Our Thought Leaders & Speakers

Hear experts from Australia share their thought leadership on the future of Customer Experience Management.

Lisa Macqueen

Business Transformation Expert

Automation Queen

Lisa Macqueen helps her clients crack the code of small business success by using a combination of technology and smart marketing ideas to dominate their industry. She spent 20 years working in sales and marketing for large international hotel chains, before joining her husband Hamish, in the family business, Cleancorp.

Not long after starting her ‘new career’ she realised that not only was the business struggling, but there were no systems or processes in place to capture leads, nurture clients or manage day to day workflow. So, she set about creating her 7 Step Power Principal S-y-s-t-e-m (save yourself some time, energy and money), and turned the cleaning business into a multi-million dollar national cleaning company in the space of a few short years.

Lisa’s philosophy is that “automation leads to domination”, and her goal is to teach her clients to stop chasing clients and start landing contracts. Because as she says, “when people know who you are, you can charge more, have more credibility and be more visible as an industry leader – essentially you can dominate markets, instead of competing in them”.

Lisa is also the winner of the Infusionsoft Small Business ICON Award for 2014 (formerly known as the Ultimate Marketer Award), entrepreneur, speaker, author, marketer, business owner, wife and mother to her 3 daughters.

Christian Lafrance

Audience Experience Strategy Lead - Radio Multiplatform

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Christian is passionate about enabling organizations to to effectively transform their products & services to better resonate with customers, enable competitive advantage and drive more value per customer. He leads the design & innovation of radio on digital platforms at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

He brings to his presentations his experiences from over 14 years of journey across most parts of the customer experience design lifecycle with a focus on strategy and innovation. His design consulting and in-house design roles have exposed him to multiple sectors and industries and include a track record of market-launched innovations.

David Francis

Head of Interactive

Blue Star Group

David is a contextual marketing evangelist, working to re-engineer the value proposition of one of world’s largest industries: Print Communications. As Head of Blue Star Interactive, David has built the first AR-dedicated division inside one of Australia’s largest print companies, servicing more than 3000 blue-chip companies across extremely diverse vertical markets.

David has conceived and produced AR for some of the world’s largest brands and is a regular speaker and panelist at digital marketing innovation events. He works with AR software and hardware manufacturers to focus on User Experience, legacy and future proofing. Ostensibly, David is a content-creator, understanding the toolkits to deliver AR that fits the human mind, our senses and behaviours.

Tina Paterson

Head of Transformation – Business Processes

Bupa Australia & New Zealand

Tina has worked across 9 industries and 12 countries in a variety of roles in Operations, Finance, HR and Process Improvement. She has led departments of up to 300 people and has a passion for transforming processes for the benefit of customers, employees and the bottom line. She is a certified Lean and Six Sigma Master Black Belt from GE and holds a Master of Commerce from The University of Melbourne.

Tina’s current role involves transforming Bupa’s Health Insurance experience for their customers by focusing on establishing and embedding customer-centric and fit for purpose end to end business process management and governance solutions.

Kate Symons

Head of Customer Centric Innovation & Business Design

Bupa Australia

Kate is a visionary who inspires organisations about the possibilities in terms of customer centricity. A Postgraduate qualified with over 10 years of work experience as a Customer Experience expert. She has agency and client side experience having worked with some of Australia’s most reputable organisations leading teams to evolve their mindsets, knowledge, skills and tools using Human Centred Design, Agile and Lean methods to drive better customer and business outcomes.

Andrew Lamrock

Director Enterprise Intelligence

Call Journey

From National Manager of Sales Programs at Telstra to CEO of Medibank Melbourne Ice and now the Director of Enterprise Intelligence at Call Journey, Andrew helps organisations unlock the ‘voice of business’. As a modernist vanguard Andrew’s role is to provide organisations with the opportunity to take customer interactions and turn them into real relationships, by listening better. Andrew has the rare ability to rationalise visionary technology for everyday use, through a basic principle that acknowledges ‘people’ in every step of the journey.

Lee Ussher

Social Media Brand Strategist

Buzz Web Media

Lee is an Australian business woman leader who’s paved a successful career from start-up to an internationally recognised social media speaker, specialist & online marketing agency.

Her successful accomplishments in achieving business growth using innovative social media marketing strategies has been recognised by:

✧ being listed as a LinkedIn Publisher
✧ 3 Australian Telstra Business Woman nominations
✧ NAB Woman Entrepreneur nominee
✧ regular social media commentary on radio, web tv, newspapers & business websites
✧ featured in DARE & GLOSS magazines
✧ published article contributor in a Sydney business newspaper

Specialising in Brand & CEO reputation management, Lee’s secured top 1% LinkedIn rankings for clients. Positioning them as industry leaders, & exposing their business to fresh leads & new growth opportunities.

