Martin Newman
Most large consumer-facing organisations claim to be customer-led and operate as the opposite. Functions are measured on volume, conversion and cost, while the lived customer experience falls between them. Boards then ask why loyalty is eroding and acquisition costs keep climbing.
Martin Newman is a customer experience authority and former retail operator who helps consumer-facing organisations rebuild their commercial strategy around the customer rather than the channel.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Martin Newman
- He has run multichannel and digital operations inside Burberry, Harrods, Ted Baker, Pentland Brands and Intersport, so the customer-centricity argument lands as operating advice, not consultancy theory.
- He built and sold a 100-person global e-commerce consultancy, Practicology, acquired by Pattern in 2018, which gives him a P&L view of what customer experience is actually worth.
- His framework of new ROIs, set out in “ROI Reimagined”, gives leadership teams a concrete way to measure inspiration, integrity, inclusion, innovation and intervention alongside conventional financials.
- “100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience”, co-authored with Malcolm McDonald, was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2019 and is used inside organisations as an operating reference, not a one-off read.
- He designed and teaches the Mini-MBA in Customer Centricity with Oxford College of Marketing, so the same content can be extended from a keynote into a structured learning programme for a leadership cohort.
Biography highlights
- Founder of The Customer First Group and Customer Service Action, an independent platform for consumers to escalate service issues directly to CEOs.
- Founder of Practicology, scaled to around 100 staff across the UK, EU, Middle East and Asia, sold to US-based Pattern in 2018.
- Author of “100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience” (Kogan Page, with Malcolm McDonald), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2019.
- Author of “The Power of Customer Experience” (Kogan Page) and “ROI Reimagined: 11 Bold New Ways to Measure What Really Matters”.
- Course director of the Mini-MBA in Customer Centricity, delivered with Oxford College of Marketing.
- Senior multichannel, digital and e-commerce roles at Burberry, Harrods, Ted Baker, Pentland Brands and Intersport.
Biography
Burberry, Harrods, Ted Baker, Pentland Brands and Intersport all sat inside the same generation of UK retailers that had to rebuild their business around digital while keeping the store estate honest. Newman ran multichannel and e-commerce operations inside several of them, which is where his customer-centricity argument actually comes from.
He then founded Practicology, an e-commerce consultancy he scaled to around 100 people across the UK, EU, Middle East and Asia before selling it to Pattern in 2018. That experience gives him a commercial view of customer experience that most CX speakers do not have, namely what it is worth to a board, and where investment in it gets blocked.
Two books with Kogan Page set out the framework. “100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience”, co-authored with Malcolm McDonald, was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2019. “The Power of Customer Experience” makes the commercial case for customer-centricity as a growth strategy. His most recent book, “ROI Reimagined”, proposes eleven new measures of return, including return on integrity, inclusion, innovation and intervention, intended to sit alongside the financial metrics that already run the business.
Alongside the books and keynote work, Newman runs Customer Service Action, a platform that escalates unresolved consumer issues to CEOs, and teaches the Mini-MBA in Customer Centricity with Oxford College of Marketing. Both extend the same argument: that when service operating choices are visible at the top of the organisation, behaviour changes.
Key speaking topics
- Customer centricity as commercial strategy
- Customer experience and brand loyalty
- The new ROIs of customer-led business
- Multichannel and digital retail operations
- Organisational culture and the customer
- Voice of the customer and service recovery
- Customer-led growth in consumer-facing sectors
Ideal for
- Boards and executive teams in retail, consumer goods, hospitality, financial services and telecoms reviewing their customer strategy
- CMOs, Chief Customer Officers, CX directors and digital leaders
- Transformation leads working on culture, service and operating model alongside digital change
- Leadership development cohorts running CX or growth-focused programmes
Audience outcomes
- A clearer commercial argument for treating customer experience as a board-level strategic lever, not an operational function
- A working vocabulary for the new ROIs that customer-centric organisations are measuring alongside financials
- Specific operating examples from inside Burberry, Harrods and other named retailers that translate to other consumer-facing sectors
- A sharper view of where the gap typically sits between stated customer strategy and the experience the organisation actually delivers
- Practical reference points from “100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience” that leadership teams can apply after the session
Talks
Sets out the operating components, culture, technology, data and inclusion, that determine whether an organisation is genuinely customer-led.
Key takeaways:
- Where customer-centricity sits in the operating model, not the marketing function
- The cultural and structural blockers that stop most organisations from acting on customer insight
- A reference framework for assessing customer-centric maturity
Examines how consumer-facing brands move from satisfaction to advocacy and lifetime value.
Key takeaways:
- The behavioural and service factors that drive emotional loyalty
- How brand promise and operational reality stay aligned at scale
- Practical service recovery as a loyalty mechanism, not a complaints process
Introduces alternative measures of return drawn from “ROI Reimagined”, including integrity, inclusion, innovation and intervention.
Key takeaways:
- Why traditional ROI metrics underweight long-term customer value
- The new measures leadership teams can adopt alongside financial KPIs
- How to translate the new ROIs into board-level reporting
Looks at how consumer-facing organisations should plan around the next phase of digital, technology adoption and channel behaviour.
Key takeaways:
- The channel and technology shifts most likely to affect consumer behaviour next
- How to phase investment so digital evolution does not break the existing model
- The capabilities consumer brands need to build internally rather than outsource
Argues for KPIs anchored in voice-of-customer signal rather than internal volume metrics.
Key takeaways:
- The KPIs that consistently predict customer-led growth
- How to turn customer data into operational decisions, not dashboards
- Where most organisations stop measuring and where they should start