Head of Customer Support / Customer Operations / Customer Experience (D2C) - £60-90k + Bonus - Stevenage (Onsite initially, then hybrid)
This exciting role is with a fast-growing home furnishing D2C retailer that launched in April and is part of a larger group that’s been manufacturing and selling high quality sofas to high street retailers globally for over 20 years.
They currently sell to the US market and the business is scaling fast, with plans to launch in Canada and the UK soon. They have a very rapidly assembled offshore customer support function but as they scale, they want to build a world-class capability to deliver quicker resolutions, clearer communication, and a consistently excellent experience across phone, email, and webchat—extending across all customer touchpoints.
This is a very hands-on role, initially focused on improving customer support and looking for quick wins, managing a small offshore team of 6 in the Philippines. You’ll then build a UK support team and look more broadly at the customer experience (CX), coordinating cross-functionally to remove friction across the entire customer journey, resolve avoidable issues pro-actively and enable the customer to self-serve where possible.
This is a strategic operations role but will be very hands-on, going into the detail and picking problems apart, fixing issues yourself. This role combines hands-on execution with ownership of longer-term customer support and customer experience strategy. If your background is primarily CX strategy, journey mapping, or research-led roles without owning day-to-day customer support operations, this role is unlikely to be the right fit.
Responsibilities:
* Build and lead a high-performing UK support team (hiring, onboarding, coaching, performance management).
* Manage and develop the offshore team of 6 in the Philippines, ensuring consistent quality, clear escalation paths, and aligned KPIs.
* Establish a unified service culture, playbooks, schedules, and standards across all locations and channels.
* Design and continuously improve support workflows to reduce time-to-resolution (TTR), increase first-contact resolution (FCR), and raise CSAT/NPS.
* Implement and optimise multi-channel communications (phone, email, and webchat), including staffing models, SLAs, and routing strategies.
* Create knowledge bases, macros, and self-serve content (FAQs, help centre articles, guided flows) to reduce inbound volume and empower customers.
* Lead root-cause analysis for repeat issues; collaborate with Product, Ecommerce, Operations, and Logistics to fix upstream causes.
* Select, implement, and optimise the customer support stack (e.g., CRM/helpdesk, telephony/IVR, chat, QA and analytics tools).
* Integrate systems to provide a single customer view (orders, returns, delivery status, payment, loyalty) and streamline agent workflows.
* Establish dashboards and reporting for real-time performance management and trend analysis.
* Define support strategy, SLAs, and staffing plans to meet seasonal demand and promotional peaks.
* Partner with Ecommerce & Marketing on proactive communications (order status updates, delivery notifications, returns guidance).
* Work with Operations & Logistics to improve post-purchase experiences (packaging, dispatch accuracy, returns processing).
* Champion CX across all touchpoints—website, checkout, fulfilment, returns, loyalty—prioritising fixes that reduce contact rate and improve trust.
Required Experience:
* Previous experience leading a customer support function in a retail, D2C or eCommerce environment.
* Ideally experience in large and ideally a start-up or early stage environment, where you’re very hands on without broader teams, infrastructure and tech in place.
* Any experience of broader customer experience across all customer touch points is an advantage
* Comfort working onsite (Stevenage) until fully onboarded, hybrid working later.
* Multi-channel operations expertise (phone/IVR, email, webchat) and familiarity with helpdesk/CRM platforms
* Process design & continuous improvement mindset
* Data-driven decision making: strong ability to define KPIs, build dashboards, interpret insights, and prioritise improvements.
* Excellent communication & stakeholder management, comfortable working cross-functionally and influencing at all levels.
* Customer-centric orientation with a track record of improving CSAT/NPS and reducing TTR/contact rates.
* Compliance awareness (UK GDPR) and best practices for secure, ethical customer data handling.
Initially onsite in Stevenage 5 days a week, then more flexibility once processes are set up.