Start with the Customer

Meet Peter Cross, the author of the essential text on customer experience, at this event for makers, artisans & craftspeople

Start with the customerLearn why (and how) great customer experience can differentiate your business from the author of last year's best selling book.

Start with the customer, written by Peter Cross, a leading expert in customer behaviour and ex Customer Experience Director at John Lewis and Waitrose, collaborating with Jo Causon, Chief Executive at the Institute of Customer Service, calls time on second rate service and reveals why it’s time to put the customer back at the heart of business.

This exclusive session is your opportunity to hear all about it directly from the author.

Dubbed by the media "the essential text on customer experience" for anyone in the service of customers in a changing world, Peter will reframe your understanding of the modern customer, guide you through the forces shaping their behaviour, reveal the golden rules and cardinal sins of service and help you build a world-class service culture, fit for whatever you’re selling and wherever you’re selling it.

About the book Featuring a foreword by Mary Portas, this refreshingly honest and easy to read book offers

• A new approach to understanding customers by exploring the eternal power of human need as both a driver of behaviour and means to stay one step ahead of both your customers and competitors
• An insightful guide on how to create an empowered and enabled “listening culture” within your business- Learn how to elevate the service your business offers, by discovering, perfecting and standardising signature moments in your customer experience
• Understand the keys to employee happiness which ensure that your team feels complicit in creating the customer outcomes you want to see
• Find out what it takes to find, retain and lead people to deliver service excellence
• Discover a compelling and provocative portrait of the customer of the future
  Peter will be talking to all these themes and taking your questions on his second visit to Margate.

Peter will be talking to all these themes and taking your questions on his second visit to Margate.

This event is for makers, artisans, craftspeople and artists

Join us at Brighter Days Academy in practical sessions that will give you marketing confidence, build your customer service skills, prepare you to sell to the public, shops and galleries and reach out to expand your network and customer base.

The sessions are open to all small creative businesses and £5 per person.

About Peter Cross

Eight years in charge of the customer experience at John Lewis and ten more as Mary Portas’ business partner, mean there are few who can match Peter's unique blend of consulting and practical experience and step so confidently into the future of shopping, helping brands and organisations remain irresistible to their target consumers.

Known for his charismatic, inspiring and straight talking style, Peter draws on his experience with some of the world's most iconic brands and shares trusted techniques of deepening relationships with both consumers and employees through brand purpose and authentic human connection.

Peppering his presentations with tangible examples from across the commercial and third sectors, Peter isn't afraid to challenge current thinking, offering new perspectives around disruptive innovation, internal culture and remaining what Peter calls sticky.

In his time at John Lewis customers slept in shops, staff were sent to theatre school, the organisation's customer service agenda, values and purpose were reset, a Christmas ad campaign became the global benchmark and Waitrose played a front line role in feeding the nation. During his time as a Consultant, charity shops were reinvented, a professional cosmetic line opened Institutes in multiple territories, a report for the Government predicted the future of the high street, one of the world's biggest shopping malls opened during a global recession and some of the greatest luxury brands redefined the meaning of physical retail.

Peter ensures his audiences leave with a clear sense of what the future of commerce might have in store, actionable insights and a passion and determination to stand out and play their part.