Andrew McMillan

Book a top business speaker today with Great Business Speakers!

Andrew McMillan started Engaging Service over ten years ago. Prior to that he spent 28 years working for the John Lewis Partnership, starting as a management trainee to becoming responsible for customer experience across the department store division.

He wants to make individuals and organisations happier and more fulfilled through a sense of collective purpose, so they engender trust, loyalty and advocacy from their customers while becoming more productive and, as a consequence, more profitable.

For more details on how Andrew can add value to your event, contact us on 0044 (0)1753 439289

Andrew McMillan started his career as a management trainee with the John Lewis Partnership. Quickly moving through the management ranks, he ended up heading a department in the flagship Oxford Street branch. From there, he moved to their head office to take charge of their intelligence team.

21 years after first starting with the brand, he was asked to lead on their customer experience; the role saw him develop their market-leading culture and attitude towards customer experience. That customer-driven culture is something that has now become synonymous with the John Lewis brand.

After nearly three decades at John Lewis, Andrew joined a boutique consultancy firm as a principal consultant. It was here he honed his skills in employee engagement, customer experience, and customer-centric business process change.

Other positions include joining the customer experience committee at Revo – previously the British Council of Shopping Centres; as a judge and adviser for the Customer Focus Award; and judge for the Virgin Atlantic Customer Experience and Loyalty Award.

In 2012 he founded and became director of Engaging Service. Whether it’s a small, family-run firm or a large multinational, Andrew McMillan places an emphasis on understanding what makes (or can make) them different. By uncovering inherent values and a shared enthusiasm he brings about employee engagement and growth. Andrew also looks at the roles of leadership, communication, trust and even enjoying work in creating success.

CORPORATE

Since Engaging Service was founded, Andrew has spoken at over 300 conferences and events, and has consulted for over 40 organisations worldwide, from large corporations to SMEs.

He has spoken at global conferences, across all commercial sectors as well as government, health, and not-for-profit organisations. He does not have a standard presentation, but instead collaborates with his clients and tailors his talks to meet the precise needs to the event.

Andrew also provides workshops which are, in effect, longer versions of his conference presentations, but with more time for practical exercises and questions.

KEYNOTE TALKS

Inside Out Customer Experience: What do your customers really experience when they interact with front-line employees, and how do they subsequently feel about your organisation? Many companies focus on their product or service, rather than their customer experience. Engaging employees with common behaviours and attitudes will increase the customer experience, consequently leading to consistent and sustainable relationships.

Differentiation: Why would customers choose your business over your competitors? What attitudes should your business be adopting to ensure potential customer always choose you? In an ever-increasing commoditised marketplace, businesses can’t just rely on their product and price to differentiate themselves. Creating a powerful reputation will ensure you are proactively chosen by your customer, leading to long-term success.

Productivity: Fun at work can be seen as frivolous and is rarely at the top of the leadership agenda. However, it creates an environment that attracts millennials, improves productivity and employee engagement, and reduces employee turnover. Engaged employees will deliver a better and more consistent customer experience, which in turn improves reputation and turnover.

Leadership of Change: Inspiring and engaging leadership at every level of seniority seems to challenge organisations globally. Many companies assume leadership skills training is the answer but it rarely is. Ensuring managers have the opportunity and time to lead as well as manage is critical, followed by the right skills and self-belief to use them effectively.

Storytelling: When the right work environment is created, employees will become brand ambassadors and spontaneously do remarkable things for customers. Celebrating these ‘stories’ through internal communications is a really powerful way of recognising individuals, while reinforcing the customer and employee engagement ambitions of the organisation.

Marketing: Many companies attempt to create their personality through marketing, which can be a disappointment to customers if the reality falls short of what is promised. Rather than working from the outside in, smart organisations start from the inside out, creating their business personality through engaging their employees with a common purpose and using that to drive their customer experience.

Sales: So many organisations take a short-term view to sales – maximise the sale today and don’t think about tomorrow. However, taking a longer term view of customers, and focussing on their individual needs rather than the immediate needs of the company can build a degree of trust and loyalty that will provide a robust defence to the unpredictable economic challenges organisations have to inevitably face.

