Andrew McMillan helps organizations build customer-first cultures that turn engaged employees into lasting loyalty and growth.
5.00 of 5
Top rated!5 of 5
I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation today, and have had some very positive comments from delegates, colleagues and other speakers, who both referred back to some things you mentioned in the final session. You really gave us food for thought.
Nottingham Business School
Andrew McMillan shows organizations how to turn culture into a competitive edge. Drawing on decades of leadership experience, including his time as Head of Customer Experience at John Lewis, he brings practical insight into what truly drives loyalty, performance, and long-term growth. His keynotes connect employee engagement with customer outcomes, offering clear strategies that leaders can act on immediately. Andrew equips teams to align around shared values, strengthen service delivery, and create experiences customers remember.
Andrew McMillan is widely recognized for his work in customer experience, employee engagement, and cultural transformation. Best known for his leadership at John Lewis, he spent more than 20 years shaping a service culture that became a benchmark for excellence and loyalty. Today, he brings that experience to organizations looking to strengthen performance through people, values, and consistent delivery.
As Head of Customer Experience at John Lewis, Andrew led a 20,000-strong workforce across 26 stores. His leadership helped position the brand as one of the most trusted names in retail, consistently recognized by Which?, Verdict, and Retail Week for its service standards.
His work focused on embedding a culture where employees felt ownership, purpose, and pride in what they delivered. This approach proved that when people are aligned internally, customer satisfaction follows naturally. The result was a service model that drove both loyalty and commercial success.
Andrew’s philosophy is simple: strong internal culture shapes every external interaction. In his keynotes, he demonstrates how organizations can move beyond surface-level service improvements and instead build environments where employees are motivated to deliver meaningful experiences.
He explores how leadership behaviors, clarity of purpose, and shared values influence daily performance. Audiences gain a clear understanding of how to create alignment across teams and how to sustain it over time. His sessions are grounded in real-world examples, making the ideas easy to apply regardless of industry or size.
Beyond retail, Andrew has worked closely with NHS trusts and public institutions, helping them design human-centered service strategies. These initiatives have led to award-winning improvements in patient care and citizen engagement, showing that the same principles of culture and service apply across sectors.
As a long-standing judge for the Customer Focus Award, he has also evaluated some of the UK’s most forward-thinking organizations. This role gives him a unique perspective on what sets high-performing companies apart and how innovation in customer experience continues to evolve.
Andrew’s keynote sessions are designed to deliver both inspiration and practical direction. He provides audiences with tools and perspectives they can use immediately, including:
Each talk is tailored to the audience, ensuring relevance whether speaking to senior leaders, managers, or frontline teams.
Booking Andrew McMillan means bringing clarity, credibility, and real-world experience to your event. His ability to connect culture with performance makes him a strong choice for organizations focused on growth through people.
He speaks with authority, backed by decades of hands-on leadership, and delivers insights that resonate long after the event ends. Whether your goal is to improve customer satisfaction, strengthen employee engagement, or build a lasting competitive advantage, Andrew provides the direction and confidence to move forward.
5 of 5
I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation today, and have had some very positive comments from delegates, colleagues and other speakers, who both referred back to some things you mentioned in the final session. You really gave us food for thought.
Nottingham Business School
Andrew McMillan
5 of 5
I would like to thank you very much indeed for your contribution to our event the other week, and let you know that the feedback from delegates regarding your presentation has been really very positive.
University of Oxford
Andrew McMillan
5 of 5
I wanted to say that Andrew’s session was a very great success. He was extremely engaging (Even to our very mixed audience) and he has generated many ideas and plans for our business going forwards. The feedback we received from his session was very positive across the board.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Andrew McMillan
5 of 5
Many thanks for this and for the day itself – everyone raved about the presentation afterwards and mentioned it as a highlight in the end of the day wrap-up! Just a shame we didn’t have enough time to explore more of the points in detail – I will know for next time!
Shell
Andrew McMillan
5 of 5
Thank you so much for speaking on Wednesday evening - the conversation carried on for a couple of hours after you left. People were particularly struck by your slide 'hire for attitude - fire for attitude' so I had a queue of people wanting to talk to me about this. You were also referenced a lot at our meeting, the following day, so clearly you went down well.
