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Richard Murray

Richard Murray

00.01 My name’s Richard Murray, I’m the head of customer services for Jagex Limited, we are the UK’s biggest games developer and publisher. I manage a team of a hundred and fifty people and we are responsible for making sure our millions of customers are taken care of on a week by week basis. In terms of workloads we can have anywhere from a quarter of a million work items or correspondence from players up to upwards of one million depending on the season per week. It’s not like working in an insurance company where the community’s not engaged, our community tell us what they love about the product and also conversely they tell us what they hate about it and what they want us to fix. So we’ve got a, in football terms, a twelfth man on the pitch helping us out all the time.

00.45 What did I want to be when I was growing up, well I suppose, which young boy didn’t want to be a footballer. I did, I certainly was never talented in that area. I actually really enjoyed school, I enjoyed the whole lot of it, I still really enjoy learning. Particularly like science subjects and art subjects and creative subjects. I don’t think there was one subject that I disliked, I took a year out after school, not that I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and then started to study radio production and journalism. So, that was potentially one area that my career could have gone in, it was also very much business related, so a lot of the skills that I am using today in my day to day role have come from that particular course and it was very, very transferable.

01.32 I thought I would certainly pursue a career in that direction, but immediately after I went travelling so I went and spent a summer in Martha’s Vineyard, worked as a waiter there, having a great time and really having a fantastic summer. It was the first time really that I was away from home, so of course you start to learn a little bit about who you are, getting a bit of independence and start to have to find your own way in the world. All of that, was wonderful and yeah I got a bit of the travel bug so I spent six years in Australia working in a marketing company managing call centres out there. From a career perspective I had some wonderful mentors there, I still have very fond memories of those days and also the people I worked with and I’m still in touch with a lot of my friends from Australia.

02.17 From an inspiration point of view, I think like everybody I was very lucky to have incredible parents, my mother and father gave me confidence to believe I could do whatever I wanted to do and some very good teachers who really cared about investing in and making sure that we learnt.

02.33 I truly enjoy what I am doing at the moment, I think the Jagex journey is fantastic, the strategy that we have as a senior management team is very exciting so the future for me is quite rosy, I’m really, really excited about that. If I wasn’t doing what I’m doing now, what would I do. I would probably be one of two things, either possibly a farmer just to spend as much time as possible out doors I really enjoy hill walking or alternatively potentially involved in some sort of renewable energy scheme or company. Outside or work, anything which is outdoors, I love just walking on the weekend, preferably uphill if possible. I like setting myself the challenge of trying to climb a mountain whether that’s in Wales, or the Lake District and most of my holidays will be spent walking with family or friends.

03.25 This is a picture of Kilimanjaro and the company I work for in Australia, when we achieved our first net million, the owners of the company took a handful of us away to climb Kilimanjaro. We did that for one week and then we went on safari for another week. It means a lot to me in terms of celebration of success as a team, the achievement of goals and reward and recognition for people who really contribute to your organisation, and I like to think that I incorporate as much of that as I can in my day to day role now.