Catherine is a Senior Associate Consultant at Customer Essential. She has worked on many and varied client assignments and continues to contribute in a major way to the development of the Customer Essential proposition, based on client needs and market trends. Catherine’s particular areas of expertise include Programme Design and Management, Customer Strategy and Market planning, Key Account Management, Data strategy and management and use of Insight to drive the customer experience. She is also a dab hand at Pond Dipping.
Catherine’s thoughts:
“I learned so much about championing the customer and rising to management challenges at BP. I arrived at BP from a direct marketing background. This gave me an understanding of the intuitive use of data to get your message across and it was here that I first met Merlin Stone, an inspiration and a great friend and colleague throughout my customer management career.
My career at BP provided me with the fantastic opportunity of working in many different roles and countries. I provided extensive input to the development of a pan European strategy whilst managing change programmes in a number of countries simultaneously. I had the great pleasure of working with highly talented and intelligent people (and customers), all of whom contributed to my understanding of business dynamics and the role of customer management in releasing an organisation’s capability.
The move into consultancy in 2000 provided an ideal opportunity to support clients on their customer journey and to provide in depth mentoring and hands on expertise with the nitty gritty of getting things done. I have had the pleasure of setting up and managing a number of Customer Management programmes for and with challenging and exciting client organisations.
Always one to rise to a challenge, I have also taken on and managed a part time events-management role with a leading environmental charity, a great way of deploying my knowledge and network in a completely different direction.”
Working at the “coalface”, feedback tends to be instantaneous – people either come along and enjoy themselves or not!