career she was the
person I repeatedly turned to when I wanted my
teams and me to get closer to our customers.
Sue led customer immersion for me across several
different businesses, from large events involving
more than 100 people and virtual sessions, through
to small roundtables with a dozen customers.
She also managed a community of thousands of
customers who had volunteered to share their views
with us, giving us a fantastic way to quickly test
ideas, get feedback and involve customers in our
experimental test-and-learn approach to change.
We brought customers directly into the business on
many occasions too - for example, to help us design
customer communications they would understand and
actually want to read.
We even asked customers to walk around our offices
and look at our internal performance boards. The
test was simple: could a customer understand how we
talked about them and their experience, or had we
disappeared into corporate jargon and acronyms?
What makes Sue exceptional is that she is obsessively
customer-focused, but she also understands how to
turn customer insight into action.
She knows how to create the right environment for
honest conversations, get beneath the surface of
what customers are saying and then challenge leaders
and teams to do something meaningful with what they
have heard.
She is equally comfortable working with senior
executives, frontline colleagues or customers.
For anyone who might be nervous about taking part in
an immersion session, Sue has an incredible ability
to put them at ease through a combination of empathy,
support, energy and fun.
Sue introduced me to customer immersion many years
ago, and it became something I carried with me
throughout my leadership career.
I repeatedly asked her to work with my teams,
challenge us and make sure we never became complacent
about our customer experience.
I believe everyone in an organisation, leaders and
colleagues alike, should regularly spend time with
their customers, hear their experiences first-hand
and be prepared to be challenged by what they hear.
If you genuinely want to build a more customer-obsessed
organisation rather than simply talk about being one,
I couldn’t recommend Sue more highly.