Shaun Smith began his career in the airline industry working with British Airways in a number of senior customer service and operations roles. He became Head of Customer Service, Sales and Marketing Training worldwide for British Airways at the time the airline was becoming privatised in the mid-1980s and was one of four senior managers on the Steering Group that managed the highly regarded ‘Putting People First’ initiative. He later moved to Hong Kong as Managing Director of Cathay Performa Consulting (a subsidiary of The Swire Group) where he led a team, consulting with major organisations throughout Asia in the area of services strategy.
Whilst working in Hong Kong, Shaun was appointed as Group Advisor to Inchcape Group, consulting to over 30 business units covering marketing services, retailing, shipping services and motor distribution to help them move from competing on price and product to competing on customer service. Over the next five years he was responsible for designing and leading deployment worldwide, working closely with the individual BU Managing Directors and their teams.
Shaun Smith returned to the UK in the late 1990s as Senior Vice-President of the Forum Corporation, when he ran Forum’s customer experience consulting practice.
In 2001 Shaun Smith founded the highly regarded customer experience consultancy, Smith+Co, which is firmly rooted in the ‘keep it simple’ ethos. Smith+Co has worked on customer experience initiatives for leading brands like Burberry, Premier Inn, PayPal, O2, Westpac, Estee Lauder, Symantec, Best Western, Waterstones and IHG.
Shaun has featured a number of times on CNBC and CNN and is sought after to speak internationally on key business issues. He has spoken in 25 countries to a wide variety of leading brands and has chaired and moderated events for a number of major companies including Vodafone, RBS and Salesforce. He is a former Fellow of the Professional Speakers Association and Member of the Global Speakers Federation. Shaun was presented with the top industry award, the PSAE (Professional Speaking Award of Excellence).
Shaun Smith has also appeared a number of times at the prestigious London Business Forum. His approach is refreshingly simple, authoritative and always stimulating.
