Christopher F

Award-winning author | Customer-Focused Leadership expert | Helping leaders raise the floor of CX & build champion teams | #Leadership

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

👇 Do you ever say no? Here's how... 👇

Highlights from #APMPLiberty Mental Health & Wellness Symposium Kickoff featuring Colby Hanjan, CF APMP Chelsea Cooper, CL/CF APMP Tori Bunk, CF APMP Mark Wigginton, Certified Professional Coach Christopher Farnath

"Champion Hires" available: https://t.co/9uQLVoGXXN

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

👇 Job hopping can be a strategy, if you avoid a bear trap! 👇

Highlights from #APMPLiberty Mental Health & Wellness Symposium Kickoff featuring Colby Hanjan, CF APMP Chelsea Cooper, CL/CF APMP Tori Bunk, CF APMP Mark Wigginton, Certified Professional Coach Christopher Farnath

"Champion Hires" available: https://t.co/9uQLVoGXXN

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

👇 Are you owning your career breaks?👇

Highlights from #APMPLiberty Mental Health & Wellness Symposium Kickoff featuring Colby Hanjan CF APMP, Chelsea Cooper CL/CF APMP, Tori Bunk CF APMP, Mark Wigginton Certified Professional Coach & Christopher Farnath

"Champion Hires" available: https://t.co/9uQLVoGXXN

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

England World Cup 2026 - Kansas City https://t.co/N1tyeeNUgh via @YouTube

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

👇 Are you keeping track of your superpowers?👇

Highlights from #APMPLiberty Mental Health & Wellness Symposium Kickoff featuring Colby Hanjan, CF APMP Chelsea Cooper, CL/CF APMP Tori Bunk, CF APMP Mark Wigginton, Certified Professional Coach Christopher Farnath

"Champion Hires" available: https://t.co/9uQLVoGXXN

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

👇 Are you a great fit for your organisation? 👇

Highlights from April's #APMPLiberty Mental Health & Wellness Symposium Kickoff featuring Colby Hanjan, CF APMP Chelsea Cooper, CL/CF APMP Tori Bunk, CF APMP Mark Wigginton, Certified Professional Coach

"Champion Hires" available: https://t.co/9uQLVoHvNl

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

👇 Do you stand out when communicating? 👇

Highlights from April's #APMPLiberty Mental Health & Wellness Symposium Kickoff featuring Colby Hanjan, CF APMP Chelsea Cooper, CL/CF APMP Tori Bunk, CF APMP Mark Wigginton, Certified Professional Coach

"Champion Hires" available: https://t.co/9uQLVoGXXN

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

👇 Do you recognise your undervalued skills? 👇

Highlights from April's #APMPLiberty Mental Health & Wellness Symposium Kickoff featuring Colby Hanjan, CF APMP Chelsea Cooper, CL/CF APMP Tori Bunk, CF APMP Mark Wigginton, Certified Professional Coach

[Dave @GamewithDave]

After years of streaming, people are starting to buy DVDs again because of price hikes, ads, and disappearing content. Fair move?

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

👇What on earth are human-centered transferable skills? 👇

Highlights from April's #APMPLiberty Mental Health & Wellness Symposium Kickoff featuring Colby Hanjan, Chelsea Cooper, Tori Bunk, Mark Wigginton & Chris Farnath

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

The TikTok Car Trader Beat Toyota at Customer Experience
A few months ago, my daughter bought a second-hand automatic Toyota Yaris.

We’d searched the usual places, classifieds, garages, and car sites, but eventually found one through a trader on TikTok.

Yes, TikTok.
❌ Not a main dealer.

❌ Not a glossy showroom.

❌ Not a registered garage.

Just a social media trader with a car that looked right, drove well, and seemed a sensible choice. He told us he’d recently changed the clutch system and, even though the car was sold as seen, said:

“If you have any problems, come back to me. I know a lot of people.”
Lovely words. But let’s be honest, when something goes wrong three months later, you don’t exactly expect this to be more than words.

A few weeks later... my daughter called.
The automatic system had disengaged and locked her out of driving. Twice. It turns out this is a known issue with that model of Yaris. An actuator problem.

So we called Toyota.

Their quote? £3,000.

❌ That was about 75% of what we’d paid for the car...

❌ Disaster territory...

❌ An expensive mistake...

Almost as a last resort, I texted the original TikTok trader.

→ I expected silence.

→ Or excuses.

→ Or the classic “sold as seen, mate."

He replied within seconds.

I told him it was an actuator problem.

Seconds later, he replied:

“No problem. I’ll get it sorted.”
Two minutes after that, he’d booked the car in with a mechanic for 10am on Bank Holiday Monday.

The total cost? £350.

Then he sent me the mechanic’s details so I could liaise directly.

The mechanic was just as responsive.

We arrived on Bank Holiday Monday, expecting to leave the car and disappear for a few hours.

He said:

“Don’t do that. I’ll have it done in 30 minutes. Go up to Morrisons for a coffee and I’ll text you when it’s ready.”
Forty-five minutes later, we were driving home.

✔️ New actuator.

✔️ Six-month warranty.

✔️ Problem solved.

This was spectacular because it was so unexpected. A TikTok second-hand car dealer who believes in his reputation and outstanding service. Who knew?