With a Ba.Ed and Post Grad. Studies background and a career history of professional training & public speaking, her social media consulting & workshops is widely recognised for providing creative social media solutions to her clients & company brand managers. These workshops have also been listed with Australian associations for continual professional development points and NSW Govt & Local Councils. Today, as a social media speaker & professional brand management trainer, she is widely sort after.

In 2009 she established Buzz Web Media, a social media & online marketing agency, which provides:

• web design & development
• combined SEO & social media retargeting advertising campaigns
• Hands-on social media & online marketing workshops
• Online marketing consulting & management packages

Ankica Elder

Online Communications Officer

Campbelltown City Council, South Australia

As a customer focused professional, Ankica is involved in developing and implementing online communication strategies for local government. Ankica is currently responsible for preparing corporate communication materials for promotion in various locations including Council’s website and social media platforms to promote Council programs, services and events in a planned, coordinated and strategic manner.

Pivotal to effective customer communication and engagement is creating a compelling customer experience via digital media to engage and retain customers.

Chris Luxford

Co-Founder Experience Innovators

Senior Partner, The ASPIRE! Group

Chris is a passionate and innovative thought leader in customer experience. Traditional business process transformation, advanced digital and mobile technology and organisational wide change management are important, but the breakaway leaders go further than these levers. He is a futurist who sees human interaction and information sharing process via technologies (inc digital and mobile) as the keys to innovative differentiation of the forthcoming decade. Chris is incredibly passionate about change and innovation through enhancing customer experience in ways never envisioned before enabling significant market differentiation via by re-thinking conventional wisdom.

An experienced executive with over 20 years of operational and management experience in sales, contact centres, customer experience, innovation consulting, and technology across Telco, Media, Technology and Banking & Finance throughout the APAC region.

Prior to establishing Experience Innovators, Chris led a large tier 1 BPO ($190M annual revenue) as CEO. In that role, Chris successfully re-engineered the company to increase EBITDA from $6M to $19M in less than 2 years with GAGR of revenue exceeding 16%.

Jennifer Reddington

Head of Customer Experience Research & Data

Fifth Quadrant

Seeing opportunity everywhere, Jennifer is constantly striving to combine customer experience, design and usability. Where others see a gaping chasm, Jen will always find ways to bring them together and work in unison.

With fourteen years of experience in customer and market research, she is highly accomplished in both research design and analysis. Having previously worked as a Consumer Insights Manager for Yahoo! and having gained invaluable experience in both online and traditional media, she is an expert in customer needs.

Jennifer has gained valuable experience working across multiple industries and the government sectors, working with organisations such as Telstra, Westpac, ASIC, UNSW, News Corporation, and Nestle. She has a passion for tapping into the customers’ needs to drive innovation.

Stephanie Bauer

Customer Experience Strategy Consultant

Fifth Quadrant Pty Ltd

Stephanie has over 20 years senior experience in the customer experience industry, working at both senior operational and strategic levels with many clients across Australia, Europe and South Africa.

Stephanie has a wealth of customer experience industry experience having designed, transitioned and managed highly successful customer contact centre operations, in addition to providing strategic consultancy services within a broad range of industry sectors. Stephanie has an in-depth understanding of customer experience strategy design, implementation and optimization.

David Heacock

Director

Cybertrack Consulting

David Heacock is a digital innovator specialising in user experience architecture, design and digital technologies for large programs and enterprises. He is currently the User Experience Architect on the redevelopment of the Australian Passport Office's internal systems and public interfaces.

As a partner and Director of Canberra’s iconic design house MA@D Communication, David led a team of designers, project managers, analysts, developers and creatives to stake a place in the Australian market before the company was acquired by ZOO Advertising in 2007. Since then David has contracted in senior positions in the Australian Government, playing a leadership role in developing corporate capabilities around innovation and user experience architecture. David recently lead a team known as the Business Design Lab at the Department of Immigration and Border Protection – an internal ‘Skunkworks’ style consulting unit used by business areas to break complex problems in unique ways.

David continues to develop innovative business including the start-up Stalkthis.com, an online shopping utility that monitors the prices of your favourite online products.

Brendon Noney

Partner

HWL Ebsworth Lawyers

Brendon's practice is in commercial legal work where he balances his clients' commercial needs with reasoned and sound legal advice, representation and documentation.