Complaints: We’ve all heard the figures that a satisfied customer tells x number of people, whereas a dissatisfied customer tells x+++ number of people. However, many dissatisfied customers who experience a swift positive resolution are more likely to become the strongest advocates of an organisation, while providing some free consultancy as to how that organisation can become more customer friendly.

Retail: Bricks and mortar retail is said to be in decline and for many retailers they are frankly experiencing what they deserve. To tempt customers away from their smart devices, high streets and shopping centres need to offer a personally affirming experience to make customers’ effort in visiting them worthwhile.

CONSULTING AND COACHING

There’s several reasons you may employ a consultant:

– No expertise or experience in the discipline

– Expertise but insufficient resource capacity

– Expertise and resource capacity available but the knowledge that an external view will be more effective

Consulting programmes are based on the philosophy that engaged employees perform better for their organisations, colleagues and customers. Cross-sector clients over the past ten years have proved this time and time again.

Andrew’s framework was born out of nearly 30 years’ experience at John Lewis, and has evolved over his cross-sector consulting. His framework covers:

– Diagnose: identify and validate the key issues

– Strategic Direction: working with the whole board to gain consensus on key goals relating to strategy implementation

– Define: working with front-line employees to define and articulate the consistently delivered behaviours and attitudes for which the organisation is to become famous

– Measure: employee and customer measurement programmes to evidence if the behaviours and attitudes are positively impacting customers

– Communicate: internal communication programmes to introduce behaviours and attitudes

– Leadership: support for managers to help them identify and overcome leadership challenges

– Reward, Recognition and Appraisal: to align the HR structures to the new behaviours so that employees are rewarded, not just for outcomes, but for how they achieved them

– Recruitment: to ensure the advertising of roles is designed to attract the sort of people who will naturally behave in the way the organisation aspires to, and to reinforce the behaviours and attitudes

CLIENTS

3, Abellio, AirFrance, Argos, Armagh City Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council, Asda, Autoglym, AXA, Barclays, Bath College, BaxterStorey, Bunzl, Cala Homes, CBRE, Chubb, City of Westminster, Close Brothers, Deloitte, Doncaster Council, EE, Engie, Etisalat, Eurostar, Experian, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Genesis, idsMED, International Paper, Investec, Kings College London, Lambert Smith Hampton, the Law Society, Macquarie, Mercedes Benz, Michael Kors, Money Supermarket, Morrison Utility Services, National Grid, NFU Mutual, NHBC,

NHS Leadership Academy, NHS Property Services, Nissan, Nottingham Trent University, Nuffield Health, Olympus, Parkdean Resorts, Rightmove, Roche, Royal Bank of Scotland, Shell, the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, South East Coast Ambulance Service, St James’s Place Wealth Management, Toyota, United Utilities, University of Oxford, Veolia, Virgin Atlantic, Welsh Water, Wiltshire Farm Foods

To check fees and availability for Andrew McMillan, contact Great Business Speakers on 0044 (0)1753 439289

Contact us.

Andrew McMillan, a visionary speaker, guides you through navigating disruption with adaptability and innovation for success.

Andrew had a fantastic story to tell, delivered it in a very engaging way, and the feedback was extremely positive. A great impact!
Royal Bank of Scotland

Charming and personable! Andrew was accommodating and very professional in his area of expertise.
Legal & General Assurance Society Limited

A big thank you for your presentation and the insights you provided our team! The feedback was very positive and I felt you connected well with our team. And this is a tough to please crowd! I was also personally captivated by your message and thoroughly enjoyed the presentation.
Arch Reinsurance

Andrew McMillan was superb. I really enjoyed all of the guest speakers but, in particular, Andrew. I felt his session offered much more of a real life experience. Andrew McMillan was very inspiring.
United Utilities

You joining us and sharing your experiences really made a difference, especially with our long tenured staff as they really felt hearing a credible voice from outside the organisation has given them confidence that the journey we are on is the right one.
National Grid

