stellify

Hire in the fast period. It saves you a year.

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:13:25 GMT

Maximising impact; Hire new leaders in peak.

Every September the same questions come up with customer leaders who experience a type of winter peak. Is the contact centre resourced.

In 2026 the questions have moved on. Will the systems hold? Is the AI we put into the service layer going to help or hurt? Have we moved far enough since last peak to measure it?

Peak has become a proof question. And most businesses are still hiring for it the wrong way round.

The old assumption: Don't bring a senior leader in during peak. Too much noise, too late to feel the benefits. Let them start in the new year when it's calm and they'll be ready for next time.

Recruit in the slow period, impact in the fast one. Sounds sensible... Yet it’s the option that easily means impact needs to wait 12 months.

Measurable impact for senior leaders has shifted from 9 down to 6 months, and in some cases as little as 3 months (the benefits of fresh eyes and board backing!) so there's no longer a need for a 6 month pre-peak integration for leaders. The bigger risk is waiting 6 months for impact that can be felt in 3.

A September decision: Brief the search now, gain clarity on what you need and commit to the hiring process, and you could see someone join ready to experience peak first hand and start building on impact immediately.

Transformational leaders can be available on short notice and be in time to impact your business performance.

One leader put it to me in an interesting way last week: the value is in being there while it's happening.

The question for September: Who do you need in the customer function to be there, and actively transforming, through this peak and into the next?

If you haven't hired them yet, decide now, while the pressure is visible and the learning is free. Waiting for calm moves the risk a year down the road.

FAQs

92% of leaders say it's not about the money. But here's why it should be.

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 16:25:38 GMT

I spend my days talking to senior people in customer functions who are working out what they do next.

This is what it sounds like:

"After 15 years I feel like I've hit a ceiling. It's been amazing, it's just time."

"We've had too many restructures. I can't actually get anything done."

"My role is becoming more office based and my commute is 90 minutes. It just isn't sustainable."

"I'm not looking, but your role excited me."

Step one in understanding the person behind a CV is always the same three points, in the same order. I ask every leader the same things in the same way because it keeps the assessment fair, and it means I am comparing what people tell me rather than how well they interview.

Where are you now. What made you update your CV.

Your role and your experience. Remit, team, business, achievements.

What next. Goals, market, timelines, non-negotiables.

Salary comes up in that third conversation, and 92% of the time it is followed by a but.

"...but that's not the most important thing."

That is the real turning point. It is where everything else we have discussed gets tested.

When someone is moving for more money alone, it usually tells me we have not got to the depth of the motivators yet. People rarely upheave a whole career for a couple of grand when they are happy, and at leadership level that would surprise me. Someone who has been underpaid for years and knows it is different. That is a correction, and it is overdue.

Moving for less needs the same test. If you are happy, why leave for less. A drop will solve the immediate problem, the commute, the restructures, the lack of ownership, and for a while that feels like relief. Then the other frustrations start arriving and there is less in the role to absorb them. Less money usually means less responsibility, and less responsibility shows up in ways people do not plan for. Smaller decisions. Fewer of the rooms you are used to being in.

A typical version of this came up recently. A 15k drop against 90 minutes of daily commute. Personally a good trade off. In practice the role was ill suited, the remit smaller than expected, and the friction showed up in what they could own. Back on the market inside the year, with two offers on the table.

Unless intentional 'taking a step back' is often a hard adjustment for a leader who is used to operating at a certain level. Most people underestimate it. Being paid under what you are worth mostly feels like being undervalued and that you are measured against things you might not have done in a while, and only rarely doesn't.

Salary is a measure and it works in both directions. Right role, wrong number. Smaller job wrapped in a bigger title. The number shows you a balance before the job description does.

What a business pays tells you the remit it expects and the level the job really sits at. 92% of leaders tell me it is not the most important thing. Yet, It is still the most reliable measure they have.

FAQs

People ask me how's the market. The question should be who's getting jobs.

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 16:21:01 GMT

People ask me how's the market. The question should be who's getting jobs.

So here's the answer. The leaders picking up multiple offers right now all do the same few things. Invest 2 minutes in yourself today and let's spot something you don't know you're doing.

Trying to be everything to everyone doesn't work. Your job search is no different.

Most leaders share their results as the reason they're exceptional. NPS improvement. Culture work. Cost savings.

What you might not know is that results are the minimum criteria for a top leadership job. Clients already expect excellence. They already expect commercial thinking. Pitch yourself there and you sound like everyone else.

Here's what the ones with offers on the table do. Try it.

Explain how you got the results. The decisions, the sequencing, the calls you made when it was hard.

Name the small tangible things that built your team's culture. The things that show who you are when you lead.

Show the impact a customer function brings, then say what you'd actually do. Don't leave your method a mystery that only hiring you will reveal. It's rarely complicated, but without it, how does a client know they like the way you work?

Know exactly what role you want next and be laser focused on it, even when it doesn't match what's in front of you.