Brendon has a niche in advising Australian and international clients (users and providers) on legal issues related to Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Intellectual Property (IP). His experience extends to advice on multi-media, digital and new technology including contractual arrangements with data centres, contracts relating to the establishment and delivery of cloud computing services including Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), advising on data warehousing, cross border data flow and data security and disclosure issues, privacy and confidential information, intellectual property (copyright and trade marking issues), software licensing (including EULA, bid price and ELA), software and app development and maintenance contracts and website development and maintenance agreements and terms and conditions and social media terms of use and privacy policies.

His ICT and IP offering is complemented by his broader skills and experience in mergers and acquisitions including advising on private equity and venture capital investments, advising on buy-outs, divestments, shareholders agreements, due diligence and broader commercial law issues.

His work includes providing contracts for and advising on a broad range of commercial settings and relationships (for example distribution arrangements, joint ventures, options, agency, procurement, licensing, confidentiality and non-disclosure, memorandum of understanding and letters of intent, terms and conditions of trade), corporations law issues and compliance matters.

He advises a wide range of wholly owned subsidiaries of multinationals, mid-market corporations and businesses including those in the FMCG sector, broadcasters, retailers, motor vehicle distributors, manufacturers, ICT providers and customers, registered clubs, leisure and entertainment businesses, not-for-profit organisations and charities, nationwide franchisors, franchisees, financial services providers as well as start-up and emerging businesses, SMEs and professional services firms.

Amrita Bhattacharyya

Manager Customer Strategy

Metro

Amrita is a former management consultant with over 12 years of consulting experience with blue chip consulting firms in the US, specializing in defining customer experience transformation strategies for Fortune 500 clients. Currently as Head of Customer Strategy at Metro Trains Melbourne, Amrita has led the transformation of Metro’s customer experience program resulting in successful accreditation by Customer Service Institute of Australia (CSIA) and a 4% increase in customer satisfaction.

Harriet Wakelam

Head of Customer Experience

Medibank

Until September this year, she was setting up the Customer Experience Design capability at Capco (a specialist Financial Services consultancy) in London Given that titles are meaningless.. This means that she is fascinated by the intersection of people, change, product and service to transform and makes this happen with banks and other financial service institutions. She is driven by the development of purposeful services whether in health, financial services or communications through the development of outcomes not outputs. She is driven by a vision of a fairer world that sustains people and business. She has worked as an experience designer with NAB, Australia Post, some of the UK’s biggest banks, and supports a range of innovative start-ups from Singapore to Russia.

She listens a lot, talks a bit and loves to weave curious cross-disciplinary teams with the courage to both create exciting things often but also build breakthroughs from disasters.

Harriet is originally a Londoner arriving back in Melbourne via Perth, Karratha, Slovakia amongst others. Her great loves include 2 small people, the random collision of ideas, brave people, courage and mischief (supported by the odd chocolate and martini).

Thinking out loud @hwakelam and all the usual places.

Alexandra Almond

Senior Consultant, Customer Experience Design

National Australia Bank

Alexandra is a customer experience design manager, and she believes that starting with the customers will create a better business.

She’s been at NAB for 13 years, working across a diverse range of business units including projects, brand, strategy and procurement, before joining the Customer Experience Design team 4 years ago.

Her job, which she loves, is making sure as a business NAB understands how their products and services fit into customers' lives, and to design better solutions.

Alexandra has a Bachelor of Arts (History and French) from Melbourne University that is stored in the garage somewhere.

Nigel Prior

Customer Experience Practice Manager, IT Business Solutions

NEC

Nigel is NEC Australia’s Customer Experience Practice Manager, responsible for the governance, strategy, advice and delivery of customer experience transformations for NEC’s customers.

With 14 years’ experience in the Customer Experience and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) IT sector, a key area of Nigel’s interest is in the mapping of organisational business strategies to the delivery of great customer experiences.

Nigel joined NEC Australia after an extensive and varied career in the software and call centre industry. As an employee of NEC, he’s pleased to be part of an organisation that understands networking and contact centre technologies along with IT and Customer Experience solutions.

Karen Platt

Director, Customer Experience & Insight

Optus Business

Karen plays a key role in helping Optus Business place the customer at the heart of its culture and operations. "My personal field of expertise is in the people side of change and understanding how to utilise customer and employee feedback to drive improvements," she says. "My team also focuses on customer centric strategy and design, in addition to business improvement in process and systems that enable customer experience excellence and consulting internally to support best practice leadership in customer experience, so our skills balance each other very well."

