Alex Mead | The record: 20+ years running customer operations

In plain terms

I am Alex Mead, a customer contact, service and experience transformation executive with 20+ years in the role. Those years run across banking, aviation, luxury cruise, business process outsourcing, business travel management, premium travel, technology and field services. I have led a regulated retail banking operation of 3,000 people. I built a Saudi digital bank's customer operation from zero. I consolidated nine outsource partners and 3,000+ agents into two inside an airline group. I 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. That means 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, and mobile worldwide. I am available now for a Chief Customer Officer, VP, Director or Head of Customer Contact, Service and Experience appointment. A permanent appointment is what I am looking for, and interim is genuinely open.

The employers, in order: Emirates NBD, Explora Journeys, Total CX in the Beyon Group, Alvarez & Marsal, D360 Bank, Edrington including The Macallan, ATPI. Then IAG the British Airways group, Golfbreaks.com, Rentokil Initial, Ticketmaster, 1&1 IONOS with Fasthosts, SpinVox which later became Nuance, and Travelsphere, and Barclays.

My experience spans startups, scaling businesses and global enterprises, including full P&L. I am now the practitioner defining how AI and agentic automation actually get built, bought and deployed inside large customer organisations. Not advising on it from the outside.

Alex Mead

The track record. Named, dated, with the basis of each engagement stated.

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.

Mar 2026 – present

EPIC CSX

Chief Customer Officer | Head of Customer Operations & Contact Centre Transformation

My own leadership framework and working proof, not a software product · applying and proving the model on live mandates

This year I have built working GenAI and agentic AI models for customer operations rather than talk about them. Three applications of one operating model came out of it: AI-native banking, ultra-luxury cruise and a completed luxury-travel proof of concept. The learning carries on. A permanent appointment is now the priority, and I am open to interim mandates alongside it.

Sep 2025 – Mar 2026

Emirates NBD

Interim Executive Director, Customer Contact & Service Transformation

Interim

GenAI 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 improvement of 5%+. Avaya replaced by agentic AI, natural-language understanding in English and Arabic, and the move from 20 manual audits per agent per month to 100% GenAI post-interaction quality management, designed, approved and handed to the permanent team. Completed INSEAD's AI Leadership Programme during the mandate, November 2025.

Apr – Sep 2025

Explora Journeys

Interim Global Vice President, Experience Centres | Contact Centre Transformation

Interim · reported to the President

Global ownership of the Experience Centres and their digital and GenAI strategy for an ultra-luxury cruise brand, reporting to the President. Call abandonment above 10% brought below 5%.

Jan 2024 – Mar 2025

Total CX (Beyon Group)

Chief Executive Customer Officer

Fixed-term build, growth and handover mandate · full P&L

Grew a greenfield business process outsourcer from 75 to 400+ FTE in twelve months, delivering 150% revenue growth against plan, holding the P&L.

Apr 2017 – Jan 2024

Alvarez & Marsal

Global Customer Service Experience Director

Seven years · embedded mandates

Twelve or more distinct client engagements through a leading global advisory group. The delivery model was embedded rather than advisory, with direct operational accountability for service outcomes. 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.

Nov 2020 – May 2022

D360 Bank

Executive Director, Customer Service Experience

Via Alvarez & Marsal

A PIF-backed Saudi digital bank built from zero. I was the bank’s first customer executive hire. From November 2020 to May 2022 I led the original customer experience and customer operations build. I defined and delivered the end-to-end CX vision, service blueprint and technology stack, and built and led a 150+ FTE contact centre covering onboarding, helpdesk, complaints, in-app chat and social channels. I returned for two months through Alvarez & Marsal to support the launch, on an advisory basis. I applied the EPIC Customer Service and Contact Centre framework to the service model. The bank has since grown beyond three million customers.

Jul 2018 – Dec 2019

Edrington (The Macallan)

Global Consumer Service Leader

Via Alvarez & Marsal

A bespoke customer portal that activated the group's previously under-used Salesforce investment, and a QR code on the bottle surfacing the customer's history the moment it was scanned. Across around nine premium spirits brands.

Apr 2017 – Jun 2018

ATPI

Group Customer Service Director

Interim · via Alvarez & Marsal

His 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.

Apr 2014 – Apr 2017

IAG (British Airways group)

Global Customer Service Experience Transformation Leader

£38m of annual operating cost removed. Nine outsource partners and 3,000+ agents consolidated to two. 4,000+ FTE across 12 sites and 3 continents.

May 2015 – Oct 2016

Golfbreaks.com

Chief Customer Officer / VP Customer Experience

Appointed during his IAG tenure

+12% booking conversion and the Reevoo rebook rate from around 92% to 99%, through contact-centre redesign and CRM modernisation.

