With a career spanning senior leadership roles, large-scale transformation programmes and consultancy across both public and private sectors, Richard brings a strong commercial mindset to customer service training. His work focuses on turning customer service from a “nice to have” into a measurable driver of trust, loyalty and organisational performance.

Richard has delivered stand-alone customer service courses, led award-winning customer experience transformation programmes, and supported organisations to embed customer-focused behaviours at scale. He has also taught at university level and delivered professional qualifications, giving him a rare ability to combine academic rigour with real-world practicality.

His career includes founding and selling consulting practices, senior management roles at Capita and Smurfit Kappa, and non-executive directorships. Richard is also the author of The Investors in People Handbook and The Tenant Insight Toolkit, reinforcing his expertise in service quality, insight and continuous improvement.

Training style and experience

Richard’s training style is highly interactive, practical and grounded in real customer conversations. Participants are actively involved throughout, with plenty of opportunity to practise, reflect and receive supportive but challenging feedback.

His approach is shaped by a successful and varied career, including:

• Managing Capita Symonds’ growth from 850 staff (£80m revenue) to 3,000 staff (£300m revenue), with customer focus embedded as a core performance driver
• Leading major change and customer experience transformation programmes, including:
• £3m digital transformation for Turner & Townsend
• £100m property transformation for Birmingham City Council
• £50m workplace transformation for the Ministry of Defence
• Designing and delivering an award-winning £2m customer service change programme for Ford Motor Company, focused on customer experience, consistency and frontline capability
• Acting as Head of Marketing for three flagship public-sector programmes (RE:FIT, RE:NEW and Energiesprong), with a strong emphasis on customer insight and engagement
• Winning nine national awards for marketing and customer experience
• Being part of Capita’s ‘big ticket’ sales team, winning multiple multi-million-pound contracts through strong customer relationships
• Delivering European sales and customer programmes for organisations including Renault, Michelin and Lafarge

Richard’s customer service training consistently helps people:

• Handle challenging conversations with confidence
• Communicate clearly, calmly and professionally
• Build trust and rapport quickly
• Stay empathetic while still achieving outcomes
• Apply practical tools they can use immediately back in role

Qualifications and professional affiliations

• BSc (Hons) Business Studies
• Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing
• Certified Member of the Market Research Society
• Certified Management Consultant
• Certified C-Me Colour Profile Practitioner
• Certified Net Promoter Score (NPS) Practitioner
• Certified NLP Practitioner

Previous training clients include

Richard has delivered customer service, communication and performance training for a wide range of organisations, including:

Associated British Ports • Atkins • Atos • Birmingham City Council • Birmingham City University • Byker Housing Trust • Chartered Institute of Housing • Chartered Institute of Marketing • Civica • Endress+Hauser • Estuary Housing Association • Ford Motor Company • Gateley Legal • Greene King • Institute of Packaging • Institute of Quarrying • Law Society of Scotland • Leeds Beckett University • Longcliffe Quarries • Metropolitan Police • Michelin • Ministry of Defence • Network Rail • O2 • Perrys Motor Group • Porterbrook Leasing • Quark • Rentokil Initial • Sandvik • Scania • Smurfit Kappa • SNC Lavalin • Specsavers • The Pensions Regulator

Richard receives consistently excellent feedback, particularly for making customer service training feel relevant, engaging and immediately useful:

• “A really interactive session — the time flew by (which never happens on training days).”
• “A customer service approach that made me rethink what ‘good’ actually looks like.”
• “Modern, relevant content that fits real customer conversations, not textbook fluff.”
• “Richard has a great way of making the learning stick without it feeling heavy.”
• “The course gave me a stronger structure for handling calls and tricky situations.”
• “Strong focus on empathy and tone — it genuinely changed how I come across.”
• “Practical tools and frameworks I’ll actually keep using — not just nod and forget.”
• “Richard somehow made ‘customer service training’ really interesting, which I didn’t think was possible.”
• “10/10!”