Customer Experience Manager, Old Mutual Activate

A real banker at heart, Debra stumbled into the contact centre business by accident and cannot imagine doing anything else.

Debra spent 25 years at Nedbank moving through the ranks from Number 1 teller to an Area manager in the Western and Southern cape responsible for the overall management of 25 branches. She has also managed large homeloan and investment centres often having to develop and implement strategies from scratch.

She was head hunted by old Mutual to become the Old Mutual Bank’s Operations Manager. Her real passion is customer service so when the opportunity arose to become the first customer experience manager at Old Mutual, she jumped at the chance to make the role her own. She selfishly developed a customer engagement strategy encompassing all the elements she enjoyed, which saw the bank win the ASK Afrika orange index award two years in a row.

After the bank was integrated into Nedbank as a result of a banking license issue, she had the choice to move back to Nedbank or remain on a redeployment plan – she chose the latter deciding to live dangerously!

She is currently the Customer Experience Manager for the direct marketing contact centre of Old Mutual called Activate and is responsible for managing the customer research, quality, and compliance, marketing and communication for the entire business.
She is constantly looking at new technology to improve both the customers experience as well as to make the lives of the sales consultants easier.

Having survived breast cancer in 2006, Debra devotes a large amount of her time “giving back” and is the spokesperson for a bunch of women execs called the “Titsters” promoting early detection.