Dec 2010 – Mar 2014

Rentokil Initial

Group Director of Customer Care & Contact Centres

A group executive reporting to the Group CEO, accountable for 2,000+ FTE across 70+ international sites. City Link’s field force was 3,000 drivers. £24m saved.

The first logistics operation to give customers a delivery time, and a way to tell the depot when that time would not work. It removed 50,000 calls a day across 3,000 drivers. The sector copied it.

The harder half was behavioural. False carding, marking a delivery as attempted when no attempt was made, had to stop. I settled the position with the CTO, the IT Director, the COO and the CFO first. Then I brought the GPS tracking data to all 74 depot general managers and 7 network directors, in one room. Together we resolved it. The argument I made was commercial rather than moral: every forced delivery loses money, because you pay to go back and deliver it again.

The second change was structural. Between 1,200 and 1,400 customer service people sat inside the depots, reporting to their own depot general manager. The people who saw a depot failing reported to the person whose depot it was. I persuaded the business to move them into my line, and virtualised them into one team serving the whole network rather than one depot.

Successful delivery attempts rose at least 13% a day. Rentokil Initial plc’s 2012 annual report records City Link achieving a 13% reduction in cost per delivery on volume growth of 17%. Abandonment above 90% turned into more than 90% of calls answered, with average speed of answer below one minute. Average speed of answer went from over eight minutes to under one, handling time down about 25%. A quarter of contact moved to voice self-service.

Apr 2008 – Nov 2010

Ticketmaster

VP Customer Service

An Operating Board position leading contact centre, digital and retail sales, service and fulfilment across twelve countries. Average order value up 20%, successful fulfilment up over 25%, contact centre operating cost down over 40% and NPS up over 25%.

Feb 2005 – Mar 2008

1&1 IONOS

Chief Customer Officer & Global Operations Director

Interim · three concurrent mandates

One 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 over 15%, worth £7.5m.

Feb 2001 – Jan 2005

Barclays

Customer Service, Operations & Customer Relations Director

3,000 people across large UK contact centre sites and offshore outsourced back office in Asia, for Barclays Direct Mortgages and The Woolwich. Sales up over 40% across all brands, £15m of OPEX removed against a five-year transformation plan, and an FSA Customer Relations rating moved from poor to good, removing the prospect of a £20m complaints-handling fine.

The mandates I cannot name

Twelve or more distinct client engagements through a leading global advisory group. Most are under NDA. They were embedded operating roles across travel, banking, telecoms, SaaS and B2B service environments, with direct accountability for service outcomes. 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.

The record, in order.

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, and all three were fixed-term by design. Total CX was a Chief Executive Customer Officer role with the P&L, on a build, growth and handover mandate. Explora Journeys and Emirates NBD were interim: 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 recommendations are from the people I ran those operations with.

This year I have built working GenAI and agentic AI models rather than talk about them. I am actively exploring opportunities. The learning carries on, because in this field it has to. 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, and the right interim transformation mandate. A permanent seat is what I want, one brand, one mandate, and the conditions to build something that lasts. Where a mandate is interim, I take it on the same terms I always have.

If this is the track record you need, let's talk → Download my CV (PDF) ↓

The unglamorous half

Every operation on the record above needed the same disciplines before anything clever was possible: forecasting, scheduling, quality, coaching and the cost line. Reading the customer is the part that photographs well. This is the part that decides whether the answer can actually be staffed.

Rentokil Initial

2,000+ FTE across 70+ international sites. £24m of savings and an 80% overall contact reduction, through process redesign, automation, predictive analytics, workforce management and workforce optimisation, and performance management. I built the operating disciplines, forecasting, scheduling, quality assurance, coaching, performance routines, control and governance, into a group-standard playbook that outlived the programme.

Explora Journeys

I inherited an operation running without consistent workforce management, quality assurance, role clarity, reporting or follow-the-sun coverage, with abandonment above 10% for several weeks. It came below 5% inside the stabilisation window while I strengthened training, workforce optimisation, reporting and operating discipline, and stood up greenfield Workforce Management, Quality Management and Performance Management capabilities.

Total CX, Beyon Group

Accountable for sales, commercial development, service delivery, workforce management, quality assurance, reporting, cost control and the leadership structure behind it. I built a 500-seat greenfield site, standardised the service delivery, workforce management and quality platforms, and established consistent KPI scorecards, performance routines and frontline coaching across every client line.

IAG, and the outsource estate

Nine outsource partners and 3,000+ agents rationalised to a two-partner model serving all four operating companies. I led the BPO selection end to end, from strategy through RFP, due diligence, contract and transition. The £38m a year came from a connected programme rather than a single lever, and the outsource realignment was the most material part of it.

