Conversation with… Sham Aziz, head of customer experience at Gymshark
From a North London call centre to leading customer experience at Gymshark, Aziz reflects on the people who believed in him, the lessons learnt along the way, and why great customer experience has always been about people first.
You’ve spent your career working with some of the UK’s best-known retailers including Selfridges, Net-a-Porter, Matches and now Gymshark. What drew you to customer experience and service as a career?
Subscribe to TRBLike most people I know in CX, I fell into it. I’m not sure many children grow up dreaming of a career in a contact centre.
I grew up in North London, where NatWest had an enormous call centre. Some mates worked there, so I joined them while I was at college. Earning a bit of money was about the extent of my grand career plan.
Then two things happened at the same time. I met my future wife, which made staying rather appealing! And I was selected for NatWest’s Future Leaders Programme.
Someone had seen something in me that I hadn’t yet seen in myself. They invested in me and showed me a path I hadn’t imagined. I didn’t finish college, but I certainly didn’t stop learning.
I’ve stayed in customer experience because I enjoy figuring out why things don’t work quite as they should, then having a go at fixing them. I’m also forever fascinated by the impact of exceptional CX, particularly how putting things right when they’ve gone wrong can strengthen a customer’s loyalty.
You’ve spoken about your parents’ influence and work ethic. How did growing up in a big family shape you?
My dad came to the UK from Kashmir when he was 12. He worked incredibly hard, often leaving before we woke and returning after we’d gone to bed. There were times I felt I saw him once a week. Meanwhile, Mum was raising six children, which deserves its own management qualification.
Three brothers, three sisters, 1980s Britain. We shared hand-me-downs, waited our turn on games consoles, played outside and got on each other’s nerves. We loved every minute of it! One of my favourite memories is a trip to Thorpe Park with Mum, Dad and all six of us. Loggers Leap is permanently etched in my mind.
Our parents never sat us down to teach us about work ethic. They just lived it. So, when I got my National Insurance number at 16, I started earning straight away rather than asking them for money.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but their example was quietly shaping my own work ethic. And that’s something that’s served me well over the decades, particularly when life hasn’t gone quite to plan.
You’ve mentioned how much it meant when someone believed in you early in your career. Has that shaped the way you lead others today?
Absolutely. At Ocado, I met a manager called Mark, and I genuinely don’t think I’d be where I am today without him.
NatWest gave me that first bit of belief. Mark took it further. He trusted me to run an entire department, the biggest responsibility I’d ever had, but somehow made me feel completely safe taking it on.
He had this wonderful way of giving little nudges. Never making you feel silly for getting something wrong, just enough encouragement to help you figure things out yourself. He got to know me as a person and, perhaps most importantly, genuinely wanted me to succeed.
We went on to build a contact centre with more than 100 seats, developed our own ticketing system and started handling Facebook and Twitter messages on iPads we’d bought across the road. No manual for half of it. We experimented and figured things out together.
That was the turning point. Until then, my career had largely been about my own development. Suddenly, it was about helping other people grow.
I’ve tried to carry a bit of Mark into every role since. Make people feel safe, give them room to experiment and surprise themselves. And when they need a little help? Give them a nudge.
You’ve seen customer experience in retail from many different angles, including luxury, online and now sportswear. What has changed the most about customer expectations over that time?
This might be a boring answer, but I’m not convinced the fundamentals have changed much.
People want a good product, delivered when promised, that works and lasts. If something goes wrong, they want it put right without having to complete an obstacle course. Not exactly an outrageous wishlist.
Technology has changed enormously, and our patience has probably shrunk. We talk endlessly about self-service, automation and AI. I’m excited by it, but I don’t think anyone wakes up desperate to use a chatbot. They want resolution. If technology makes that effortless, brilliant. If it means six hoops before you can get help, we’ve missed the point.
Returns, warranties and delivery problems aren’t glamorous. Nobody gets a standing ovation for fixing a returns journey. But those moments reveal whether a brand means what it says.
Do the basics brilliantly. Invest in your people. Then use technology to make things even better. And maybe do it in that order.
What did seven years at Selfridges teach you about CX, and what happened when that chapter ended?
I probably drove a few finance colleagues mad at Selfridges.
Every contact centre knows cost per contact, or CPC. Budget season arrives and the question is usually: what did each contact cost last year, and how do we make it cheaper this year?
But look at a department store. As it grows, it invests in products, experiences, beautiful spaces and people. So why, when that same customer calls or messages, are we suddenly trying to spend less on them?
I wanted to change the conversation from cost per contact to investment per contact. Same CPC, different mindset. Ask what an interaction is worth, not just how cheaply we can get through it.
Selfridges is famous for the theatre of retail. That promise shouldn’t vanish when somebody needs help with a delivery. I joked that our team owned customer experience, with a rather large asterisk. The small print? “Except when we don’t.”
CX belongs to the whole business, not just customer service. Over time, we invested more per contact and delivered something that felt more like the Selfridges experience we all know and love. I learnt that customer service is the glue holding a brand’s promise together.
Then, towards the end of 2023, seven years in a job I loved ended in a seven-minute HR briefing. I was made redundant. I was sad, of course. But I reset and went again. I had faith, I prayed hard and worked hard. I’ve always believed that if I kept showing up, momentum would follow. Life almost always works out.
Rather than enter the LinkedIn CV lottery, I challenged myself to speak to 100 people in 100 days. We caught up, laughed, and I always ended with: “Is there anybody you think I should know?”
One conversation led to another. Opportunities appeared. It reminded me that relationships matter, and sometimes you don’t need the entire route mapped out. Just show up and do the reps.
Why Gymshark, and what would you love to help build there?
This is another one of those moments when a handful of things came crashing together.
I discovered fitness during lockdown and started sharing my journey: running, training, consuming protein and trying to become a fitter version of myself. Still a work in progress!
I also stopped trying quite so hard to be a CX guru on LinkedIn. The world probably didn’t need another one. I talked about things I cared about: fitness and CX. So perhaps I was still being a guru. Who knows?
Somewhere along the way, Joe at Gymshark found me. When we spoke, his thinking fascinated me. He just got it. I didn’t need to deliver my usual lecture about why cutting cost per contact isn’t the best ambition for a community-led brand. A relief for us both, I’m sure.
Gymshark has built more than a clothing business. People genuinely feel part of something. The opportunity now is to grow without losing what made it special. Rather than start with “how do we do more for less?”, I love asking, “what’s the best possible way to show up for our community?”
And I get to work with Joe and a brilliant team of managers, helping them grow and offering the sort of nudges Mark once gave me. It feels like the story coming full circle. I remember thinking: I must work here, with these people, and it has to be now.
I’ve spent the last few years doing gym. Now I get to do gym for a living. Watch this space.
