With a career spanning over three decades, Simon Rainbow has been at the forefront of innovation, guiding some of Europe’s most disruptive start-ups and businesses. His expertise in Customer Experience (CX) has allowed him to navigate the evolution of technology trends, from CRM and NPS to the rise of RPA and AI. Long tenure with both CX and technology, brings innovative ideas to reality, particularly within the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector.
As a seasoned leader in the customer experience management (CXM) automation and software industries, Simon excels at identifying and delivering innovations that create true business value. His have a proven track record of articulating the connection between technology, delivery, and value in a CXM world, and developing solutions driven by clear ROI, performance improvement, and employee loyalty metrics.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with Digital First Magazine, Simon shared his professional trajectory, insights on the impact of AI on CX, personal sources of inspiration, future plans, words of wisdom, and much more. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.
Hi Simon. Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to this career path in customer experience?
I qualified as a Marine Engineer, just as the UK stopped building ships and we were all reliant on the far east and oil transportation for a living, with a young family to support I was lucky enough to be offered a role working in Sales of Mainframe computer peripherals With Memorex Telex (ask me how and I cannot explain).
Those years in the IBM mainframe environment led me to Legent – a software company and I was hooked, firstly in software development lifecycle then moving to Point, real life agent applications, making people’s lives easier and allowing companies to understand the entire customer relationship.
From there I worked with Satmetrix, the company that co-developed NPS® which taught me a lot about how brands are regarded by their customers, and how to identify the operational levers to pull to improve that perception. It seemed a natural progression to move next to a company Openspan to how to identify, evaluate and automate processes in an organisation to improve efficiency and agent experience while improving financial outcomes.
Then the big shift, my mentor, who I had worked with for a few years joined Sitel, then one of the emerging names in Business Process Outsourcing and dragged me along and I found the perfect place, combining technology with People and process to improve customer outcomes.
I have over 10 years’ experience in BPO and CXM, working with some of the best Tech enabled organisations and now I advise companies on how to take advantage of the newest developments in the Customer Experience space for the benefit of their customers and their people and their bottom line.
What do you love the most about your current role?
In my role with ArcoIris I am in the enviable position to be able to work with different brands and organisations across Europe, advising and guiding on their CXM and AI strategy without having a product specific message, I can be completely agnostic and discuss what is best for the customer rather than for my CEO.
The variety of challenges I help solve for is truly mentally stimulating and each conversation/engagement is different to the last.
I can also keep up with the latest developments in GenAI and Automation with a completely neutral stance on the relative pros and cons, instead discuss what is best for the client and not the vendor, truly liberating
In today’s fast-paced and constantly evolving landscape, what strategies should leaders employ to maintain a strong connection with their customers and anticipate their changing needs?
Trying to keep this wide-ranging subject simple – leaders in the 20’s need to continually remind themselves and their teams that they are serving a new generation of customers, those customers have fast changing requirements and assess an organisations reputation on speed and quality.
The needle has moved, customers can communicate with brands (and each other) far faster now than ever before so leaders need to prioritise evolving to meet their customers’ needs faster than before.
I also advise that embracing new technological trends is a game where caution is the watchword, I have seen too many examples of failed tech implementations due to over exuberance and bad advice,
Always try before you buy and make clear what the success factors are before signing off on large investments, i.e. if there isn’t a Return on investment then its probably never going to work for you!
Have you seen, firsthand, any AI impacts on the practice of CX? What impacts are you expecting in the next few years?
Yes, AI has certainly helped in addressing multilingual agent support in a digital response environment. There are many use cases that show the need for huge monolithic contact centres or multiple locations to deal with multilingual digital customer support is waning. Companies today can serve customers in multiple languages from centralised source using machine translation software either in house built or off the shelf.
Customer self-service is an area where there are many examples of AI being used, some good, some quite honestly appalling.
The future is clearly arriving faster than we expected re Generative AI and its use in business, I think the next main developments will be in the area of assisting empowered agents when the Customer Experience moves to the voice channel, either directly or as a result of a digitally initiated contact that has not been resolved.
Another emerging area is post call automation, summarising not only the call but also the process flow and the tone of the conversation.
Agent training is another area that I am seeing starting to be addressed by AI to reduce the need for classroom-based training, both initial as well as ongoing as well as the development of some clever Customer product suggestion tools that anticipates what a customer will want to buy next, really useful in eCommerce applications
Lastly the travel and tourism industry are benefitting in both customer operations as well as passenger customer service with some innovative AI powered solutions emerging.
How would you describe your leadership style?
I believe in surrounding myself with people better than me at everything I do, apart from being able to assemble and motivate a team to succeed. I hate being micromanaged so wherever possible I don’t do it myself!
Is there a particular person you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are?
As I mentioned earlier, I worked for the same person 3 times, he saw the potential in me that I sometimes doubted, coached me to address those concerns and gave me the headroom to do what I did best. The most successful years in my sales career and the best learning experience to prepare me for what I do now.
If you could have a one-hour meeting with someone famous who is alive or dead, who would it be and why?
Difficult question!
I think probably Steve Jobs – He revolutionised the Tech world by putting customer experience at the very heart of everything Apple designed, it was all about how the products made you feel rather than how they did the task.
Latterly it was also all about how they looked rather than how they worked. Apple was always different, rebellious and ultimately successful. I think getting into how he felt about the customer is something that many leaders in CX could do more of in today’s market
What do you believe are the characteristics and actions that you used to get to where you are today?
Resilience, curiosity and sheer determination to get things done.
Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
I would like to think that the next 5 years will be the most exciting period in CXM for many years. The changes that GENAI and new cohort of customers and CX staff coming into play now will transform how we do business, hopefully for the better, CXM is the bell weather of our society, so I hope to still be at the forefront of the rapid changes in our business
What advice would you give to somebody who is considering entering your field or has just entered the field?
Keep an open mind, CXM is a wide-ranging field and as I have mentioned previously is now fast moving. Focus on the value you create not just the process or the tech, customers will be looking for great experiences as a hygiene factor not as a differentiator so focus on the value you provide.
Most importantly, try new things, it’s what makes life interesting!