Register for the contact strategy web cast

It will be available on Tuesday June 3 at 12.00pm and will explore how to integrate channels successfully and cost-effectively. The panel will also explore the skills and technology needed, success stories, The Varney review and what this means for public sector contact centres overcoming the challenge of email and mobile call handling.

It will feature contributions from Marc Michaels, the director of direct and relationship marketing for the COI, Jeff Lynn, customer information centre manager at BMW Financial and Rob Denton, managing director of customer management consultancy, Navigator CM.

You can register at http://insitu.stream57.com/marketingdirect/ and questions can be submitted to paula.fox@haymarket.com.

The panellists

Marc Michaels

Michaels is responsible for ensuring the COI is an excellent practitioner of DM, managing four teams of professionals.

He has been involved in all aspects of direct marketing work for Government information campaigns and has 20 years of experience on hundreds of projects involving direct mail, door drops, e-mail, contact centre and fulfilment, household distribution, field marketing, customer relationship management and campaign evaluation across all major COI clients.

Having worked for ITT and IBM as a marketing officer, Michaels helped set up COI Direct Marketing in 1987. He also worked for two and a half years as a group head on advertising campaigns for health, RAF, Army and DWP.

Michaels currently chairs ISBA’s Direct Marketing Action Group and sits on the IDM’s management council and the DMA’s door to door council.

Jeff Lynn

Lynn has more than twenty years experience in the telecoms and automotive sectors, initially in IT then in contact centre operations. He has managed the BMW customer information centre for the last eighteen months and has overseen a shift of approach from product-centric to customer-centric with the implementation of the Ultimate Customer Experience programme.

He has used the strength of the BMW brand to create an efficient operation and fulfil BMW customers' high expectations. In a fast changing market his ongoing challenge is to maintain a quality service against increasing volumes of contacts without a corresponding increase in costs.

Rob Denton

Rob Denton is passionate about bringing a sense of order and creativity to 21st century customer chaos. He joined Navigator in 2007 following a spell as customer care director at Fiat Auto, where he was instrumental in lifting Fiat off the bottom of the JD Power UK rankings.

His agency side experience exposed him to carelines, telemarketing campaigns and hosting customer service departments for a range of companies that include Nissan, Skoda, Audi, Porsche, Reg Vardy Group (Now Vertu) in the automotive sector and Dairy Crest, the Children’s Mutual, and Yoplait in the FMCG sector.