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At Your Service... Meet the Folio Customer Service Team

June 02, 2026

Love books? So do these guys. Meet the Folio customer service team ready to share their literary know-how with you.

Want to know about a book Need an update on your delivery? Or wondering when the next edition of Folio magazine will be available? No worries: send us an email or give us a call – and speak to a real Folio person who will do their best to answer your queries and also give you an honest view on why they love the Folio James Bond Collection so much. Or Piranesi. Or Captain America.

To be honest, it depends on which one of the team you speak to. ‘You never quite know what each new day is going to bring,’ says Andrew Wagstaff, Folio’s Head of Customer Service. ‘And that’s a good thing in a job. In fact, people are always coming up to me in the lift, asking how they get on the team.’

Why is a seat in customer service so highly prized? Simple, according to Andrew: if you like people and you love books, there is no better place to work. ‘I joined Folio in, oooh, 1936? [actually 1997, but we’re not counting]. I was only meant to be here for six weeks, while the world caught up with my artistic and musical vision, but we’re still waiting for that to happen, and so here we are. I’m in good company. Everyone here is also an artist, actor, writer, musician or painter. So when you talk to us, you’re talking to people who care about the good stuff. And that makes it a great team to work with.’

So along with Andrew, meet the team: Customer Service Assistants Marina Lacoste, Lucy Woollett, Patrick Seymour, Federico Sarmiento, Cris Caraccio and Tiffany Thomas. If you’ve got any problems, queries, suggestions or comments, these are the people who will listen, help and tell you in great detail just why Folio’s Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is so special.

If something goes wrong, Andrew stresses, everyone just wants to put it right. ‘I know it’s easy to say that, but we actually will. Things happen. Delivery drivers can get stressed out. There may well be something weird going on with the postal service in Montevideo that we don’t know about. There might be something controversial in the translations of The Odyssey and The Iliad we’ve chosen to use. This is why the job is never boring – all these things can come up in the same morning.’

Perhaps you’re searching for a particular title – or find yourself in possession of a book that you want to know more about. ‘Some customers are preparing collections to give to their children, or have inherited their Folio books from their parents,’ says Cris. ‘We get calls like that all the time, from all over the world, and we will always try to help.’

For Tiffany, the newest member of the team, the story behind every book – and every call – has a personal resonance. ‘My mum had a book subscription where four books would come to our house every single month,’ she says. ‘She loved books. So when the opportunity came to apply for this job, it felt comforting, because reading was our thing – we used to do it together every evening.’

The books themselves, of course, are ever present: the team have their own little library and every desk has (at least) one book on hand – all the better to describe their many glories to customers. And, of course, in rare moments of quiet, those same books are also read, because every member of the customer service team is also a Folio fan. ‘Honestly, being able to see the new books and how the design, illustrations and concept have been matched to these beautiful works is a highlight of the job,’ says Federico.

And that means the team know the thrill of managing to secure a copy of your dream book – and the pain when that title sells out in ten minutes. ‘The quickest I’ve ever seen a book go was Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell,’ remembers Federico. ‘My first call of the day was an order for it, but it sold out before the conversation ended. So all I could do was apologise – they ran out a lot faster than we expected. People also went crazy for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit limited editions – the craziest I’ve ever known.’ Tiffany adds some sage advice. ‘If you want a book, get it. There’s nothing worse than wanting it, waiting, and then it’s gone.’

“If you want a book, get it. There's nothing worse than wanting it, waiting, and then it's gone ...”

But however busy the department gets, they all agree it’s always a pleasure to talk to customers. ‘It’s nice to talk on a human level and get excited about the little things that spark joy for people,’ says Tiffany. ‘It’s heartwarming. It feels like it’s Christmas all the time. I recently had a customer who asked me what I enjoyed. I’m a Marvel girl, so I told him about our Marvel books. When you have your own passions, it’s very easy to tell people what you love about them. And before I knew it, he said: “Right, I’m getting those for my kids.”’

Lucy agrees. ‘In this day and age, I think the kind of human-centred customer service experience we offer is rare. My favourite thing is speaking to all our customers around the world. I love seeing where our parcels go. And the suggestions that our customers come up with are a delight: I love learning about books I didn’t know about before.’

And those suggestions are always noted. Most requested books include Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and The Dark Tower by Stephen King. ‘The most requested one over the years has been Watership Down by Richard Adams – but the rights are very difficult to get,’ says Andrew. ‘Then there’s Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. We’ve done Small Gods and Mort and we’d love to be able to bring them back one day.’

In an age of impenetrable algorithms, babbling bots and rage-inducing automated replies, it’s comforting to know that in a book-strewn corner of a Shad Thames office, this bunch of humans are genuinely happy when you call. ‘We hope that nothing goes wrong and you never have to speak to us,’ says Andrew, ‘but if you do, we’ll try to make it as painless and pleasant an experience as possible. A longstanding customer of ours recently sent us a badge that says: “Read books, be kind, stay weird” and that feels very much like it could be the motto for Folio customer service. Long may it continue.’

Words | Lucy Jolin
Photography | © Orlando Gili

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