CCW Europe Digital's Top CX Influencers to Watch in 2024

All things considered, it’s a pretty exciting time to be in the world of CX right now. Sure, 2024 is set to bring a host of significant challenges, not least a consumer base harbouring demands that exceed basic efficiency and an AI hype cycle that is difficult to keep up with. But in amongst all the change and all the uncertainty, there emerges tremendous opportunity.

Here, we shine a spotlight on a group of visionaries who are doing some extraordinary things to move the CX conversation forward – leaders who are disrupting the landscape, innovating their brands, transforming their organisational cultures, and taking CX to new places (and new heights). Together they are evolving the concept of CX and pioneering fresh ways to create exceptional branded touchpoints where and when consumers want them.

Ready to be inspired? Let’s go.

Riffat Tufail

Head of Customer Vulnerability, Standard Life UK

A vulnerability champion

Over the past few years, UK financial services organisations have met unprecedented levels of customer vulnerability off the back of the pandemic and the current multitude of pressures surrounding the cost-of-living crisis. It’s against this backdrop that Riffat Tufail has become a leading force in the CX space, recognised for her exceptional work addressing and advocating for customers facing vulnerable circumstances. She has led groundbreaking initiatives in her position at Standard Life UK – initiatives that includes launching a new financial hardship guide for colleagues to aid them in difficult conversations with customers, creating a multi-award-winning learning and development programme, and commissioning research to further understand the impact rising day-to-day costs are having on vulnerable demographics. Her dedication to this cause also ties into her unwavering commitment to best-in-class CX, with her work leading to impressive customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. Win-win.

Riffat’s reach also transcends her organisation’s walls – she is actively engaged with industry peers and collaborates with other institutions to work towards better support for those in vulnerable circumstances. As this subject continues to get more and more airtime, expect to see Riffat get the same.

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You can hear Riffat speak at our upcoming UK Exchange event in March 2024.

Louise Williams

Group Head of Customer Experience Design, TUI

A champion of customer-centricity

Louise Williams has enjoyed a long and successful 19-year career at TUI, rising through the ranks and holding various CRM positions before becoming the Group Head of Customer Experience Design in early 2021. When Louise took on this role, the travel industry was in a state of perpetual chaos, and the brand itself was looking for a new sense of purpose and a new identity that was more of a fit for a digital-first world. Over the last three years, Louise has played a key role in modernising TUI through both the employee and customer lens, and she has been instrumental in fostering a customer-centric culture within the organisation, all while navigating some serious economic, logistical, and operational headwinds (who remembers the traffic light system?).

Her dedication to shifting mentality and connecting the brand promise to the TUI working experience recently came to life through the company’s Makers of Happy campaign that scooped numerous industry awards and garnered much critical acclaim. Her achievements stand as a guiding light for those looking to reboot their internal behaviours in a way that can serve to drive brand loyalty, build resilience, and future-proof their business.

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Listen to Louise talk about all things travel on our recent podcast.

Aymen Ismail

Head of Customer Engagement Solutions, smart Europe & Advisory Board Member, CCW Europe

A customer engagement disruptor

Aymen Ismail is spearheading the conversation around disruption in the customer engagement ecosystem. With over two decades of experience across various industries including telecoms, insurance, retail, media, and technology behind him, Aymen has become a household name in CX circles and a passionate speaker about the innovative ways in which brands can craft powerful customer development and management strategies that span every stage of the customer journey.

Today Aymen is applying his knowledge and the lessons he has learned in the world of electric urban mobility at smart Europe. There, he is fronting projects designed to empower the contact centre with fresh approaches to communication and implementing cutting-edge methodologies that are revolutionising the automobile shopping landscape. Aymen is a key part of the company’s ambition to make car buying an intuitive, fully digital-driven experience whereby consumers can choose their own journey, while data generates relevant personalisation.

Be sure to look out for his new book due out soon and a new concept he is championing: the omnisphere.

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Listen to Aymen dive in to all things data on our podcast.

Graeme Matheson

Planning and Performance Lead, John Lewis & Partners

An employee welfare advocate

Fresh out of the military some 30 years ago, Graeme Matheson "fell" into the contact centre "game", landing a job on the metaphorical frontlines with nothing but a pencil, a spreadsheet of numbers, and a telephone in hand. He's never looked back since, embarking on a hugely successful career in the industry that has included a range of roles both on the supplier and buyer side in the retail, telecoms, and financial services sectors. Graeme has a long track record of delivering exceptional customer experiences across channels and geographies and he believes that the key to it all is looking after (and prioritising) the employee experience.

His current role at John Lewis & Partners has involved overseeing a huge transition and evolution of the company's contact centre infrastructure. When he joined eight years ago, there was significant disconnect between the in-house team and the outsourcing partners. Graeme has been on a journey to build networks and relationships between those two estates so that they are unified in their goals, their approach, and their desire to fix customers' problems. His influence also extends way beyond John Lewis Partnership through his representation as a Council Member of the Global Sourcing Association, CX Foundation and his advocacy for better employee management.

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Listen to Graeme explore the makings of great employee experiences on our podcast.

