Alex Mead
Available now. Permanent.
British, based in Bahrain, globally mobile, on-site from week one.
I see where a brand needs to be in two years, know the technology hands-on, and can win the toughest board then take the company with me. I am hired to run the function, not to advise on it.
20+ years · 6+ sectors · 30+ countries · teams from 75 to 4,000+ FTE · 46 named references
Barclays
UK banking · Feb 2001–Jan 2005
Customer Service & Operations Director. 3,000 FTE, £15m saved, and a regulatory rating moved from poor to good.
IAG, British Airways group
Aviation · Apr 2014–Apr 2017
Global CX Transformation Leader. £38m of annual operating cost removed. Nine outsource partners and 3,000+ agents consolidated to two, across 4,000+ FTE and 20+ languages.
D360 Bank
Saudi digital bank · Nov 2020–May 2022
Executive Director, Customer Service Experience. Customer employee number one. Built from zero, as customer employee number one. The launch target was 500,000 customers in six months. Delivered 2 million in six months and 3 million within a year of launch, at 90%+ CSAT.
Direct, no form: alex@epiccsx.com · +44 7916 125344 · +973 3604 7110 · linkedin.com/in/alexmead
I am Alex Mead, a customer contact, service and experience transformation executive with more than twenty years in the role, across banking, aviation, luxury cruise, business process outsourcing, business travel management, premium travel, technology and field services. I have run regulated banking contact operations of 4,000+ FTE, built a Saudi digital bank's customer operation from zero, consolidated nine outsource partners and 3,000+ agents into two inside an airline group, and carried the P&L of a greenfield BPO. I work at the point where customer contact, service, sales and experience meet the technology underneath them: CRM, CCaaS, workforce engagement and workforce optimisation, and the integration into real-time and post-interaction back-end systems. I am British, based in Bahrain, mobile worldwide, and available now for a permanent Chief Customer Officer, VP, Director or Head of Customer Contact, Service and Experience appointment.
The employers, in order: Emirates NBD, Explora Journeys in the MSC Group, Total CX in the Beyon Group, Alvarez & Marsal, D360 Bank, Edrington including The Macallan, ATPI, IAG the British Airways group, Golfbreaks.com, Rentokil Initial and City Link, Ticketmaster and Seatwave, 1&1 IONOS with Fasthosts, SpinVox which later became Nuance, and Travelsphere, and Barclays.
I hold full P&L and operating authority in every recent role, and I am now the practitioner defining how AI and agentic automation actually get built, bought and deployed inside large customer organisations, not just advising on it from the outside.
Alex Mead
Every number below belongs to one role in one organisation. None of it is a career total. Where a mandate was delivered through Alvarez & Marsal, it says so.
EPIC CSX
Executive Director, Customer Contact, Service & Experience
Own vehicle · deliberate interludeSix months taken deliberately to build deep, practical GenAI capability in customer operations rather than talk about it. Three working prototypes came out of it: an AI-native Islamic bank, an ultra-luxury cruise brand, and a high-touch luxury safari and premium escorted-travel group across the Middle East and Africa. That work is finished and a permanent appointment is now the priority.
Emirates NBD
Executive Director, Customer Contact & Service Transformation
InterimGenAI and agentic AI strategy for a 4,000+ FTE contact operation across two banks. Targets set at 40% OPEX reduction, 10% acquisition uplift and CSAT up 5 points. Avaya replaced by agentic AI, natural-language understanding in English and Arabic, and 20 manual audits per agent per month replaced by 100% GenAI post-interaction quality management. Completed INSEAD's AI Leadership Programme in Dubai during the mandate, November 2025.
Explora Journeys (MSC Group)
Global VP Experience Centres & CX Strategy
Interim · reported to the PresidentGlobal ownership of the Experience Centres and the CX strategy for an ultra-luxury cruise brand inside the world's largest privately held cruise group, reporting to the President. Call abandonment above 10% brought below 5%.
