Impressive line-up of speakers for seminar

Aug 20 2008 by Iain Laing, The Journal

AMONG the speakers and consultants lined up to address North East businesses at this year’s service excellence seminar is Tim Robson, Marks & Spencer’s service design manager.

The seminar, hosted by eaga plc, Muckle LLP and The Journal, at the Hilton Gateshead hotel on September 11, examines how businesses can achieve higher levels of customer service through engaging their employees. Marks & Spencer is one of the UK’s leading retailers, with more than 21 million people visiting its 662 stores every week. It employs more than 75,000 people in the UK and abroad and last year had total group sales of £9,022m. Mr Robson will explain to the seminar how Marks & Spencer defines service and how the company’s attitude towards service has broadened over the years. He will describe how the focus at Marks & Spencer has moved away from doing tasks to ensuring staff concentrate on the customer and specifically their attitude and behaviour towards customers.

Marks & Spencer has more than 7,500 people in its stores who coach their colleagues, and all new joiners complete an induction and up to 26 weeks ongoing training. More than 4,000 employees completed the Marks & Spencer’s Buying Academy and Food Academy courses and it is now trialling similar academies for womenswear and merchandising.

Mr Robson adds to an impressive line-up of speakers at the conference: Jeff Kober, chief executive officer of World Class Benchmarking, Ryan Powell, lead strategy analyst at Virgin Media, and Jocelyn Maxfield, creative director of Tom’s Companies and Serenity in the City. Jeff Kober has been providing training initiatives for the private and public sectors for more than 25 years and previous clients include Federal Express, Bank of America, US Department of Education and Volkswagen. Ryan Powell is CRM professional with more than 12 years experience gained around the world. Jocelyn Maxfield transformed the former derelict Seaham Hall into the North East’s only Five Star hotel and Michelin star restaurant.

The seminar will be chaired by Sir Michael Darrington of Greggs plc, one of the North East’s largest companies with about 19,000 staff and an annual turnover of more than £580m.

To register go to nebusiness.co.uk or to find out more details about the seminar please contact Ruth Craig on 0191 211 7930 or email rcraig@muckle-llp.com