Shrinkage, occupancy and attrition are the three numbers that decide whether any of the rest of this is deliverable. I expect to be asked about all three.

How I cut cost without cutting service → What a Chief Customer Officer owns →

Three working prototypes, and what they are actually evidence of

These are not proof I can build. They are proof I can see an operating model no brand is running today. And specify it precisely enough 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 open it

An AI-native, Shariah-compliant Islamic bank with six customer channels behind a single compliance firewall. It shows what AI-orchestrated service looks like when the regulator is in the room.

Luxury cruise open it

A complete guest journey, from first enquiry to post-cruise. AI and human specialists work as one team, with no loss of context at any handover.

Luxury travel not published

A complete operating model for complex, high-value journeys booked direct and through advisors. Delivered as a proof of concept for an unnamed luxury travel business, and not published here.

Credentials and recognition

All third-party, all verifiable.

INSEAD · November 2025

AI Leadership Programme, completed during my Emirates NBD mandate. AI leadership inside a large regulated customer organisation, not tooling.

Honour

MVP Customer Experience.

ITIL

Foundation certified.

Forty-six recommendations. Named, verbatim, verifiable.

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 · known from Explora Journeys

…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 of anything we were looking to implement.
Jon Wells · Director Customer Contact · Carnival UK (P&O Cruises & Cunard) · known from IAG (British Airways group)

Alex Mead is the first senior CX management staff that I have ever learned from him a lot during my career life…
Mohammed AlManasef · Contact Center Senior Manager · D360 Bank

Read all 46, verbatim → Verify them on LinkedIn →

How I work

I had a working method long before GenAI 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 set out more than fifteen years ago, as a way of thinking about customer leadership rather than anything I built, and proven across multiple sectors long before generative AI existed. Both still hold in the GenAI era. I know CRM, CCaaS, WEM, WFO and the integration into real-time and post-interaction back-end systems. I know them well enough to make the result run inside your stack rather than inside a slide.

The rare part, and the thing forty-six recommendations keep saying in different words. I can roll my sleeves up and motivate frontline teams in the toughest circumstances. I can hold a board's attention in the same week. Most customer leaders are one or the other.

The approach in full → What I do in the first ninety days → Where a customer operation leaks revenue →

The through-line, documented

Customer experience formalised as a profession around 2009–2011: Forrester held its first dedicated Customer Experience Forum in 2009, and the CXPA was founded in 2011. At almost exactly that moment, Alex was being independently interviewed about two operational turnarounds, and saying, on the record, what would later be named EPIC.

Give customers easier ways to do simple things themselves, but when a human is needed, give that person the context, information and authority to do something useful.
Alex Mead · Frost & Sullivan Executive Interview · 2009, as VP Customer Service, Ticketmaster, thirteen years before ChatGPT

In 2011 he turned around Rentokil Initial’s global logistics customer operation. He took call abandonment above 90% below 10%, and average speed to answer from over eight minutes to under one. He ended false carding and rebuilt the delivery promise around telling the customer a time. Rentokil Initial plc’s 2012 annual report records City Link achieving a 13% reduction in cost per delivery on volume growth of 17%. It says that following the successful introduction of customer care technology in City Link the group had begun rolling out best practice more widely.

Alex Mead interviewed on stage by Peter Coffee of Salesforce, 2012 — 2012: interviewed by Salesforce’s Peter Coffee on the Rentokil Initial turnaround.

Rentokil Initial 2011 turnaround evidence: abandonment above 90 percent to below 10, ASA over 8 minutes to under 1, cost per delivery down 13 percent, volume up 17 percent — The 2011 turnaround: operating metrics, with the plc-reported 2012 business impact.

EPIC before it was called EPIC. The principles came from running and fixing real operations. Self-service that works, proactive information, channels behaving as one journey, no repetition, and employees with the context, information and authority to act. GenAI did not create them; it removed the last excuse for not delivering them at scale.

Read the full argument →

Direct. No form.

I am available now for a Chief Customer Officer, VP, Director or Head of Customer Contact, Service and Experience role. A permanent appointment is what I am looking for, and interim is genuinely open. British, based in Bahrain, globally mobile and open to relocation. 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.

Chief Customer Officer · VP · Director · Head of Customer Contact, Service and Experience

In plain terms

The track record. Named, dated, with the basis of each engagement stated.

The mandates I cannot name

The record, in order.

The unglamorous half

Rentokil Initial

Explora Journeys

Total CX, Beyon Group

IAG, and the outsource estate

Three working prototypes, and what they are actually evidence of

Everything here, and what each one proves

Credentials and recognition

Forty-six recommendations. Named, verbatim, verifiable.

How I work

The through-line, documented

Direct. No form.