As Head of Customer Experience, Michelle shapes the customer strategy for Activate Collision Solutions and makes sure it comes to life in every interaction.
Michelle started her career on the front line of a contact centre. She brings more than two decades of customer experience and a real passion for developing people. In this interview, she reflects on her career, how customer expectations in claims are changing and what excites her most about the future.
Tell us a bit about your career so far.
I started at British Gas almost straight from school, wearing a headset in a contact centre. I was fortunate to spend 20 years there, in a business with a strong focus on developing people. I worked my way up from call handler to Team Leader, then Call Centre Manager and eventually a national Head of Customer Experience role.
After two years in the fleet sector, I joined Avant Repair Network as Head of Customer Experience in 2023. Following Activate Group’s acquisition of Avant in 2025, I now lead customer experience across Activate Collision Solutions.
What does your role involve?
I design a customer experience strategy that puts the customer at the heart of what we do. Then I make sure my frontline teams have everything they need to deliver it: systems, processes, technology, training and coaching. I also manage our customer accounts and support business development.
What I love most is bringing my teams on the journey. Having started with a headset on myself, I know the people on the front line often have the answers to solve problems for our customers. I find supporting my colleagues to progress and become the best version of themselves is one of the most rewarding parts of my role.
What are you most excited about right now?
Over the last year, my proudest achievement has been bringing our Halifax and Huddersfield teams together. We’ve combined two businesses, but it doesn’t feel like that anymore. We’re one team focused on positive customer outcomes, and that’s our whole mantra at Activate Collision Solutions.
Next comes technology. I’m very clear that AI is a tool in our toolbox, not a way to replace the human interactions that our customers value so highly. It’s about taking the monotony away so our people can focus on what they do best, which is having empathetic conversations and really listening to customers, solving the more complex problems.
What is the biggest change in motor claims over the past 5 years?
Since COVID, claims frequency has reduced, but when an incident does happen, customers expect more. We’ve all got used to everything arriving at our door the next day and that expectation carries over into every customer service experience we have.
We have to manage expectations well, but we also have to push ourselves to be more customer-centric. We’re not just repairing cars, people rely on their vehicles. We need to ask how we can repair more efficiently, source parts more effectively and communicate better all the time.
What will the claims experience look like in the future?
It needs to be simple. As an industry, we’re very good at overcomplicating repairing a car.
We also have to serve every customer the way they want to be served. Some people want a great conversation on the phone. Others want an app, a portal or a notification. That challenge will grow as younger generations, who have grown up with instant technology and AI, start driving.
I don’t believe there’s one silver bullet. For us leading the way in customer experience means making continuous improvements at every step of the customer journey. When you step back and look at the whole journey, those improvements are what add up to a great customer experience.
