Customer Experience Proposition Manager

About the roleThe Partnership is the UK’s largest employee-owned business and home to our two well-loved retail brands - John Lewis & Partners and Waitrose & Partners, as well as expanding into new areas beyond retail.

We aren’t an ordinary business though. The Partnership is different because everyone who works here isn’t just an employee. We are Partners, with a shared responsibility for our success, and we share the rewards when we’re successful.

Everything we do is powered by our unique purpose: Working in Partnership for a happier world. Our Purpose inspires our principles, drives our decisions and acts as our guide, so that everything we do contributes to Happier People, Happier Business and a Happier World.

As a Customer Experience Proposition Manager, you will be known for building the ultimate Waitrose experience for our customers and driving loyalty and advocacy amongst our target customers. Leading temporary, cross functional, collaborative squads, you will explore, design, prototype, test and develop end-to-end customer propositions and/or fix customer pain points, bringing each opportunity to an agreed conclusion. You’ll aim to keep progressing the Waitrose customer experience and positively impacting as many customers as possible.

As a Senior member of the team, you’ll contribute to the health and performance of the Profession by role modelling the proposition design process, balancing an entrepreneurial, innovative mindset with a pragmatic, commercial approach. You’ll work with independence, passion, agility, pace and actively manage stakeholders of all levels to see opportunities through from conception to consumer testing of prototypes, and where warranted, expansion and scale. You’ll take pride in both successes
and failures, driving a cultural change to the way we work and actively contribute to the delivery of our Waitrose Partnership Plan.

At a glance:

• Salary: Salary up to £70,000 per annum skill and experience dependant

• Contract type: This is a 12 month fixed term opportunity

• Hours and location of the role:

  • 35 hours per week

  • Your home location will be our Bracknell Head Office with frequent travel to stores and off site locations

  • The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the office and home based upon your personal needs whilst balancing the needs of the business. The team attend the office every Tuesday to connect and attend key meetings on more of an ad-hoc basis

Key responsibilities:

• Develop the Waitrose customer experience for Strategic Priorities, through customer data and insight, your deep understanding of the competitive market and feedback from frontline Partners

• Lead the development of customer propositions in those priorities through your expert knowledge of CX design principles, agile working and stakeholder management. Building out a series of tests to help prove concepts, and ensuring reporting of results to relevant governance groups and own any agreed actions including the handover to other teams to deliver expansion and scale if required

• Dive collaboration between cross functional stakeholders, resolve challenges and drive the best outcome for our customers. Coach and develop your cross functional squads to improve themselves and increase the effectiveness of the CX profession

• Deliver clear, concise and effective communication and presentations to all stakeholders as required, including Waitrose Directors, Executive Directors and governance forums if required. Use your superior interpersonal skills to establish productive and healthy relationships with senior stakeholders in Customer, Commercial, Retail, Online and Strategy. Provide clear and actionable briefs to other professions where necessary

• Champion a relentless focus on the needs of our target customers by regularly reviewing competitors and best practice, meeting with customers and contributing to the ongoing review of propositions and touchpoints. Maintain a balance of specialist and holistic knowledge of Waitrose channels, touchpoints and strategic areas to ensure you can adapt and flex to the changing needs of our customers

The successful candidate will have the following skills:

• Customer-centric mindset: Puts every customer, both internal and external, at the heart of everything, and understands the Partnership ambition to offer differentiated service that is aligned to our Values. Understands that they are empowered to deliver incredible service for every type of customer with whom they interact and acts on this every time in every environment

• Action orientated: Remains motivated and shows drive and determination to achieve success. Persists in the face of obstacles and overcomes any barriers that arise, focusing on solutions and not problems

• Entrepreneurial: Must be able to deal with ambiguity and take ownership of the area where they are working. Looks for opportunities to promote services and products to increase sales and create commercial value. Is able to think creatively and can make good profit related decisions as a result

• Stakeholder Management: Identifies who is impacted by or involved in your goals/objectives and therefore who is key to achieving the desired successful outcomes. Understands the motivations and priorities of these stakeholders and takes these into account in order to build and manage sustainable relationships. Can anticipate potential challenges stakeholders may bring and puts plans in place to achieve collaboration

• Builds Effective Teams: Builds high performing teams through integrating a diversity and blend of skills and personalities and supporting a trust based environment. Empowers the team to achieve success with a shared sense of purpose and clarity on team goals

Essential skills and/or experience you’ll need: 

• Shaping, defining and delivering Customer Propositions specifically elevating the customer experience across holistic (store, app, website) journeys

• Experience in leading a matrix group of individuals to deliver an outcome or goal

• Dealing with ambiguity & complex change

• Stakeholder management

• In depth understanding of proposition design tools, methods and approaches

• Track record of delivering improvements to the customer experience

• Use of data and insight to inform/influence decision makers

Desirable skills and/or experience you may have: 

• Delivering change in a physical retail environment

About The Partnership

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:  

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.  

We also recommend that you apply as soon as possible as vacancies can close early if we see a high number of applicants.  

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.