'Nickell provide that essential link between client and call centre. They have proven their ability to drive profitability through improved performance – particularly with respect to ensuring that front line call centre staff understand both the product and the importance of how they deal with our clients.

Nickell, through James Eagle, has played a critical role in assisting us to develop a strategic link with our outsourced call centre partner.

This involved sourcing them in the first place followed by a rapid set-up and subsequent development to encompass not just inbound calls, but more involved outbound work including the development of scripts, training and monitoring for a number of projects.'

John Pickles,
Sales & Marketing Director, Inside Track.

'During the early part of 2004 we asked James to come and work with our Sydney-based contact centre sales teams knowing that James and Nickell would bring a fresh, energetic and innovative approach to what we were trying to achieve.

The five weeks James spent working alongside the frontline staff and management proved invaluable both in terms of quick wins and immediate results and in respect of laying down very solid foundations for the future covering how we use our brand, understand our customers and give those customers a totally positive experience when they deal with AMP.

We are currently discussing with James a revisit to the team to assess how we have progressed and how we can improve even further.'

Craig Meller,
Director, Product Manufacturing, AMP Financial Services.

'We asked James and Nickell to work with our sales team at a time when we were looking to significantly grow the sales operation, aware of James’ experience and the impressive results he achieved whilst working with Virgin Money.

During the time that Nickell worked directly with both our sales managers and the front line members of the team we achieved and surpassed the goals that we had originally set and now enjoy sales success as the norm directly as a result of delivering customer service excellence and delighting our customers.

James and Nickell’s work with the team has laid very solid foundations for the future and we continue to use James’ experience and expertise on a regular basis.'

Rowan Gormley,
Managing Director, Virgin Wines.

'Through Nickell, James has brought his considerable expertise into the Jobcentre+ business and quickly and very significantly improved the effectiveness of the operation through his refreshing, people and results focused approach.

Tangible improvements are very evident, for example, staff effectiveness (time actually spent talking to our customers) up by 35% in one contact centre, sickness levels down to an all time low in another, these very welcome turnarounds largely driven by James’ input and initiatives.

In a very short space of time James has become an essential member of the team.'

Stewart Halliday,
Business Manager, Department of Work and Pensions.

'We have worked with Nickell since August 2003 and continue to do so across a variety of different aspects of managing our business and both Andrew and James have become an invaluable part of our team.

Their enthusiastic and innovative approach in understanding and helping transform our business into a high-energy, sales focused, results driven team of people has taken us to a new level and we look forward to continuing the F&R – Nickell partnership long into the future.'

Mark Bedini,
Chairman & Founder, Fine & Rare Wines.

Virgin Games is a very fast growing company who are enjoying the benfits of the online gaming boom and as a result of the increased business coming through their door the amount of customer traffic through their contact centres has increased significantly.

The guys at Games asked us to compile a brief for their customer service and sales teams setting down a series of KPIs and service standards that would become universally adopted across their various contact centre operations, these spread far and wide from Gibraltar to the United States.

The experience we were able to offer included 5 years running a Virgin contact centre ourselves as well as being acutely aware of the opportunities and potential pitfalls outsourcing your customer contact centre can bring especially when dealing with a brand as powerful as Virgin.

Virgin Games.

'James is an invaluable link between the Dataforce Group and our clients. James lives and breathes the brands that he works with and his enthusiasm and skills as a coach and project developer have helped our contact centre teams to become true 'Brand Advocates'.

His main focus is customer experience and his mantra of 'upbeat, friendly and professional' informs both his approach and the values he promotes in the teams.

The Dataforce Group and James have worked together for over two years now and continue to provide the best possible and continually improving CRM solutions to our mutual clients.'

Kevin Telford,
Director of Strategy, Dataforce Group.

Working alongside the businesses’ senior management team and their front line call centre operatives, we provided a series of recommendations on how to improve customer service levels and therefore sales of the company’s competitively priced European flights from their Brussels base.

Virgin Express.

Working with both the front line and back office staff we focused upon the key customer service attributes that are crucial in delivering a totally positive experience for all C&G customers.

The training sessions resulted in the team understanding what a positive experience looks and feels like and therefore made it far easier to change their behaviour in order to deliver this time after time.

Cheltenham and Gloucester.