Karen has launched a range of initiatives to obtain feedback from customers and improve their experience with Optus Business. One of Karen’s greatest personal achievements has been the development of a best practice Voice of Customer Program. “This is about taking the time to understand what all our customers expect and experience from strategic relationships through to operational interactions, and then using this insight to inform our account plans, continual improvement, business strategy and investment priorities" she says. The Customer Experience feedback metrics are now embedded in employees' key performance indicators and incentive schemes resulting on Optus Business achieving their highest ever customer experience satisfaction and advocacy outcomes since its 2007 inception.

Karen wasalso been involved in the development of the Future of Business 2014 report – Creating a Business Customers Love, commissioning research with 550 business and government organisations and 5000 consumers making it one of the largest ever Australia-based customer experience studies. The insights from this report help organisations understand how to create a business that customers love with findings showing that technology decisions should not be made in isolation from customer experience strategies.

Karen is now leading Optus Business Capability & Innovation function ensuring products & solutions are created to meet customer future needs and developed in an innovative, agile and customer centric approach.

She also coaches leaders within Optus Business and externally to develop the skills required to drive change within their organisations. Karen’s track record in leading product management, product development, sales, marketing and programs functions for the organisation has given her a deep understanding of the business and its people.”

Peter Strohkorb

CEO

Peter Strohkorb Consulting International

During over 15 years in both Sales and Marketing executive roles for some of the largest brands on the plane Peter has witnessed the waste, cost and frustrations that ensue on both sides when Sales and Marketing do not collaborate well. This personal experience has fired his passion to eliminate this waste of time, money and effort. His OneTEAM Method is a structured Sales & Marketing Productivity framework to grow sales results, to lift customer experience and to boost staff morale.

His vision is to create a world where Sales and Marketing functions work together as one team, to the benefit of all stakeholders.

Today, Peter is the CEO of Peter Strohkorb Consulting International, a business consulting firm that specialises in lifting sales results by helping Sales and Marketing teams to work together more effectively. Peter is also a popular speaker, MC and facilitator, regular blogger, the publisher of the Sales+Marketing Collaboration Community on LinkedIn, and the author of a soon to be released new book, called The OneTEAM Method. He is a guest lecturer on Sales and Marketing alignment in the executive MBA program at the Sydney Business School and to the MBA Masterclass at the University of Wollongong. Peter holds a “Mini MBA” from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM) in Sydney.

Jeff Carruthers

Managing Director

Resonate Solutions

Jeff is the CEO of Resonate Solutions – the leading local provider of customer feedback solutions for market leaders in the Asia Pacific. Jeff founded Resonate in 2001 as a CRM consulting and solutions provider and has steered the business through its integration of Social Media and Customer Experience Management with a focus on what makes organisations relevant to contemporary customers – and a keen eye for technical innovation.

Jeff has played both the Business Development role as well as the Project Director role for many of the large and complex projects that Resonate has completed since inception. This has included Closed Loop Feedback (NPS) Programs with Woolworths, Qantas, and SingTel Optus.

An experienced General & Commercial Manager, Jeff has previously managed businesses and acquisitions for Brambles Limited (Wreckair Hire NSW) and a range of Professional Services (IT & Consulting) firms before developing the Resonate business.

Jeff has degrees in Economics (University of Adelaide) and Accounting (University of Technology, Sydney) and is an Accredited NPS Consultant.

Jeff is passionate about the potential that large organisations can unleash by listening to customers and acting systematically to create advocates and profitable sales growth; and the science that can now be applied through approaches and metrics like Net Promoter Score, customer life-time value and “big data” generally.

Joe Hindmarsh

Northern Lead: Data & Insight Solutions

Salmat

Joe is one of the region’s most experienced consultants who has been heavily involved in pioneering and transforming revenue growth across some of Australia’s leading organizations, by blending big data and multi-channel enablement.

He has held a range of management positions with Salmat, Australian Business Solutions Group, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and CPA Australia, leading numerous transformation projects involving the build and execution of revenue improvement solutions and change programs.

He has worked with clients such as Samsung, Coates, Coles, Metcash, ClearView, St George Bank, Austral Bricks, Hunter Water and Sydney Cricket & Sports Ground Trust.

In 2011 he was the lead performer at Deloitte Analytics. In 2007 as part of the Ernst & Young team, he created the revenue transformation tool which received the International Business Award from billionaire Donald J. Trump and a panel of global business leaders in Germany for their work in implementing change management projects for clients looking to grow revenue.

As the Northern Lead of Data & Insight Solutions at Salmat, Joe has been invited to share his unique approach and insights into what best-in-class use of Data & Technology looks like. His views are unique and empowering yet simplistic, and will leave you with a different way to look at commercial performance.