Toyota
Andrew McMillan
5 of 5
Andrew was excellent in his delivery and audience engagement. The presentation was relevant to the industry with a good mix of business theory and practicable examples.
Coach Marque
Andrew McMillan
5 of 5
Excellent, not only in his presentation but also in how easy it was to work with him. The content was precisely what we wanted!
Sonova
Andrew McMillan
5 of 5
Many thanks Andrew, you were fabulous, very interesting and inspiring and I’ve had some very positive feedback from the retailers which is great.
King’s Road Retail Group
Andrew McMillan
5 of 5
Very personable and down to earth. Good balance of business case studies and personal experiences to bring customer service alive. Our teams really enjoyed the session and we have received such positive feedback it was great.
Michael Kors
Andrew McMillan
5 of 5
Andrew McMillan was superb. I really enjoyed all of the guest speakers but, in particular, Andrew. I felt his session offered much more of a real life experience. Andrew McMillan was very inspiring.
United Utilities
Andrew McMillan
5 of 5
Andrew had a fantastic story to tell, delivered it in a very engaging way, and the feedback was extremely positive. A great impact!
Royal Bank of Scotland
Andrew McMillan
Keynote by Andrew McMillan:
What do your customers really experience when they interact with front-line employees and how do they subsequently feel about your organisation? Many organisations focus on their product, services or processes when they think about customer experience, or attempt to train the experience they aspire to deliver.
Engage employees with common behaviours and attitudes and your customer experience becomes an external reflection of the organisation’s internal relationships and consequently has consistency, integrity, depth and sustainability. It's a major point of differentiation in a crowded marketplace and one that many organisations fail to capitalise upon.
Keynote by Andrew McMillan:
Why are you in business from your customers’ perspective? Why would customers choose your business over your competitors’? What attitudes and behaviours should your business be adopting to ensure potential customers always choose you?
In an increasingly commoditised and transparent marketplace businesses can’t just rely on product and price to differentiate themselves. Creating a powerful reputation so that you are proactively chosen by your customers is critical for long term success.
Keynote by Andrew McMillan:
Fun at work can be seen as frivolous and rarely finds itself on the leadership agenda. However, it can create an environment that attracts millennials, reduces employee turnover, improves productivity and employee engagement.
Really engaged employees deliver a better and more consistent customer experience which in turn improves reputation and turnover. Perhaps not so frivolous after all!
Keynote by Andrew McMillan:
Inspiring and engaging leadership at every level of seniority seems to challenge organisations globally at a time when agile responsiveness to change requires confident, capable leadership more than ever before. Many organisations assume leadership skills training is the answer but it rarely is.
Ensuring managers have the opportunity and time to lead as well as manage is critical, followed by the right skills and sufficient self-belief to use them effectively.
Keynote by Andrew McMillan:
When the right environment is created, employees will become brand ambassadors and spontaneously do some remarkable things for customers.
Capturing and celebrating these ‘stories’ through internal communications across the whole business is a really powerful way of recognising individuals, while reinforcing the customer and employee engagement ambitions of the organisation.
Keynote by Andrew McMillan:
Many organisations attempt to create their image and personality through marketing, which can be a disappointment to customers if the reality falls short of what is promised.
Rather than working from the outside in, smart organisations start from the inside out, creating their business personality through engaging their employees with a common purpose and using that to drive their customer experience. Their marketing is then authentic, reflecting the reality of their customer experience rather than a marketing team's imagination and creativity.
Keynote by Andrew McMillan:
So many organisations take a short term view to sales - maximise the sale today and don't think about tomorrow. However, taking a longer term view of customers and focussing on their individual needs rather than the immediate needs of the organisation can, over time, build a degree of trust and loyalty that will provide a robust defence to the unpredictable economic challenges organisations will inevitably face.
Keynote by Andrew McMillan:
Bricks and mortar retail is said to be in terminal decline and for many retailers they are frankly experiencing what they deserve. To tempt customers away from their tablets, smartphones and PCs, high streets and shopping centres need to offer a personally affirming experience to make customers’ effort in visiting them worthwhile. Other sectors are successfully using this retail based strategy to differentiate themselves in a globally commoditised marketplace, yet many retailers seem to have forgotten how to do it.
Watch speaker Andrew McMillan in action