Total CX (Beyon Group)
Chief Executive Customer Officer
Full-time · full P&LGrew a greenfield business process outsourcer from 75 to 400+ FTE in twelve months, with 150% revenue growth, holding the P&L.
Alvarez & Marsal
Global Customer Service Experience Director
Seven years · embedded mandatesTwelve or more distinct client engagements through a leading global advisory group, six of them as interim leadership. On those six I held the operating role, ran the function and carried the numbers. I embedded, led teams and built operations rather than writing decks and leaving. Most are under NDA and cannot be named. The three I can name are the three rows below.
D360 Bank
Executive Director, Customer Service Experience
Via Alvarez & MarsalA PIF-backed Saudi digital bank built from zero. I was customer employee number one: I designed the operation, hired the teams, chose the technology and stood up a 150+ FTE contact centre. The launch target was 500,000 customers in six months. We delivered 2 million in six months and 3 million within a year of launch, at 90%+ CSAT, with the lowest cost-to-serve of any bank in Saudi Arabia.
Edrington (The Macallan)
Global Consumer Experience Leader
Via Alvarez & Marsal25% NPS uplift and 40%+ faster fulfilment, across around nine luxury spirits brands.
ATPI
Group Customer Service Director
Interim · via Alvarez & MarsalHis first Alvarez & Marsal assignment: two weeks consulting, then around a year running it as interim leadership. £18m of OPEX savings and a 20% sales uplift, through contact-centre redesign and CRM modernisation, with delivery hubs in Mumbai and Chennai.
IAG (British Airways group)
Global CX Transformation Leader
Payroll£38m of annual operating cost removed. Nine outsource partners and 3,000+ agents consolidated to two. 4,000+ FTE across 12 sites and 20+ languages.
Golfbreaks.com
Chief Customer Officer
Secondment from IAG+12% booking conversion and 99% customer rebooking intent, through contact-centre redesign and CRM modernisation.
Rentokil Initial (City Link)
Group Director, Customer Care & Contact Centres
PayrollA 2,000+ FTE contact operation across 70+ sites, serving a field force of 3,000 drivers. £24m saved. The first logistics operation to give customers a delivery time, removing 50,000 calls a day across 3,000 drivers. The sector copied it. Abandonment above 90% turned into 90% of calls answered within 30 seconds, average speed of answer from eight minutes to under one, handling time down 25%, and a quarter of contact moved to voice self-service.
Ticketmaster / Seatwave
VP Customer Service
PayrollCustomer service leadership across live entertainment ticketing and the secondary market, through the Seatwave period.
1&1 IONOS
Chief Customer Officer & Global Operations Director
Payroll · three mandates in one periodOne period covering three customer operations mandates. 1&1 and Fasthosts as Chief Customer Officer. SpinVox, later Nuance, as Director of Global Customer Operations: scaled from 100 to 4,000+ staff across 14 countries, with 12 clients onboarded. Travelsphere as Group Customer Service & Sales Director: direct-sales conversion up 15%, worth £7.5m.
Barclays
Customer Service & Operations Director
Payroll3,000 FTE, £15m saved, a 40% mortgage sales uplift and a regulatory rating moved from poor to good.
Twelve or more distinct client engagements through a leading global advisory group, six as interim leadership. Most are under NDA. Those six were operating roles across banking, travel, logistics and business services: I held the seat, ran the function and carried the numbers. I embedded, led teams and built operations rather than writing decks and leaving. The three clients I am free to name are D360 Bank, Edrington and ATPI, all above, with their results attached.
If you need the rest verified, ask me. I would rather have that conversation than publish a list I am not entitled to publish.
20+ years, one pattern: permanent executive, interim leader building from nothing, and embedded consultant in high-pressure turnarounds. The size changes but the standard doesn’t.
