About.We are Customer Start, a CX training, consultancy and advisory business with one profound goal; help organisations of all sizes to improve their customer experiences.
We focus on providing value through a clarity of purpose, strategy, execution and results. |
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We are passionate about customers and their experiences. Our reason to exist is to help companies realise the value that a customer centric approach can bring.
More than that we want to help enable companies to provide ever better experiences to their customers through a more humanised level of holistic understanding and empathy to generate trust and advocacy in thousands of customers across the globe. Customer Start is here to help you on your journey greater customer centricity to ensure happier customers, empowered employees, amazing culture and improved processes. No matter where you are in your journey, Customer Start can help through our range of services. |
Our Vision
"To help make the world a better place one experience at a time."
Our Mission
To make the UK a 'Centre of Excellence' in Customer Service and Experience promoting investment, job creation and innovation through disrupting the way we think about service and experience and creating innovative leaders of the future.
Our Why
Simply stated, we believe in creating amazing experiences for every single one of our clients' customers. More than that we believe in creating great places to work for employees through exceptional culture and servant leadership.
Our Executive Team
Miles C. Thomas
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Miles has over 20 years of experience in customer service and customer experience in a diverse set of organisations from Deloitte to tech start-up SubHub to International Baccalaureate and Bloom & Wild.
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Miles' Experience
Richard Godfrey
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A commercial entrepreneur, Richard started his first business in 2003 which rapidly became Wales' largest serviced apartment operator, offering service-led, luxurious short-stay accommodation. He went on to diversity the business into new markets with group turnover in excess of £4.5m.
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Our Consultants
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Christopher Brooks
Senior Associate CX Consultant 
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Christopher is a customer strategist with over 20 years of agency, client-side and consultancy experience working with corporates across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
He is the Founder of a not-for-profit enterprise, Customer Experience World Games (CXWG) which was set up to help CX professionals make a difference to customers, employees, communities and society in general. He is the Host of the CX Superheroes Podcast series. He has been recognised as CX Today’s 2024 CX Leader's CX Influencer of the Year and 2024 CX Culture Champion of the Year and winner of International CX Awards GOLD for B2B Marketing. He is also a Thinkers 360 Leading Voice, Top 10 CX influencer, and LinkedIn CX Voice. Additionally, he is a Speaker at several CX events, judge at CX awards, contributor to the CXMagazine and research journals. Click below for more detail
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Professional Experience
Christopher has advised and supported many clients striving to put customer led thinking at the core of their business. Some of these brands include Syngenta, UCL, PlayStation, Visa, Hyperoptics, Direct Line, SSE, Tesco Bank, npower and Skanska.
While supporting these clients, Christopher carried out the following:
While supporting these clients, Christopher carried out the following:
- Helped clients drive greater value from effective customer experience strategies and activities.
- Developed effective customer experience strategies with all levels of stakeholders, typically working with blue chip international brands.
- Helped clients to achieve sustainable profits through accountable customer experience management.
- Employed a proven suite of CX activities which drive committed and content customers to deliver commercial success of our clients.
- Created BEX (Brand Experience Platform) which enables all areas of the business to understand, engage and actively deliver brand differentiating customer experience.
- Ran customer insight programmes including undertaking fieldwork, analysis and managing VoC programmes and customer panels for clients.
- Facilitated and managed development of output through to strategic business tool for customer journey mapping workshops with novices and advanced practitioners.
- Structured and ran employee engagement programmes across front and back office colleagues. Covered customer engagement, customer experience engagement and brand strategy buy in.
- Worked with clients to interpret and employ the advanced CX measurement EXQ (measures SoC achieved through profitable customer behaviour change achieved from CX).
Key Skills & Contributions
- Customer Experience Programmes design and delivery
- Customer-culture transformation programmes
- Customer Insight and Optimisation
- CX Service Design
- Customer Value Proposition design and delivery
- VoC pitch search and selection
- Customer segmentation and persona development
- Drive Customer Acquisition and Retention strategies
- Customer Journey Mapping programme design
- Translating under utilised customer insight into commercially viable marketing assets
- Customer experience mentoring.
