Customer Experience Manager

JOB TITLE:Customer Experience Manager UK

JOB LOCATION:                                      Kingston

FUNCTION:                                 Supply Chain

SUB FUNCTION:                        Customer Experience

WORK LEVEL:                            WL2A

REPORTS TO:                             Customer Experience Director

ABOUT UNILEVER

Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of Food, Home and Personal Care products with sales in over 190 countries and reaching 2 billion consumers a day. Unilever has more than 400 brands found in homes around the world, including Persil, Surf, Domestos, CIF, Dove, Lynx, Simple, Knorr, Hellmann’s and Colman’s. Faced with the daunting issues of climate change and the need for human development, we want to move towards a connected world where everyone can live well and within the natural limits of the planet. That’s why our purpose is ‘to make sustainable living commonplace”.

We passionately believe that by becoming the #1 trusted Supply partner to our Customers we will grow our business faster and unlock new and exciting opportunities to drive Unilever forward.

JOB PURPOSE

The key purpose of the role is to drive improvements in the overall experience our Customers have when they work with Unilever, aligned to our ambition of becoming the #1 Supplier in our industry, as perceived by our Customers. The Customer Experience Manager is responsible for leading how we work with our Customers for a given account team group or country. The role is focussed on developing relationships with the senior contacts within the Customer Commercial and Supply Chain teams, leveraging these to develop joint strategic action plans.

An essential element of the role is providing leadership and development to your Customer Experience Team (across both Unilever and Genpact roles).  The Customer Experience Manager is responsible for monitoring the total performance of how Unilever executes our plans with our Customers across Commercial and Supply Chain, leading for process excellence, shining a light on issues and driving improvements. They are data driven in their approach, excellent at prioritisation to ensure effort is spent in the areas that can add most value. The role champions the use of the latest tools and technology to deliver results.

The Customer Experience Manager provides leadership on how we should segment and interact with our Customers and sets the contact strategy. By being close to Customer needs and developing strong trusting relationships with senior Customer contacts, the role identifies the areas where Unilever needs to focus and drives change in those areas in order to move us closer to our goal of becoming #1 in the industry. The role helps others in the organisation to understand the external context and what risks / opportunities these might pose for Unilever. In this context, the Customer Experience Manager has an important input into developing the Customer Operations Strategy.

This role business partners the account team or country Customer Development Director(s), providing insight and input to Customer strategy.

RESPONSIBILITIES / KEY DELIVERABLES

• Relationship development with key senior contacts within the Customer Commercial and Supply Chain teams.

• Drives Improvement in Customer experience metrics (Dispatch Rate, Overdue payments, Forecast Accuracy & Bias, Invoice Accuracy, On Shelf Availability, Claims Completion Times, # of escalations and time spent on escalations, Trade Terms compliance,)

• Drive the agenda to enable Unilever to become the #1 Supplier, as measured by the Advantage Group Survey, including mastering what is important for your Customer and how this translates into the specific questions asked within the survey.

• Understand Customer requirements and culture (strategy, structure, targets, operational standards, routines, processes, systems etc) so as to develop opportunities for improved service, reduced cost to serve (including Trade Terms compliance), improved on-shelf availability. Alongside this, the role owns the Customer contact strategy. Ensure the voice of the Customer is heard within Unilever and Genpact.

• Management of the team of Customer Collaboration Specialists providing support and structure for individual and team development, and set priorities / guidance for the extended Customer team (including team members working for partner organisations). Coach the team to close skills gaps across finance, Commercial, and SC knowledge. Foster an environment of team working across the Unilever and Genpact teams.

• Ensure Customer insight is fed into the forecast process, working in partnership with CD to achieve this. Driving an improving trend in the Customer level forecast accuracy and bias.

• Be the main contact point for the Customer Development Director(s) within the Customer Operations team.  

• Agreeing joint improvement plans with Customer Commercial and Supply Chain teams.

• Work with the Customer Experience Director to develop and deliver the total Customer Operations strategic plan and maintain a cohesive department by taking responsibility outside of the account team for particular processes / projects across the department.

ALL ABOUT YOU

• Supply Chain Mastery – A clear understanding of end-to-end Supply Chain operations, and data up and down the Supply Chain. Seeks to provide Supply Chain expertise to help create business value and achieve desired business goals.

• Commercial Business Understanding – understands the Customer and Unilever P&L and how the end-to-end Order to Cash cycle operates. Able to identify process improvement opportunities within the Order to Cash cycle.

• Relationship Building, Partnering, and Influencing – Ability to partner and build trust with a range of stakeholders both internally and externally, using effective communication and influencing skills.

• Vision Setting & Business Leadership - Ability to set a vision for others of how we can improve, and articulate why it is so important, so as to build motivation in the organisation to achieve the vision. As part of this set high standards for the team.

• Externally Orientated & Proactive in Identifying Risks / Opportunities – reading the external context within the market and the pressures impacting our Customers, using this to clearly articulate to others what the growth opportunities and risks are for Unilever and driving others to plan ahead.

• Personal & Team Leadership - is highly motivated to make the best contribution that they can and bring out the best in others. Is able to flex their style, adjust messages and how they are delivered based on the audience and the situation.  Demonstrates empathy, emotional intelligence and is able to make connections between different pieces of information. Is able to nurture and build talent.

• Lifelong Learner – is committed to constantly developing themselves, regularly evaluating their knowledge / skills gaps and taking action to continue to develop in these areas. As a leader they also encourage others to have the attitude of a lifelong learner.

• Process Driven – sees the value in getting things right first time, and organises ways of working to make this happen in a repeatable way.

• Analytical Skills – Uses data to drive insight, quickly able to identify to identify problems, root causes, and solutions.  Effective at prioritising these for maximum return on time spent.

• Technology Advocate – embraces new technology, seeks to understand how it works in depth and leads for the use of standardised tools within their team.

Key Interactions

• Senior Customer Contacts (ensuring your team is covering all key contacts within the Customer), Customer Development Leadership Team.

• Logistics Managers and Director, Partner Organisation (e.g., Genpact) Leadership Team, Planning Managers and Director, Customer Experience Director, other Customer Experience Managers.