Three mandates since January 2024. Total CX was a full-time Chief Executive Customer Officer role with the P&L. Explora Journeys and Emirates NBD were interim by design: each needed an operating leader for a defined commercial or transformation outcome, and each got one. That is a deliberate sequence of executive mandates, not a sequence of exits, and the references are from the people I ran those operations with.
In 2026 I deliberately took six months to build deep, practical GenAI capability rather than talk about it. That is finished. No vendor, nothing to sell; in role this is built in your stack, to my vision.
That search is now the priority: I am firmly in the market for a permanent leadership role. One brand, one mandate, and the conditions to build something that lasts.
All third-party, all verifiable.
INSEAD · November 2025
AI Leadership Programme, completed in Dubai during my Emirates NBD mandate. AI leadership inside a large regulated customer organisation, not tooling.
Frost & Sullivan
Twice voted Global Customer Experience Thought Leader.
BSc · Engineering
Computer Systems and Information Engineering. It is why the CRM, CCaaS, WEM and WFO conversation is a working one rather than a vocabulary one.
Business Frontier · 2025
Excellence in Customer Experience.
European Customer Festival · 2016
Chairman.
ITIL
Foundation certified.
Every LinkedIn recommendation I have received, from chairmen to frontline team members, across banking, cruise, travel, luxury, BPO and technology. Nothing edited, nothing cherry-picked. All 46 are published in full, and every one of them can be checked against my LinkedIn profile.
I placed Alex at CityLink/Rentokil. From the shortlist I created for this role Alex was the clear leader. An expert in his field combined with first class interpersonal skills made Alex the ideal candidate.
Sanjay Gohil · Partner, Board Practice · Wilton & Bain
Alex made an immediate impact at Explora Journeys by bringing a clear sense of purpose, control, and vision to the future of our Customer Experience strategy.
Carlos Insuasti · Director of Contact Center Sales & Operations · Cunard
He didn't entertain the normal corporate jargon you associate with customer experience practitioners but kept it all very simple with the customer always at the center.
Jon Wells · Director Customer Contact · Carnival UK (P&O Cruises & Cunard)
Alex is the first senior CX management staff that I have ever truly learned from in my career.
Mohammed AlManasef · Contact Center Senior Manager · D360 Bank
I had a working method before AI arrived. EPIC CSX is the customer side: experiences that are Easy, Personalised, Intuitive and Contextual. TIME EX is the employee side: people need Time, Information, Motivation and Empowerment to deliver it. Both were built in 2012 and proven across six sectors long before generative AI existed. Since GenAI I have rebuilt both from scratch, and I know CRM, CCaaS, WEM, WFO and the integration into real-time and post-interaction back-end systems well enough to make the result run inside your stack rather than inside a slide.
The rare part, and the thing forty-six references keep saying in different words: I can roll my sleeves up and motivate frontline teams in the toughest circumstances, and I can hold a board's attention in the same week. Most customer leaders are one or the other.
These are not proof I can build. They are proof I can see an operating model that no brand is running today, and specify it precisely enough for it to be built inside your stack. The point is not the working prototypes. It is the level of critical thinking I used to create compelling visions that do not exist in any brand right now.
No vendor, nothing to sell; in role this is built in your stack, to my vision.
Regulated banking
An AI-native, Shariah-compliant Islamic bank with six customer channels behind a single compliance firewall, built to show what AI-orchestrated service looks like when the regulator is in the room.
Luxury cruise
A complete guest journey, from first enquiry to post-cruise, with AI and human specialists working as one team and no loss of context at any handover.
Luxury safari and escorted travel
A high-touch safari and premium escorted-travel operating model across the Middle East and Africa, for complex, high-value journeys booked direct and through advisors. The client is under NDA, so it is not published here.
I am available now for a permanent Chief Customer Officer, VP, Director or Head of Customer Contact, Service and Experience role. British, based in Bahrain, mobile worldwide, on-site from week one. If you are hiring for that seat, or you are a search partner with a brief that fits, the fastest route is a direct conversation.