→ Not the glossy branding.

→ Not the corporate brochure.

→ Not the impressive showroom.

→ Not the “your call is important to us” message while you sit on hold for 38 minutes.

Just ownership. Responsiveness. A trusted network. A promise honoured.

And someone who did what they said they would do.

The lesson?
Spectacular customer experience does not always come from where you expect it.

Sometimes it comes from the person with no corporate playbook, no customer success department, no polished service charter, and no expensive CRM.

Just a simple attitude:

“I’ll help you get this sorted.”

That’s the part customers remember.

Not the problem.

The response.

And in this case, the response was spectacular.

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

Easter is about renewal.

→ A reset.
→ A fresh start.

But most organisations don’t need a reset.

→ They need fewer repeat mistakes.

The same issue should not reach the customer twice.
If it does, something hasn’t been designed properly.

→ That’s not effort.
→ That’s leadership.

Raising the floor is not about doing things differently once.
It’s about ensuring the same failure doesn’t happen again.

As you reflect this weekend:
→ What’s one issue in your organisation that should never happen twice?

#RaiseTheFloor #Leadership #CustomerExperience #Governance

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

“Customer problems rarely grow because teams are careless. They grow because decisions arrive too late.”
Escalation often looks like communication.
But often it is hesitation.

→ Teams wait for clarity.
→ Wait for authority.
→ Wait for permission.

Leadership design determines whether problems surface early or explode later.
Raise the floor (make fewer mistakes), and the distance between signal and decision becomes shorter.

#RaiseTheFloor #CustomerFocusedLeadership #Leadership #Governance

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

Most organisations don’t have a performance problem.
They have a tolerance problem.
They tolerate what should never happen twice.
#RaiseTheFloor

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

“The strongest organisations do not depend on exceptional people. They design systems that make spectacular outcomes normal.”
Hero cultures feel inspiring.
But they rarely scale.
When success depends on extraordinary effort, volatility follows.
→ Customers experience inconsistency.
→ Teams burn out.
→ Leaders firefight.
The stronger model is quieter.
Design systems where reliability becomes routine.
That is what raising the floor actually means.
#RaiseTheFloor #CustomerFocusedLeadership #Leadership #Governance

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

The Dashboard Illusion - “Data reveals problems. Leadership decides whether they matter.”

Most organisations today have excellent dashboards.

→ Customer scores.
→ Operational metrics.
→ Real-time reporting.

Yet the same issues still reach customers.
The real challenge was never visibility.
It was decision discipline.

→ Signals appear early.
→ But action arrives late.

The leadership shift is not collecting better data.
It is acting on the signal sooner.

This is one of the core leadership disciplines explored in Raise the Floor, Not the Ceiling.

And it’s a central theme inside the Customer-Focused Leadership Academy, where we examine how leaders turn insight into consistent action.

Where in your organisation do signals appear early, but decisions arrive late?

#RaiseTheFloor #CustomerFocusedLeadership #Leadership #Governance

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

From Philosophy to Practice...
Over the past week, I have been thrilled by the engagement following the relaunch of "Raise the Floor, Not the Ceiling."

One question keeps coming up:

“How do you actually build this into an organisation?”

The book introduces the philosophy.
The harder work is operationalising it.

That means examining how leadership decisions are made, how escalation works, how teams interpret customer impact, and how accountability is structured across functions.

This is why we have implemented the Customer-Focused Leadership Academy as the next step in our work.

The Academy is designed to help leaders translate the Raise the Floor philosophy into practical leadership disciplines, strengthening governance, decision quality, and customer outcomes in environments where AI and automation are reshaping how work gets done.

→ It is not about adding more activity.
→ It is about improving the consistency of leadership decisions that materially affect customers and performance.

I will be sharing more details shortly.

In the meantime, if this is a conversation that resonates with you, I would be interested to hear where your organisation finds the greatest challenge: preventing issues early or responding effectively when they arise?

#RaiseTheFloor #CustomerFocusedLeadership #Leadership #Governance #OperationalExcellence

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

Tomorrow, Raise the Floor, Not the Ceiling relaunches.
Let me be precise about what that means.

This is not a book about customer service.
It is a book about leadership design.

→ About the preventable failures that quietly become governance conversations.
→ About the volatility we tolerate because recovery feels easier than redesign.

In 2026, AI works first time.
Leadership must too.

If you are accountable for risk, customer outcomes, or operational discipline, this conversation is no longer optional.

Tomorrow.

The floor always wins.

#RaiseTheFloor #CustomerFocusedLeadership #Governance #GRC #Leadership

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

In two days, Raise the Floor, Not the Ceiling relaunches.

Let me be clear about what this is not.

→ It’s not a customer service book.
→ It’s not about delight.
→ It’s not about chasing higher ceilings.

It’s about eliminating preventable failure.

In 2026, AI works first time.
Leadership must too.

If you’ve ever sat in a boardroom explaining something that should never have happened, this philosophy will resonate.

Tuesday!

#RaiseTheFloor #CustomerFocusedLeadership #Governance #Leadership

[Christopher F @cfarnath]

New article on LinkedIn: https://t.co/dvG7U4pWHf

#RaiseTheFloor #CustomerFocusedLeadership #Governance #GRC #Leadership