5.00 of 5
Top rated!With deep retail and consultancy experience, Andrew McMillan helps businesses of all sizes embed service-driven cultures that spark growth, innovation, and brand loyalty.
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, the former head of customer experience at John Lewis, helps organizations build customer-first cultures that drive loyalty and growth. With decades of leadership experience and a proven track record transforming employee engagement into exceptional service, his keynotes offer actionable insights that inspire lasting change. Whether you're a multinational or a growing business, Andrew empowers teams to align values, boost performance, and deliver a customer experience that truly sets you apart.
Keynote Speaker Andrew McMillan is widely recognized as one of the UK’s leading authorities on customer experience, employee engagement, and internal culture transformation. Best known for shaping the award-winning customer service strategy at John Lewis, Andrew spent over 20 years turning the iconic retailer into a benchmark for service excellence and brand loyalty.
As Head of Customer Experience, he led a 20,000-strong team across 26 stores, building a service culture that consistently topped rankings by Which?, Verdict, and Retail Week. His approach, rooted in the belief that great customer experience starts with a strong internal culture, delivers sustainable, long-term results for organizations across sectors.
Today, Andrew brings this expertise to the stage as a highly sought-after keynote speaker. His keynotes offer powerful, practical insights into how organizations can differentiate through values-led leadership, aligned teams, and emotionally intelligent customer service. He shows how to create a workplace where employees are truly engaged and how that translates into customer loyalty and business success.
Book Andrew McMillan for your event to inspire cultural transformation, improve customer satisfaction, and create lasting competitive advantage. His experience, credibility, and clarity make him a standout speaker for any organization focused on performance through people.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