Christopher’s Approach
Christopher’s approach in helping organisations improve their outcomes through customer-world led thinking always entails looking to the outcome as the goal rather than the challenge to overcome or fix.
With this in mind he helps brands attract and retain committed and content customers. He is committed to great CX practice which creates betterment for all involved; customers, employees, communities, society and shareholders.
With this in mind he helps brands attract and retain committed and content customers. He is committed to great CX practice which creates betterment for all involved; customers, employees, communities, society and shareholders.
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James Edmonds
Principal CX Consultant 
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A seasoned professional with a deep focus on customer experience (CX) transformation and culture, James brings extensive experience in driving strategic initiatives and embedding customer-centric practices across major organisations.
Click below for more detail
Professional Experience
Professional Experience James Hay Partnership & Nucleus - Head of Customer Experience & Insight
Just Group - Senior CX Strategy Consultant
RSA Group - Claims Transformation Programme Manager
Key Skills & Contributions
James' Approach
James is passionate about creating practical, sustainable customer experience transformations that resonate with both customers and employees. By blending strategic vision with hands-on execution, he helps organisations build CX cultures that deliver lasting value |
Sam Heighway
Lead HR and Leadership Consultant |
Sam has a 30-year career in HR with experience at director level within multi-national companies. Sam is a qualified leadership coach and member of the CIPD who specialises in helping companies maximise performance and build strong cultures.
Sam is highly experienced in team & 1:1 coaching at an executive level, effectively and confidently facilitating sessions to help break down silos and work through blockers while remaining impartial and independent. |
Dr. Liz Mallen
Lead EX and CX Consultant |
Liz qualified as a CCXP in 2016 and co-chaired the Customer Experience Professionals Association London network for 3 years. Liz is a respected expert in all areas of B2B Customer Experience, having developed CX strategy and measurement programs, lead customer journey mapping projects to redesign customer experiences, influenced customer centric thinking at all levels and driven customer improvement projects.
More recently Liz has engaged with Behavioural Psychology and Emotional Intelligence to provide a more relevant and meaningful profile of personas and their needs . Liz has naturally gravitated towards Employee Experience since great customer experiences rely on happy employees. Psychological Safety can be applied to improve employee wellbeing and in so doing ensure decisions are correctly informed |
Alex Parnell
Customer Service and AI Consultant |
Alex is an expert in Customer Service and operations management gained from a number of years leading front line teams in a global and multi-lingual environment.
Alex is also highly experience in the use of Artificial Intelligence systems designed to aid Customer Service self-service functions. |
Our Clients
Testimonials
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"Working with Customer Start was a game-changer for First Class Comms Ltd. From start to finish, the consultancy work was professional and effective, delivering a fantastic return on investment within weeks.
The alignment of our company values with a newly devised customer strategy was exactly what was needed. Once the direction was set they created us a Customer Success process which we enjoyed an instant impact from in terms of customer satisfaction and recurring revenue. Their defined framework for customer milestones is a valuable tool that helps us recognise and value our customers in the most appropriate way. But what stood out to us the most was the ease of working with Richard and Miles; they were a pleasure to work with and made the experience simple yet highly beneficial. In just 3 months, they helped us transform our customer experience, and we couldn't be happier with the results. If you're looking to improve your customer experience, I highly recommend Customer Start. You won't be disappointed!" |
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"We engaged with Customer Start to commence planning and improve our customer journey. Together, we enhanced our customer success framework, focusing on customer relationships and elevating engagement. Their approach, rooted in understanding and respecting customer perspectives, exceeded our expectations.
In addition to this, we also utilised their expertise for our customer survey, which proved to be immensely valuable. Their insights and methodologies allowed us to gather comprehensive feedback from our customers, enabling us to gain a deeper understanding of their needs and preferences. This has informed our strategic decisions and further strengthened our commitment to delivering exceptional experiences. Thanks to Customer Start, we're not just responding to customer needs—we're anticipating them." |
