Customer Experience Manager at EXL South Africa

Job Description

• The Customer Experience Manager is responsible for driving customer experience performance and transformation across multiple client accounts. This role provides strategic leadership and oversight of customer experience initiatives, customer resolution programs, service recovery strategies, and continuous improvement efforts to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and business outcomes.
• This role requires a highly experienced leader with deep BPO contact center expertise, strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities, experience in customer experience transformation, and a strong understanding of emerging technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), customer analytics, and automation solutions.

Responsibilities

Key Competencies:

The successful candidate will demonstrate:

• Strategic leadership with the ability to influence senior business and client stakeholders.
• Advanced customer experience and customer journey management expertise.
• Strong analytical capability with experience identifying trends, opportunities, and root causes through customer and operational data.
• Expertise in BPO and contact center operations.
• Experience leading customer resolution and service recovery programs.
• Strong stakeholder management and relationship-building skills.
• Experience designing and implementing operational improvement initiatives.
• Sound understanding of AI technologies, automation, predictive analytics, and digital customer experience solutions.
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills.
• Strong leadership and coaching capabilities with experience managing specialist teams.
• Ability to manage multiple client portfolios and competing priorities.
• Excellent project and change management capabilities.
• Commercial awareness and understanding of customer experience drivers.

Key Responsibilities:

Customer Experience Strategy & Leadership:

• Develop and execute a customer experience excellence strategy across multiple client portfolios.
• Drive sustainable improvements in customer satisfaction, customer effort, service quality, complaint reduction, and customer loyalty metrics.
• Establish governance frameworks to monitor customer experience performance and identify improvement opportunities.
• Act as the organizational subject matter expert for customer experience best practices and industry trends.

Customer Insights & Root Cause Analysis:

• Lead comprehensive root cause investigations to identify drivers of customer dissatisfaction, repeat contacts, escalations, complaints, and poor customer outcomes.
• Leverage customer feedback, operational data, quality insights, complaints trends, and voice-of-customer programs to uncover improvement opportunities.
• Translate data-driven insights into actionable solutions and business recommendations.
• Present findings and recommendations to senior leadership and client stakeholders.

Solution Design & Execution:

• Design and implement customer experience improvement initiatives that deliver measurable business outcomes.
• Drive corrective action plans and continuous improvement programs across multiple operational functions.
• Partner with Operations, Quality, Training, and Support functions to ensure solutions are effectively embedded and sustained.
• Monitor initiative effectiveness and adjust strategies based on performance outcomes.

Customer Resolution & Service Recovery:

• Provide strategic oversight of customer complaints, escalations, and service recovery programs.
• Ensure customer resolution processes deliver efficient, fair, and customer-centric outcomes.
• Identify systemic issues impacting customer experience and implement preventative solutions.
• Promote a culture of customer advocacy and resolution excellence.

AI, Innovation & Digital Transformation:

• Champion the adoption of AI-enabled customer experience solutions and emerging technologies.
• Evaluate opportunities to leverage Generative AI, automation, predictive analytics, and digital tools to improve customer outcomes and operational efficiency.
• Partner with technology and business stakeholders to drive innovation initiatives.
• Ensure customer experience strategies align with future-state digital transformation objectives.

Stakeholder & Client Management:

• Develop strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders across multiple client environments.
• Influence senior leadership and client stakeholders to gain alignment and support for customer experience initiatives.
• Represent customer experience performance, challenges, and opportunities within executive and client governance forums.
• Act as a trusted advisor on customer experience strategy and improvement opportunities.

Leadership & Capability Development:

• Lead, coach, and develop direct reports to achieve exceptional performance.
• Build a high-performance culture focused on accountability, innovation, customer advocacy, and continuous improvement.
• Identify capability gaps and implement targeted development interventions.
• Support succession planning and talent development initiatives.

Success Measures:

The role will be accountable for achieving improvements across:

• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Complaint Reduction
• Escalation Reduction
• Resolution Effectiveness
• First Contact Resolution (FCR)
• Client Satisfaction
• Continuous Improvement Delivery
• AI and Innovation Adoption

Qualifications

Essential Requirements: 

• Minimum 8–10 years of progressive leadership experience in Customer Experience, Contact Centre Operations, Customer Resolution, Training, Operational Excellence, or Continuous Improvement.
• Significant experience within a BPO or customer contact center environment.
• Experience managing multiple client portfolios and stakeholder groups.
• Proven success driving customer experience performance improvements.
• Experience leading root cause analysis and business improvement initiatives.
• Strong project and change management experience.
• Advanced analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
• Demonstrated people leadership experience in managing specialist and cross-functional teams.
• Matric/Grade 12