Customer Experience Manager
IKEA - United Kingdom
Total years of experience :9 years, 11 Months
Oversee the stores checkout department, managing 4 team leaders and 6 supervisors;
• Responsible for maintaining and improving all Customer touch points around the store, from the car park up until the exit, ensuring a consistent Customer experience.
• Responsible for creating the store event calendar, integrating customer events as part of the wider commercial calendar. Innovated a new way of working by creating a ‘store events team’. Prioritised loyalty card events and large-scale events to encourage visitation during our low visitation periods, as well as capitalising on our peak weeks to create good feedback through WOM, aiding re-visitation.
• Identified and trained potential successors, set out action plans and personal development plans for them to achieve in preparation for the next steps.
• Ensured company values were consistently communicated and refreshed in the department through coaching Team Leaders on management style.
•Created the stores ‘services strategy’ which entailed communicating our ways to shop/ services such as finance, delivery, click and collect etc. Upon strategy implementation, we saw an immediate & sustained increase of £2k per week on delivery services as well as an uplift in collection and assembly booking.
• Secured the thread of loyalty card messaging & benefits which translated to a sustained 20% increase in signups & an 8% increase in loyalty card sales compared to previous years.
• Organised regular Customer events to link in with commercial calendar, improving feedback & increased visitation by 3% compared with previous year.
•Supported the Customer relation function in a fast-paced, omni-channel retail environment. Managed upwards of 90 employees aiding in their development and service delivery.
• Standardised communication efforts on our checkout department to create a consistent, goal orientated running of the day to day, which resulted in an average monthly KPI improvement of 8.5% for productivity and loyalty card swipes.
• Lead internal investigations for fraud by creating a clear procedure and training plan for future cash office team members in co-operation with our finance department, which resulted in saving over £20, 000+ of chargeback cases in the space of 4 months.
• Presented business plans & commercial presentations to in-store & external management.
• Lead presentations for external audits in the Customer relation functions with high success, which led to the opportunity of assisting other London stores to improve their procedure implementation.
•Oversaw both Checkouts and Customer Service departments as well as motivate and lead a personal team of 22 Co-Workers on our Customer Service department.
• Set out expectations for our new Click and collect area, ensuring all orders were handed out within 15minutes and discrepancies were dealt with swiftly.
• Final point of call for escalations due to specialist knowledge and seniority, which required extreme attention to detail to gather facts for best resolution, as well as advising co-workers and team leaders on best cost-conscious decisions.
• Analyse Co-worker mistakes and create action plans which resulted in reducing return procedure mistakes by an average of -35% for FY20.
• Created the whole store floor plan for fulfilment operations for our store to change into a Click and Collect business during lockdown for Covid-19. Created multi-departmental schedules for click and collect during Covid-19 as well as contingency planning with extremely limited resources.
• Placate escalated Customer complaints ensuring that Customers' needs are met to maintain satisfaction and retention whilst also maintaining policy consistency.
• Liaised with Contact Centre to advise and decide the most cost effective and satisfactory way of resolving Customer issues.
•Led & motivated a personal team of 17 as well as the whole function to achieve set KPI’s.
• Lead conversations on best practice to improve KPI’s which resulted in an average month on month improvement of 3-4%.
• Developed and implemented various trackers for errors, fake cash & discrepancies, ensuring they are in line with IKEA procedures in preparation for yearly audits, resulting in reducing fraudulent cash by over 98%. as well as reducing stock loss on express checkouts.
• Assisted in implementing new payment technology to the store, as well as leading any technical issues until management became familiar with maintenance.
• Helped oversee a checkout department with up to 30 tills concurrently, working independently and with a team.
• Consistently adapted and thrived in a fast-paced, changing work environment to ensure Customer experience is at the forefront of importance.
• Frequently resolved Customer complaints and queries by finding the most appropriate solution for every situation.
• Achieved monthly goals and gifted Co-worker of the month awards.
I studied at a sixth form (college) with specialism subject being law. I also studied media relations/ content creation as well as general sciences. I passed all my subjects with my best grade being Law (B+)
We have GCSE’s in High school graduation. I achieved 12 A*-C grades as well as two certifications in drama and swimmig which is considered exceptional.