Tom Grealy

Tom Grealy's Biography

From organisational leadership to staff engagement Tom Grealy is a seasoned international customer operations executive with a wealth of experience in building and managing multi-geographic operations. He is highly regarded as an authentic and inspirational people leader able to successfully deliver transformational changes.

Tom worked with Telstra as a senior executive from 1998 to 2014. He was the first executive to locate customer service work in the Philippines in 2007. He subsequently established Telstra’s country office in 2009. Over the next five years, he was instrumental in delivering performance eclipsing service levels in Australia during a period in which the operation grew to 14k FTE. Tom was the architect of transformational changes that vastly improved customer service, shifting the business to world-class operational standards.

In 2014, Tom established his management consultancy practice, Grealy Consulting. He was elected President of ANZCHAM-Philippines, the peak Australian business organisation in the Philippines, in March 2015. Prior to his election as President, Tom served as a Board Director, chairing the committee, which is comprised of firms with off-shored work, including contact centres, IT and shared services functions. As ANZCHAM President, he has focused on growing and strengthening the chambers by establishing new committees on agriculture, food and wine, small business, and women in business.

Prior to his employment with Telstra, Tom worked with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade from 1985 to 1998, where he served as a diplomat in Papua New Guinea and the USA (Washington DC and Los Angeles). He also served on Australia’s delegation to the United Nations New York (twice) and as a delegate from Australia to the World Trade Organisation Ministerial meeting (Singapore), securing significant trade concessions for Australian industry.

Speaking Topics Include

Delivering Great Customer Experience - Tom believes that improving customer service starts with the custom, not the business. But it also requires operational excellence, and a culture anchored in customers, people, processes and continuous improvements.

Leading a Customer Service Transformation - The starting point for consistently delivering great customer experience rests on understanding customers’ end-to-end journey across the entire service organisation. That’s the easy part. But how do you get an organisation to align and act on what’s best for the customer?

Leadership: You're the Limit of What's Possible - In this session, Tom shows you how to lift the ambition and sense of purpose in your team, and create more ambitious leadership to drive performance.

Talent: Employee Retention and Engagement - Tom shows attenddes how to lift performance and reduce variable costs by improving employee engagement and reducing attrition.

Partnering Effectively: Beyond Vendor Management - A recent client conversation went like this: Client: 'My supplier is asleep at the wheel!'

Us: 'I agree. But just remember, they’re driving the car that you designed.'

Ouch! So often companies run into operational and performance challenges with their suppliers: misaligned expectations, under-performance, under-delivery. How do you get it right?

Off-shoring Successfully - How can off-shoring help you grow and improve your business? Who should do it? And how do you do it well?