About us


Formed in 2001, SGSA supports the service industry by providing career development for support and service employees and the creation and sharing of best practices for the industry.

The company hosts in-person and online, public training classes and bespoke classes on clients' premises. Our consultants are experienced in preparing companies for SCP Standards certification and assisting with strategic planning, operations analysis, benchmarking and service process reengineering. The senior team are:


Steve Brand



An industry practitioner with over thirty years technical support and field service experience in the aerospace, electronics, insurance and software industries. Before launching SGSA in 2001, Steve worked as a European director for two Fortune 100 software vendors managing large, international support operations. In those roles, Steve successfully led projects to re-engineer organisations, centralise and decentralise service operations, convert CRM systems, migrate from traditional support models to the Knowledge-Centered Service model, develop customer feedback programs, implement service quality systems, integrate acquisitions and much more. He is experienced in motivating and re-energising teams and firmly believes that the success of any service operation is directly linked to the work-life balance and continual skill development of the employees.

In his current role, Steve provides health checks for support operations and helps companies improve customer and employee loyalty, increase staff productivity, implement KCS and achieve SCP certification; he also develops the skills of support engineers and managers, service account managers and customer success managers through instructor-led training classes and one-to-one mentoring. When not working (which isn't very often), Steve enjoys travelling, flying light aircraft, scuba diving and snow-skiing. Steve has served on the Board of TSANet Europe to promote closer co-operation between software vendors and has assisted in the development of the Service Capability and Performance (SCP) Standards since 1998.

Steve holds a Bachelors degree in Mathematics, and an MBA from the University of Hertfordshire. He is an SCP Certification Auditor and Certified Instructor for thirteen training classes.


Jo Roberts



Jo has a strong background in business development and is a qualified coach. Communication and support are extremely important to Jo in all aspects of her life; she strongly believes that by listening to people and recognising that they are all individual, has enabled her to build strong relationships with job candidates and to match them with our clients' career opportunities.

Prior to joining SGSA in 2019, Jo worked as a Global Head of Buying for Tesco plc.


Julie Taylor



Julie is people focused and results driven; she has a relentless passion for helping others succeed, a wealth of coaching and facilitation experience. She uses a fresh, engaging and dynamic training style; facilitating with authenticity, credibility, high energy, openness, integrity and humour.

Julie has 25 years’ experience with large multi-national organisations and has an understanding of diverse fields including; Sales, Technical and Customer Support, Marketing, Legal, Education, IT, Human Resources, Finance and Research & Development. Having worked in EMEA and the USA, she has a deep understanding and appreciation of different cultures. Julie is able to provide valuable insight into human behaviour; why people behave as they do, the impact this has on the individual, others, the team and ultimately the end results.

Julie is a certified NLP Practitioner, MBTI Practitioner and an Authorised Partner and Facilitator for Wiley’s Everything DiSC, Dream Manager and The 5 Cohesive Behaviors of a Team.