James joined the board in 2017, having Chaired the Forum's Public Sector Group since 2012.

James is currently responsible for Customer Services at South Gloucestershire Council, having a background in local government combining both Customer Services and back office administration including debt collection. His experiences have focused on striving to identify opportunities to continually improve the customer journey and experience whilst delivering efficiency savings. This has included projects centring on technology, channel shift, complaints, people and cultural change. This has gained best practice recognition along with several SWCCF Awards.

Operations Director for Woven Solutions – Mid Market Outsourcing supplier. Core strengths include running large multi-functional contact centre teams for large brands. Previously chairperson for the SWCCF and keen to support and add ideas to the future of the contact centre industry.

Having worked in the contact centre industry for over 25 years, and part of the SWCCF for over 6 years. I am honoured to be asked to be part of the advisory board.  Membership of the SWCCF has enabled the centres I have been involved with to learn from the best in class, adopt best practice and themselves become leading centres.  As chair of the Senior Managers group I get to discuss issues affecting our industry and support from some of the best leaders in the industry.

I have worked across most sectors from Finance to telecoms and am currently Senior Manager Contact Centre for P&O Cruises and Cunard brands, looking at how we support these great brands launching new ships over the next 3 years whilst ensuring outstanding customer service.

I work for Brittany Ferries in a role that encompasses management of contact centres, customer experience and social media. My role is diverse and I’ve really enjoyed being at the heart of the company’s digital transformation as well as tackling the operational challenges that 11 ships, 11 ports and 2.5 million passengers can create. In my career I’ve enjoyed varied roles in supply chain management, sales and service, outsourcing, brand positioning and several commercial roles along the way. The common threads throughout have been broad management across varied department and cultural change, both of which I love. I’m at my happiest tackling a tricky challenge that needs effective change management, influencing skills and creative thought.

Holly has been involved with the SWCCF for 10 years and rejoined the board early 2017. Holly has been a part of the contact centre industry for the past 30 years; she is currently the Head of three products across Sales & Service – Home, Travel and Landlord at Liverpool Victoria. Holly has worked at Liverpool Victoria for 10 years and prior to LV worked for RSA for 21 years in a variety of roles.

Holly ensures world class service is achieved across two main sites and oversees the performance of a headcount of over 300 employees. She has considerable experience of achieving demanding service levels and driving efficiency within the business.

An advisory board member since the Forum’s inception, Katy has nearly 25 years’ experience in contact centre recruitment and consultancy.  Katy co-founded Red Recruitment in 2001, now one of the UK’s leading contact centre recruitment specialists.  Katy is well known as a passionate promoter of the contact centre industry and its opportunities.

Having worked in the contact centre industry for over 20 years, I am incredibly proud to have been closely associated with the SWCCF for 8 of those years. Being an active member of the forum has been invaluable for my centre, we have been given so many opportunities to meet with, and spend time in other centre’s where we have been able to share ideas, challenges and discuss best practices.

We also actively support some of the fantastic events arranged by the forum, Agent Fest, SWCCF Awards, quarterly forum events as well as the various working groups - these have become a key part of our yearly calendar and where possible we try to support as many of these events as possible.

Caroline is an experienced people leader and head of contact centre across financial services and retail. Having spent 3 years at Nisbets, she accomplished:

• an award winning contact centre - Achieved 3rd place in the Top 50 companies for Customer service Awards in 2016 (first time of entering), 2017 won the South West Contact Centre of the year award (in house medium sized contact centre, 2018 winners of South West contact centre – Best People Engagement, Best Use of Technology awards.
• 13 percentage point reduction in colleague attrition throughout 2018 – best practice shared with wider business.
• Delivered a cultural transformation resulting in 87% colleague engagement.