Specifics. A clear way of describing your own leadership style. Yourself in the room, alongside the facts.

The bar has never been higher and I love that. Clients expect you to know the job. They expect the results.

They're hiring a human leader. That part is all yours.

Since launching Stellify I've spent every day with customer leaders across the UK. I know who's out there, what they can do, and who's getting hired. Best part of the job.

FAQs

What the housing qualification standard means for your next customer hire

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 12:02:43 GMT

The Competence and Conduct Standard comes into force in October 2026. Larger providers, those with 1,000 homes or more, have until October 2029 to comply, and smaller providers until 2030. Senior housing managers will need a Level 4 qualification, and directors and heads of service a Level 5 or a foundation degree. Most associations are treating this as a job for the training team. It is also a hiring one, and it changes who you can appoint and how you write the brief.

The scope is where it bites

The standard follows what a role does, not what it is called. Anyone spending more than half their time on housing management service delivery, or where that is a substantial part of the role, is in scope. The guidance is not prescriptive, so borderline director roles sit in a grey area. A customer director covering complaints, income and contact centre could be read either way, and two associations can look at the same job and reach different answers. Decide where your role sits before you advertise it, because it changes who can do the job.

The people it falls hardest on

Housing has always been a sector you could rise through on results. Plenty of today's strongest customer leaders started on a front line, in a call centre, an income team or a housing office, and climbed on the strength of what they delivered rather than what they studied. The standard asks something specific of that group.

The entry requirements themselves are experience-based. The CIH Level 4 Certificate expects you to be working in housing at a supervisory or management level, with a Level 3 qualification or equivalent experience behind you. The Level 5 Diploma expects around two years at that level, or the Level 4 first. So there is no GCSE or A-level gate at the door, which matters.

The ask sits in the study itself. These are degree-level qualifications assessed by written assignment, and for a leader who has run a function for fifteen years and not sat a formal assessment since school, that is a real and uneven demand. It tests a credential they can earn on top of a capability they have already proven. A leader who progressed through performance can feel penalised by a rule that rewards paperwork, and that is worth naming plainly rather than waving through. When you hire, factor in that the strongest candidate on the evidence may also be the one for whom the qualification is the biggest lift, and decide how you will back them through it.

What it changes about the hire

For an in-scope role you are choosing between a leader who already holds the qualification, one who can complete it inside the transition window, and one you sponsor through it while they run the function. Each carries a different risk and a different cost in time. A director studying for a Level 5 while running a stretched function needs those hours from somewhere, so asking for a turnaround and a qualification from the same eighteen months is asking a lot of one appointment. Strong candidates will ask whether the seat is in scope, whether you will fund the qualification, and how you will protect the time. Vague answers lose the people you most want.

The spend pressure underneath it

The regulator is pressing harder on value for money, and professionalising a workforce costs both fees and hours away from the day job. That pressure lands on the customer function first, because it is where complaints and satisfaction scores are read. A leader who lifts service while showing clearly where the money goes is worth more now than the same leader was two years ago.

This is the search we run

We recruit customer leaders into housing across complaints, income, experience and operations. Before a search begins we settle whether the role is in scope, what qualification it needs, and how you will support the person to meet it, including the ones who have earned their place without a formal qualification behind them. That hour saves the awkward conversation three interviews in, when a strong candidate asks a question the brief never answered.

Quick answers

When does the standard come into force?

October 2026. Larger providers with 1,000 or more homes have until October 2029, smaller providers until 2030.

Which roles are in scope?

Roles where housing management service delivery is more than half the work, or a substantial part of it, judged by what the role does rather than its title.

Do you need GCSEs or A-levels to qualify?

No. Entry to the CIH Level 4 and Level 5 qualifications is based on housing experience at a supervisory or management level, not prior academic certificates. The qualifications are degree-level and assessed by assignment, which is the real demand on experienced leaders.

What does it mean for hiring?

Decide whether the role is in scope, whether you will fund the qualification and protect the time, and how you will back a strong candidate who is not yet qualified, before you brief the market.

Stellify. Elevating customer functions.

FAQs

The real cost of getting customer experience wrong

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 11:59:25 GMT

Service failures cost UK organisations around £7.3bn a month, according to the Institute of Customer Service. On the other side, 21 per cent of customers say good service made them spend more, and 62 per cent say poor practice damages a company's long-term reputation. UK customer satisfaction sits at 78.2 out of 100. Customer experience is a commercial lever, and the clearest way to see its value is to look at what happens when it fails.

The damage is rarely the mistake itself

Every business gets things wrong sometimes, and customers know it. Most will forgive a genuine error. What they will not forgive is the effort of putting it right. The payment that comes out twice and takes four calls to refund. The return that vanishes into a warehouse and a fortnight of chasing. The email that goes unanswered, so they start again on chat and repeat everything to someone with none of the history. A checkout that fights them. An app that logs them out at the worst moment. Each of these is small on its own. Together they are the reason a customer decides you are hard work and takes their spending elsewhere, usually without telling you why. That is where the £7.3bn goes: into the friction of fixing things, the repeat contacts, the goodwill spent and the customers lost.

