Maurice Whelan - Chairperson
Maurice was appointed Head of Customer Services for Sage Ireland in August 2008, having previously held the position of General Manager, Customer Service and Individual Business, with VHI Healthcare since 1999.Sage is a leading supplier of business management software and services, providing Irish businesses with solutions from payroll and accounting software to CRM and industry specific solutions, whatever your business size or industry. Sage Ireland is dedicated to providing business management software solutions to Irish business. The Sage brand is renowned around the world for excellent customer service and first class products. Established in 1999 with five people, we now employ over 220 in our Dublin offices, serving over 50,000 customers.
Maurice’s unique management style and ability to motivate and engage his team in the achievement of world-class standards is recognised at both national and international level. This culminated in Maurice being National Contact Centre Manager Of The Year in 2000 and 2002, European Call Centre People Manager Of The Year in Birmingham in 2003 and European Call Centre Industry Champion 2004.
Maurice has been a board member for 7 years, held the position of Chairman of CCMA Ireland Ltd for 3 years, was vice chair for 2 years and was re-elected as chair in June 2010.
Maurice had a degree in Marketing and also holds qualifications in Supervisory Management and Hospital and Health Services Administration. He had also completed the AMP (Advanced Management Programme) in Insead in Paris and is currently completing his BSc in Physiotherapy.
Seamus Osbourne - Vice Chairperson
Seamus has worked in the Contact Centre industry for more than 10 years. He joined VHI Healthcare in January 1999 and has worked in a number of roles within the contact centre as Advisor, Team Leader and Operations Leader.Prior to his current role, Seamus worked within the contact centre as training and development coordinator. The role involved the development of a training plan for 150 plus people whose duties varied from contact centre advisor up to the contact centre manager.
Seamus’s current role as Contact Centre Manager for customer service and individual business involves delivering on key performance indicators to ensure best in class customer experience standards to a membership in excess of 1.4 million members. An acknowledgment of the focus on service and the customer by Seamus and his team was the achievement of VHI Healthcare winning ‘The Best Customer Service Delivery’ award in the 2009 CCMA Awards.
Seamus’s third level educational background is in the area of Human Resource Strategies from the Dublin City University. Seamus also holds a Bachelor of Business Studies Marketing Degree from the Institute of Technology Carlow. Seamus is also a member of CIPD and IITD.
Rob Crowe - Board Member
Rob currently holds the role of Director of Operations for Ireland with Conduit, having previously held roles as both the Head of Customer Services and as Call Centre Manager within the company.Rob is responsible for both the operational and financial aspects of all of Conduit's Customer Care operations in Ireland through a team of 8 Operations Managers and is responsible for over 300 agents. He has worked with Conduit for over 9 years and has helped to develop and grow the services in terms of productivity, profitability and processes.
Padraic Flood - Board Member
Pádraic has recently joined Service Source, the technology market share leader in Service Revenue Performance solutions, as a Senior Account Manager.Prior to his current position he worked for ICT Group, a leading global business process service provider, where he enjoyed a variety of roles including Operations Manager and Account Director and Sage Ireland, where we worked as a Sales Manager within the Small Business Division. He has over 13 years experience in the Sales and Service sector, working across many different industry verticals including financial services, telecoms, utilities and IT. Pádraic holds an Hons Degree in English from UCG.
Annette Hickey - Board Member
Annette was appointed Head of Customer Operations for Vodafone in September 2009, following a successful career in eircom which spanned ten years in the Marketing, On-line and Call centre environments. Under Annette’s leadership eircom TSS was recognised as a best in class call centre winning best EMEA and then World Contact centre in 2006, as well as 6 awards in the Irish Contact Centre Awards in 2004, 2006 and 2007.Prior to eircom, Annette spent 5 years in FMCG as Brand Manager for Avonmore Cheese, Kilmeaden and Yoplait in Glanbia.
Annette holds a Marketing Degree with the MII and a Masters in Management, Organisational Behaviour with Trinity College.
Tracy Kennedy - Board Member
Tracy currently holds the position of Head of Customer Operations for Bord Gáis Energy with the responsibility of sales, service delivery and customer service for over 1 million gas and electricity customers.Tracy has over 10 years experience in a customer operations role working previously for a cable broadband and telecommunications company (formerly ntl now UPC).
In addition Tracy has over 6 years experience in General Insurance working for Chubb Insurance an American multinational and Hibernian now part of the Aviva group.
Within Bord Gáis Tracy was Programme Director for ‘The Big Switch’ programme, which delivered over 21% market growth within a 12 Month period and she is now heading up the Home Services division which has just launched their ‘home team’ last week with an objective to help customers manage energy costs in the home.
Tony O'Brien - Board Member
Tony heads up the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) responsibilities in monitoring the finances and quality of service of the Emergency Call Answering Service (ECAS), following 3 years as ComReg’s Customer Care Manager.Prior to that Tony was Head of Membership Services for Repak, a private sector packaging recycling compliance scheme, between 2002 and 2005. Tony previously held managerial positions with Aer Lingus in Dublin, Continental Europe and UK for over 12 years.
Tony brings an extensive portfolio of operational and managerial experience and will be responsible for Government Services as well as Head of Finance for the CCMA. He has a business qualification from CIT, an MBA from Henley Management College in London, a Diploma in Business Finance from IMI and a PRINCE2 project management qualification from QA-IQ.
Dorothy O'Byrne - Managing Director
Dorothy has over 12 years experience within the Irish and UK contact centre industry. Prior to setting up her own business, Dorothy worked with a number of leading outsourced contact centre providers within Ireland. She spent over 8 years as Vice President of Sales and Marketing with the ICT Group, a leading global business process service provider.She was previously a board member of the Irish Direct Marketing Association and founder of the Young Direct Marketing Association. Dorothy holds a Masters in Strategic International Marketing from Dublin City University.
Clair Tonkin - Board Member
Clair has a 15 year track record within the Customer Service Industry including some of leading Customer Service providers in the UK and Ireland.In the UK. she worked for EDF Energy, where she worked in many different areas including Customer Care & Debt recovery. Since 2001 she has been working for the 2008 CCMA Contact Centre of the year, Telefonica O2 Ireland.
At O2 Clair has worked in a number of roles throughout the Contact Centre including Customer Retentions Manager and Operational Customer Care Manager.
Her current role of Employee Experience Manager with O2 Ireland focuses on ensuring that the employee listening channels are well managed and that employees have the right tools, technology and environment conducive to great customer service.