Eugene Neale

Director of Business IT and CX Engineering, loveholidays

A conversational AI luminary

Despite loveholidays becoming the third largest travel agency in the UK this year, it’s a company still very much flying under the radar. That’s slowly changing, though, in large part thanks to the creative and revolutionary work that Eugene and his team are doing in the realm of conversational AI – a massively hot topic. (Side note: Become a member of CCW Europe Digital to stay on top of developments in this space.)

With a shortage of call centre staff and an unmanageable spike in customer contact during peak travel season, Eugene turned to machine learning and set up a chatbot – named Sandy – to act as their customers’ first point of contact. Sandy stands out in the world of chatbots for its ability to personalise its interactions, something loveholidays works hard on. Indeed, Sandy will greet every customer by name and then every engagement thereafter will inform and dictate how the chat pop-up engages with them. The results? Sandy has a high-resolution rate of 70%, a great feat for a large travel brand managing millions of conversations – and one that helps free up agents to deal with the more complicated customer issues. It has also been found to outperform human support in various key metrics, including resolution time, time to handle inquiries, and overall customer satisfaction scores. An industry benchmark, for sure.

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Eugene will be speaking more about Sandy at our upcoming UK Exchange event in March 2024.

Paul Herman

Senior Vice President, Global Digital Transformation Services, Sprinklr

A customer data visionary

Paul Herman is an expert on all things customer data and digital transformation. In his current role at Sprinklr, he’s driving powerful innovation in the CX space and helping connect the company’s technology stack to their customers’ strategies by empowering them to understand their digital maturity, formalise their processes and playbooks, and ultimately create a digital transformation roadmap for their future.

Paul has talked extensively about the emergence of the new breed of AI-based technologies and how when it comes to the data piece of the equation, AI needs to stand for Actionable Insights. He coaches that not all AI should be considered equal and any AI solutions that brands are deploying today must be built for unstructured data, able to adapt seamlessly to modern channels, and eminently actionable all at once. Paul is also a prominent speaker on the power of customer data and the importance of taking a platform rather than a point-solution approach to technology in order to make personalised, truly authentic, timely communication and advertising more possible.

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Catch Paul unpacking the world of customer data on our podcast.

Abdul Khaled

Head of Digital, Customer Experience & Digital Products, E.ON Next

A CX transformation leader

Abdul Khaled leads the digital and customer experience function at E.ON’s new challenger brand in the UK – E.ON Next. Upon joining the company in 2021, Abdul was tasked with helping to build this digital-first start-up from the ground up and assemble a CX team armed with a mandate to disrupt and revolutionise the energy space. His approach has been one that emphasises the perspective of the customer, ensuring that customer requirements are guiding decisions and driving strategy rather than executive intuition. Abdul places critical importance on building trust with customers and does so by challenging his team to ask themselves how they can become more transparent, how they can be different, and, crucially today, how they can be personal. He has overseen the build-out of numerous products and solutions over the past year to help with the cost-of-living crisis – products that are educational and proactive in terms of empowering customers to potentially reduce their bills. It’s a strategy that may hit bottom lines in the short-term, but he knows that by doing so, he is fostering deep, long-term brand loyalty.

In an era where the human touch remains central to customer experience excellence, Abdul’s purpose-driven leadership and customer-centric ethos can serve as a guide for CX leaders looking to introduce innovative ways of working and change internal mindsets to boost success in an increasingly competitive landscape.

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Get more insights from Abdul in our recent interview.

Heike Birlenbach

Senior Vice President, Customer Experience, Lufthansa Group

A customer management trailblazer

Heike Birlenbach is a hugely prominent figure in the airline and travel industry, forging a reputation for driving new frontiers and new innovations in the fields of customer experience and customer management. She has been part of the Lufthansa Group for over three decades during which time she has held numerous positions across multiple commercial and customer departments and markets: indeed, Heike started her career as Key Account Manager in Frankfurt, moved to London to become General Manager of Marketing and Sales Support, worked in Amsterdam as Benelux Regional Director, was based in Italy as Vice President of Lufthansa Italia, and headed the global sales team of the Lufthansa Group prior to her current role. Today (and since 2021), she serves as Senior Vice President of the customer experience division for the Lufthansa Group airlines back in her native Germany.

Heike now acts as a customer ambassador and leads a team of over 2,500 employees around the globe who collectively oversee a wide range of functions, for example experience design, insights, customer servicing, digital interactions, and product development. While looking for synergies across the airlines within the group, she always considers the individual aspects of each brand. Against the digital transformation imperative that is facing the travel sector today, Heike supports the introduction of new technologies and tactics that are helping Lufthansa Group become ever more customer-centric and deliver best-in-class, personalised brand experiences at massive scale, with the connection between the human factor and digital seen as a major focus point. She also pays close attention to the storytelling around how the company is tackling sustainability issues and how it all ties back to the customer experience.

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Stay tuned to CCW Europe Digital for an exclusive interview with Heike, coming soon.

Wrapping Up

As the CX industry continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, remaining informed is critical for leaders and innovators. You can become a member of the CCW Europe Digital community for free now to gain access to a host of resources designed to help stay on top of the latest trends and ultimately deliver a winning CX strategy. We’ve got podcasts, reports, interviews, and a whole lot more!