Consistency is the thing customers feel

Good customer experience is the same clear, low-effort experience every time, across every channel. A customer who is recognised on the phone, in the app and in store, who gets the same answer wherever they ask, and who never has to repeat themselves, trusts the brand without thinking about why. Inconsistency is what breaks that trust, and it builds up until the customer stops giving you the benefit of the doubt.

The leader is the difference between baseline and aspiration

Here is the part that matters for hiring. For the best customer experience leaders, a low-effort, consistent, well-run experience is the baseline. It is where they start, the minimum they will accept, the thing they fix in their first weeks. Appoint a leader who is not strong on customer experience and that same standard becomes the aspiration instead, the thing the function is always working towards and never quite reaching. The floor becomes the ceiling. With satisfaction at 78.2 out of 100 and customers quicker than ever to leave, few businesses can afford to run their customer function as a work in progress.

Which makes it a commercial hire

Tools and teams matter, but the height customer experience reaches is set by the person leading it. They decide which broken journeys to fix first, where a human moment earns more than an efficiency saving, and where the money goes. If customer experience decides your growth or your reputation, brief the role around the outcome you need, the retention number, the satisfaction score, the fall in complaints, and appoint the leader who has moved those numbers before. That is the search we run.

Quick answers

What does poor customer experience cost?

UK service failures cost organisations around £7.3bn a month (Institute of Customer Service), most of it in the effort of putting things right: repeat contacts, refunds, chasing and lost customers.

What frustrates customers most?

The effort of resolving a mistake, difficulty getting what they need, and inconsistency across channels, more than the original error itself.

Why does the customer experience leader matter so much?

For a strong leader, a low-effort, consistent experience is the baseline they start from. For a weak one it becomes an aspiration the function never reaches.

How should we brief a customer experience hire?

Around the outcome. Name the retention, satisfaction or complaint numbers you need to move, and look for evidence the candidate has moved them before.

Stellify. Elevating customer functions.

Why the Skills Analysis is one of a kind

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 11:55:19 GMT

Before a leader changes a customer function, they are usually working from a picture in their head: the loud problems, the people who speak up, the monthly metrics. The Skills Analysis replaces that with proof. There is nothing else quite like it, because it comes from a firm that does only one thing.

What it is

A free diagnostic. The team answers a short, anonymous survey, routed by role, and we return a clear read on the function: skills and confidence, the tools people use and where they feel held back, training gaps, targets and how fair they feel, wellbeing, and the leadership picture manager by manager. We finish with three prioritised recommendations, each with a timescale.

Built by specialists

This is where it differs from a general staff survey or an off-the-shelf engagement tool. Customer leadership is the only thing we do. We spend our time inside these functions, looking at how customer teams are built, where they strain and how they are changing. That is what shapes the analysis. The questions come from thousands of real conversations with customer leaders, so the read you get back is built by people who know what good looks like in your function, rather than a general template applied to it.

The benchmark you cannot get elsewhere

Because we run this across so many businesses, your result does not sit in isolation. You see how your team compares within your own sector on skills, confidence, pay, retention and reputation. You also see how it compares against customer teams in other sectors we work in, across financial services, housing, retail and beyond. That broader view is the part most tools cannot give you, because some of the pressures on a customer team are specific to a sector and some are showing up everywhere. Knowing which is which changes what you do about them. A retention problem that is worse than your sector average is a different problem from one the whole market is feeling, and it calls for a different response.

Why leaders act on it

The anonymity gets the truth out. People tell a survey what they will not say across a desk to the person who sets their objectives. The evidence gives them cover for an expensive decision, because reshaping a team or replacing a leader is hard to undo, and a clear read of the gaps changes both the decision and the confidence behind it. And the output is usable: three actions with timescales, ready to take to the board.

How it sharpens a hire

Most leaders run the Skills Analysis when they are about to change something. It sharpens the brief, so the role is built around the gap the team actually has rather than a copy of the last job description. That is a large part of why the hires that follow hold up. You can run the baseline free and on its own, ahead of any search. Where we also run the search the report goes deeper, and we can measure the change six months after a placement.

Quick answers

What is the Skills Analysis?

A free diagnostic. A short, anonymous team survey, routed by role, that returns a clear read on the function, benchmarked within your sector and across others, with three prioritised recommendations and timescales.

What makes it different from a staff survey?

It is built by a firm that only does customer leadership, from thousands of conversations with customer leaders, and it benchmarks you against customer teams in other businesses and sectors as well as your own.

Do I have to hire through Stellify to use it?

No. The baseline report is free and can be run on its own, ahead of any search. A deeper report is available where Stellify also runs the search.

How does it help a hire?

It briefs the role around the gap the team actually has, so the appointment is built on evidence and is more likely to hold up beyond year one.

Stellify. Elevating customer functions.