Our Team

John Turnbull

John Turnbull is the founder and Managing Director of Customer Connect Australia. He has gained extensive expertise in Customer and Stakeholder Value Management over his thirty year career.

John started his working life with hands-on roles in engineering, project management, service, sales, and marketing. Over the last 15 years, John has worked in research, education, business consulting and management.

Recent projects have included stakeholder engagement and value consulting, facilitation and education with clients in the financial services, telecommunications, consumer goods and higher education sectors. John is an adjunct lecturer, executive educator and PhD researcher at Macquarie University specialising in customer and stakeholder value. John holds an Engineering degree and an MBA majoring in marketing.

Visit John's LinkedIn page

Ross Smith

Ross is the Professional Services Director for Customer Connect Australia. He has worked in a range of executive management, operational and consulting roles in both industry and IT over his thirty career. His work at Customer Connect includes business consulting, strategy, education, research, program management and customer management (CMAT™) assessment.

Previous roles have included General Management, Sales Management in Packaging, Manufacturing High Tech companies. His experience also includes leading specialist professional services team in Management Consulting, IT and Project Management. Ross has extensive experience in managing large, complex, technology-enabled business change programs and has a track record of consistently delivered outstanding business outcomes. Ross has a broad senior management background encompassing sales, operations and professional services and consulting roles.

Most recently, Ross has been lead consulting engagements for Customer Management Programs in a wide range of industry sectors including FMCG, Financial Services, Higher Education & Charitable organisations. This work has included Customer Management Assessments, customer strategy, customer value proposition development and customer experience research.

Ross maintains several sessional lecturing positions, contributing to the delivery of the Customer Relationship Management program for Macquarie University, and the Master of Project Management program at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). He also holds positions on Marketing Advisory Boards for several organisations.

Jessica Shead

Jessica Shead is a CRM Consultant and Project Manager for Customer Connect Aust.

Jess has worked in the IT industry for over 15 years with a focus on Project Management, CRM and Analytics. Jess has been employed in roles involving education, business analysis, project management, solution development and delivery, for the software vendors Cognos and Siebel Systems (now Oracle).

Most recently, she was the Analytics Manager for an international Consumer Goods company. Jess was responsible for the development and management of their global Analytics solution.

Since joining CCA, Jess has contributed to the success of the SRM Progam of one of Australia's leading Not-for-Profit organisations and has helped develop many of the CCA education programs.

Our Credentials

The principals of Customer Connect Australia, John Turnbull and Ross Smith, share over 40 years experience in implementing business improvement programs such as relationship management, customer management, sales, marketing and service. John and Ross also provide thought leadership through a number of academic and professional activities:

Academic Activities
Macquarie Graduate School of Management:
Lecturer; MBA Programs - 819 Consumer Behaviour, 822 Services Marketing and 823 Customer Relationship Management
Presenter; Macquarie Executive Education Series; 2-day programs – “CRM – Making it Work”
Macquarie University
Lecturer; MKTG308 Customer Relationship Management
Doctoral research; Customer Value-in-Experience (ongoing)
University of Technology Sydney:
Lecturer; Master of Project Management - 15314 Project Implementation and 15316 Project Time, Cost Quality Management
Ark Group:
Presenter; “Succeeding with CRM” Program

Customer Management Forum Facilitation and CMAT™
Customer Connect Australia is an accredited Expert-level assessor in the global Customer Management Assessment Tool (CMAT™) Benchmark. CMAT™ provides organisations with an objective, evidence-based assessment of their relationship management practices, benchmarked against a global best-practice database developed over ten years and 800 assessments.
We also facilitate the Australian Chapter of Customer Loyalty Futures. This forum is an internationally renowned think-tank for organisations striving to deliver a competitive and profitable customer experience through effective Relationship Management.

CRM Program Experience
Customer Connect Australia have provided consulting support, assessments, education and project management focused on Relationship Management for a large number of organisations. Recent engagements include:

Major Australian Charity
CMAT™ assessment, Relationship Management Strategy, software evaluation and selection, CRM education, governance and quality assurance, process refinement and CRM program implementation.

Large Australian University (member of Group of Eight)
Situation assessment, future state development, Relationship Management Strategy, business case, software market survey and assessment, project plan, recommendation to Vice Chancellor Group.

Relationship Management Software Experience
CCA have experience in evaluating or implementing the following Relationship Management / CRM Software:

iMIS	Saleslogix	Internetrix
Infocomp	StayinFront	Epicor
Microsoft CRM	ThankQ	Netsuite
Onyx	UniCRM	PeopleSoft (Oracle)
Pivotal (including VitalDB)	SAP CRM	RaisersEdge
RightNow	Siebel (Oracle)	Sage CRM
Salesforce.com	O4 (PDA)	CAS

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