Victoria Tomlinson appointed director to Welcometraining

Victoria Tomlinson, chief executive of Northern Lights PR, has been appointed a director of York-based Welcometraining: a leading customer service training company designing and delivering courses and in-house programmes to businesses in Yorkshire, the North East and across the UK.

She joins fellow directors, award winning entrepreneur Denise Howard OBE and David Andrews, former CEO of Yorkshire Tourist Board.  Welcometraining designs and delivers bespoke training courses for corporates, SMEs, the professions and care homes and is the holder of the Yorkshire licence to deliver the suite of internationally recognised Welcome to Excellence courses.

Denise Howard, who built and sold YorkBoat and is now involved in a number of businesses, said:   “Victoria brings board level expertise to help Welcometraining grow.  There is a lot of synergy between our businesses –so much of good PR and corporate reputation depends on customer service.  Victoria is well known for her expertise in business social media – which has become part of the customer service remit.  Customers frequently tweet about a problem if they cannot get through to a business by phone or the internet.”

Welcometraining has a dozen one-day Welcome to Excellence customer service training courses, as well as bespoke programmes such as Sales and Marketing Training, Mystery Shopping and Customer Service Transformation. Clients include local authorities, universities and colleges, major tourist attractions such as The Jorvik Viking Centre and the Royal Armouries, retail outlets including The Light shopping centre in Leeds, Drax Power Station, independent care homes and York Minster.

David Andrews added: “Customers like our approach to helping their businesses improve through effective training and understanding of what their customers need, and we have ambitious growth plans which Victoria will help us achieve.”

Tomlinson founded Harrogate-based Northern Lights PR more than 20 years ago, has been named one of Yorkshire’s top 100 entrepreneurs and last year received a special judges’ award from the CIPR as Communicator of the Year.