Thank you for arranging for Andrew McMillan to speak at our Annual Conference in Manchester earlier this month. Feedback on the Keynote has been very positive and delegates enjoyed Andrew’s presentation style as well as the insight he gave us into his vast experience, mainly at John Lewis.
Institute of Water

It was great to have you join us at our leadership conference last week. All the feedback on the delegate forms was very positive – with your independent perspective and “call to arms” for customers being particularly well received.
Welsh Water

Very personable and down to earth. Good balance of business case studies and personal experiences to bring customer service alive. Our teams really enjoyed the session and we have received such positive feedback it was great.
Michael Kors

Many thanks Andrew, you were fabulous, very interesting and inspiring and I’ve had some very positive feedback from the retailers which is great.
King’s Road Retail Group

Excellent, not only in his presentation but also in how easy it was to work with him. The content was precisely what we wanted!
Sonova

The content that you provided for our Salon Owners and Managers was superb and the feedback has been extremely positive. Our salons LOVED your talk and found it extremely informative and engaging.
Guinot

Many thanks for your presentation yesterday, everyone seemed to enjoy it and the fun element made a fitting closing experience for Spa Life. In fact, in all the years we’ve been running Spa Life there has never been a bigger audience for the closing keynote session.
Spa Life

The feedback from your session was excellent and I know form chatting to coaches that the message really resonated with them.
Lawn Tennis Association

The conference was a great success and the feedback from our clients about your inspiring session was fantastic. It has given us all much to think about; and in particular it has reminded us to think deeply about just why we do this and what the outcomes are for our customers and their students.
NEST

It was an absolute pleasure to work with Andrew. The session went down really well and we have had so much positive feedback. I especially appreciate his effort to tailor the session for our audience. Andrew blew the audience away and we have had fantastic feedback. Wonderful professional, practices what he preaches. Excellent customer service.
UK Active

28 years in Customer Service – I think anyone interested in this session could have stayed on and listened to Andrew for another few hours. I really enjoyed this session – he is a great speaker and again brought some interesting stories to the table on customer service experience from BA to Virgin – highly recommend to bring him back. Excellent, some fantastic examples and an intelligent and well-spoken speaker.
ASAP

Andrew was excellent in his delivery and audience engagement. The presentation was relevant to the industry with a good mix of business theory and practicable examples.
Coach Marque

Thank you so much for speaking on Wednesday evening – the conversation carried on for a couple of hours after you left. People were particularly struck by your slide ‘hire for attitude – fire for attitude’ so I had a queue of people wanting to talk to me about this. You were also referenced a lot at our meeting, the following day, so clearly you went down well.
Toyota

The feedback from our delegates was fantastic. Your session was by far the most popular of the day.
Autoglym

It was a pleasure working with you. The content was perfectly applicable to our audience and delivered in a particularly engaging manner. For many dealers your presentation was the most thought provoking of the event.
Nissan

Many thanks for this and for the day itself – everyone raved about the presentation afterwards and mentioned it as a highlight in the end of the day wrap-up! Just a shame we didn’t have enough time to explore more of the points in detail – I will know for next time!
Shell

Andrew tells a fascinating story about his systematic approach to making the John Lewis business more responsive to consumer needs.
BP

I wanted to say that Andrew’s session was a very great success. He was extremely engaging (Even to our very mixed audience) and he has generated many ideas and plans for our business going forwards. The feedback we received from his session was very positive across the board.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office

I would like to thank you very much indeed for your contribution to our event the other week, and let you know that the feedback from delegates regarding your presentation has been really very positive.
University of Oxford

I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation today, and have had some very positive comments from delegates, colleagues and other speakers, who both referred back to some things you mentioned in the final session. You really gave us food for thought.
Nottingham Business School

I just wanted to say thank you again for a fantastic session at our conference yesterday, I’ve heard nothing but praise, even from the ‘cynics’ who normally loathe employee conferences. I think that your session really resonated with our employee base and was spot on for where we are now, and where we want to be.
Havebury Housing Association