World-class service is the new standard: how Mackie Myers built a CX advantage

World-class service is the new standard

Mackie Myers has built a standout recruitment business in a short period of time.

Founded in 2021, the business has been recognised in the 2025 Sunday Times Best Places to Work, certified as a B Corporation and named APSCo UK Recruitment Company of the Year in the £5m to £10m turnover category.

That recognition matters because it points to the same underlying principle: Mackie Myers has been intentional about building a business around quality, trust and long-term relationships.

From the beginning, service was part of the standard they wanted to set.

“From the beginning we wanted to be known for high quality delivery as well as excellent customer experience that is way above industry norms.”

Owen Myers, Co-Founder, Mackie Myers

That standard is reflected in how Mackie Myers talks about its own service. The business describes the “Mackie Myers Experience” as being centred around clear communication, genuine relationships and delivering on what it promises.

For Mackie Myers, delivering a world-class experience is not optional. It is fundamental to who they are.

In recruitment, growth is often framed around new business.

More outreach. More calls. More meetings. More client acquisition.

Those things still matter. But they are not the whole picture.

Sustainable growth is also about what a recruitment business retains, what it expands, what it recovers, what it gets referred into and what it stops losing without realising.

That is where customer experience becomes commercially important.

A poor experience does not always show up as a complaint. More often, it shows up quietly. A client stops sending roles. A candidate does not come back. A contractor does not refer. A hiring manager chooses another supplier next time.

If that experience is not measured, it is easy to ignore.

Mackie Myers has taken a different approach.

CX as a growth lever

For Mackie Myers, customer experience is not a soft measure.

It is directly linked to growth.

“In an industry where connections are the backbone to success, CX is absolutely fundamental to winning and retaining business.”

Owen Myers

That is the key point.

Recruitment businesses do not grow only by finding new clients. They grow by earning trust repeatedly. They grow when clients come back. They grow when candidates become advocates. They grow when a strong experience turns into a referral, introduction or retained relationship.

Referrals are especially powerful because they are built on trust before the first conversation even happens. They are usually more efficient than cold outreach, more credible than self-promotion and more likely to open doors that would otherwise be difficult to access.

But referrals do not happen consistently by accident.

They happen when businesses deliver a level of service that clients and candidates remember, then have the systems in place to identify and act on those moments.

That is why measuring customer experience matters.

It shows where the business is creating advocates. It also shows where relationships may be at risk before that risk becomes visible in revenue.

The proof behind the service standard

Mackie Myers’ results show how powerful that can be.

The business achieved a +95 Client NPS and +73 Candidate NPS, placing it in the top 1% of UK recruitment businesses measured through Talent Analytics.

Over a 12-month period, Mackie Myers achieved an overall +75 NPS, showing that its service level was not a short-term spike but a consistent operating standard.

Mackie Myers also publicly reports its own world-class NPS performance, highlighting a latest reporting period score of 73.7 across clients and candidates. That external commitment to transparency reinforces the same point: customer experience is not a hidden internal metric for the business. It is part of the standard they want to be known for.

Just as importantly, 95% of Mackie Myers clients are promoters of the brand and have confirmed they would both use the business again and actively refer it to others.

That is where CX becomes commercially meaningful.

A high score is valuable. But the real value is what sits behind it: retained relationships, repeat business, referral potential, a strong internal culture and a reputation that is being built with evidence.

For a recruitment business, that is a growth engine.

The hidden cost of unmeasured detractors

The same logic applies in the opposite direction.

Detractors are expensive, even when they are invisible.

If a business is not asking clients and candidates how they experienced the service, it may not know where relationships are weakening. It may not see patterns in communication, process, briefing quality, follow-up or candidate care.

That creates a dangerous blind spot.

A recruitment firm can be working hard on new business while quietly losing value from existing relationships.

More BD activity can cover that gap for a period, but it is inefficient. The stronger commercial model is to reduce avoidable leakage, retain more relationships, create more promoters and turn strong experiences into future opportunities.

That is the role Talent Analytics plays for Mackie Myers.

It gives the business a live view of client and candidate experience, helping leadership spot trends early and use customer feedback as a management tool.

The CX engine behind the scenes

For Owen, Talent Analytics provides more than feedback collection. It gives Mackie Myers a clear operating reference point for customer experience.

“We would rather our competitors didn’t use this platform so we can maintain a competitive advantage! It provides a tangible north star to focus management conversations around CX. Significantly, it enables us to spot any trends of poor scores in real time, allowing us to influence a behaviour change and fill any skill gaps quickly.”

Owen Myers

That quote captures the practical value.

Customer experience becomes something the business can manage. It gives leadership a north star. It supports management conversations. It helps identify where behaviour needs to change. It highlights skill gaps quickly, before small issues become bigger commercial problems.

That is what separates world-class service from good intent.

Most recruitment businesses want to deliver a great experience. Fewer have the visibility to know whether they are doing it consistently across clients, candidates, teams and consultants.

Talent Analytics gives Mackie Myers that visibility.

More than software

The partnership has also gone beyond the platform itself.

For Samantha Phillips, Head of Business Operations at Mackie Myers, the relationship with Talent Analytics has felt more like a long-term CX partnership than an off-the-shelf software implementation.

“It has been great working with a business that is also growing, it feels much more like a partnership than an off the shelf plug and play.”

Samantha Phillips, Head of Business Operations, Mackie Myers

That matters because customer experience improvement is not just about installing software.

It is about embedding a better way of managing service.

It requires the right data, the right reporting, the right conversations and the right follow-through. It requires leaders to use customer feedback as part of how they run the business, not just as a number reviewed occasionally.

Mackie Myers has treated CX as part of its growth strategy.

The results speak for themselves.

Turning service into advantage

World-class service is no longer a nice-to-have in recruitment.

It is becoming the standard strong businesses need to reach if they want to retain clients, win repeat work, generate referrals and protect reputation in a more competitive market.

Mackie Myers shows what that looks like in practice.

The business has built a measurable CX advantage by setting a high service standard, tracking client and candidate experience properly and using feedback to improve performance in real time.

That is the bigger lesson for recruitment leaders.

Growth is not just about winning more new business. It is about creating more value from every relationship you already have.

Talent Analytics helps recruitment businesses identify where relationships are strong, where risk is emerging and where service quality can become a source of retention, referrals and commercial growth.

See how Talent Analytics helps recruitment businesses turn customer experience into a growth advantage.

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