Interim Director of Customer Experience - private equity-backed retailer
The brief:
To recruit an Interim Director of Customer Experience across the marketing and customer experience functions of this established retail business.
On the marketing side, the successful candidate would drive customer traffic to all sales channels, including retail stores and digital, leading the brand's transformation and driving a step-change in brand awareness/consideration, as well as building relationships with customers through CRM.
On the customer experience side, the successful candidate would act as the 'voice of the customer', defining and guiding customer needs to develop a vision, roadmap and culture to deliver on them.
Overall, the role required a customer-focussed senior marketer to champion the customer within the marketing team and customer contact centre, developing and delivering on strategies and programmes.
The process:
As with many senior interim positions, this role had a large remit, so it was essential to outline the ideal candidate with our client – the qualities and experience need to fully deliver on their objectives. The leadership requirements were also hugely important to inspire a large team and to embed their corporate culture.
Our consultants scoured the network for suitable candidates with experience in senior management, digital marketing, retail and brand development, and other key areas to establish a wish list of candidates. We also widened the search through advertising and recommendations to develop a strong and substantial long list to assess and review.
Following swift and robust assessments and interviews by our consultants, a shortlist was developed and presented to the client for immediate interviews for this interim placement.
The result:
The chosen candidate was in situ within four weeks and hit the ground running. The client was delighted with the calibre of candidates and had a choice of suitable senior leader leaders to place but this candidate shone through the interview process.
At Suzie Walker Executive Search, our executive search consultants also recruit for interim roles to ensure that the quality of service remains, but on an accelerated timeframe.