Evan Stubbs

Chief Analytics Officer

SAS Australia

Evan Stubbs is also a Board Member for the Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia, an Adjunct Research Associate at the University of South Australia, an editor of the International Journal of Data Science, and a member of the Advisory Board for the Melbourne Business School’s Centre for Business Analytics.

He has also been awarded the CEO Excellence Award by Dr. Goodnight, CEO of the SAS Institute. A globally recognised thought leader and expert in the application of Business Analytics, he is the author of The Value of Business Analytics, Delivering Business Analytics: Practical Best Practice Guidelines, and Big Data, Big Innovation, all published by Wiley Press. He contributed to Business Analytics: An Introduction, published by Taylor & Francis.

Evan leads the Advisory business within SAS Australia, a group that coaches organisations on becoming analytical competitors. In the time Stubbs has been with SAS he has helped organisations achieve best-practice in business analytics, deliver national public reform, establish Centres of Excellence, and generate economic returns through innovation. His practical and motivational talks on creating value through the use of business analytics are in high demand. He advises executive leadership teams across the globe on how to use big data and business analytics.

He has presented at a variety of conferences. Most recently he chaired and presented at the Customer Compass, a conference focused on driving value through customer insight and analytics, participated in a panel on Big Data Analytics, and presented on building customer loyalty at Customers for Life. He also spoke at the CFO Summit for the Public Sector and delivered a keynote at ADMA’s Data Day.

Andy Fell

General Manager, Retail Banking Australia

St. George Retail Banking

Andy joined the St.George team in June 2012 to head up the newly formed Retail Banking division and is responsible for the growth and success of our branch and home lending network across New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Queensland and Western Australia.

Andy has more than 20 years’ experience in the financial services industry, including more than two years with Westpac Group where he had great success leading Westpac Retail and Business Banking in Queensland and most recently heading up the Premium Financial Services division.

Before coming to Australia, Andy worked for RBS and Nat West in the United Kingdom. His roles included Director of Mortgages, Head of Learning and Director of Retail Banking; where he was responsible for 200 branches and more than 2000 people.

Originally from Birmingham in the UK, Andy now lives in Sydney with his wife Leona and their three daughters – Emma, Lucy and Lily. Tom, Andy’s son, lives in the UK and visits often. Andy is passionate about learning and personal development.

Gerard Smith

Senior Manager - eBusiness and Contact Centre

Teachers Mutual Bank

Gerard is responsible for the organization's banking and communication channels: website, internet, mobile and telephone banking; contact centre, and the company intranet. Gerard provides strategic thought leadership on sourcing and implementing technology and strategies to develop new, or optimise existing business processes and procedures that deliver cost savings, improve member satisfaction, and increase productive capacity and quality.

Gerard has recently overseen a multimillion dollar upgrade of Teachers Mutual Bank's website, and led the bank's Contact Centre team to State and national success at the 2014 Auscontact Awards.

Gerard has worked with Teachers Mutual Bank since 1993, in a variety of roles both in NSW and WA that have given him a deep understanding of the organisation and the needs of its members.

Dori Miller

Business Design Manager, Design Practice

Telstra

Dori Miller is the Business Design Manager in Telstra’s Design Practice, a team of talented individuals who are passionate about elevating the quality of design and customer experience. She has 15 years experience in design and design research. In her current position she is exploring how design thinking can make a difference in large organizations by re-imagining the way we innovate and solve complex problems in collaboration with customers and staff.

Before coming to Australia, Dori worked in the US for companies like IBM and Microsoft doing customer research and designing software and applications.

Dori has a passion for problem solving and loves big challenges. Being an avid swimmer she has crossed the English Channel 5 times and recently became the 27th person to complete a two-way English Channel swim. She is looking for the next big challenge!

David Fairfull

Managing Partner

We Are Social

As Managing Partner of We Are Social in Australia, David is highly involved in the development of innovative social and digital solutions, for a range of Tier 1 brands. He is also responsible for the global deployment of We Are Social’s new software platform that helps brands collect detailed data on their social and digital audiences, and link this through to their CRM dataset, to give a single customer view. This single integrated view makes it possible to create personalised digital experiences that reflect the consumer’s reason for connecting with the brand.

David is a former Regional Director, APAC for MRM McCann and Managing Director of his own Digital Agency, Brave, which was sold to Powerlan Limited. He has also led large scale Digital and CRM projects for multinationals, and commercialised several digital start-ups, based in the US and Australia.

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