Customer Experience-associate Director-full

**_Are you looking to develop a career in within one of the world’s largest Research Organisations?_**

We are recruiting for an Associate Director to join our successful Customer Experience research team as maternity cover. We work for leading global businesses on programmes to improve the experiences they deliver to their customers. Customer Experience is a dynamic and expanding field that has been revolutionised by technology and analytics in recent years while also requiring strong insight and consultancy skills to get behind the ‘So What’. It goes to the heart of some of the major challenges and drivers of business success today. We are proud that our work helps clients put the customer at the centre of their business, providing an understanding of how their customer experience matches up to their brand promise. Our output is used in service and product design, both at the strategic and tactical level.

**The role**:
As an Associate Director specialising in quantitative research within the CX Insights team, your role will be focused on building and maintaining strong client relationships and meeting clients’ needs to deliver business relevant insights. You will pick up the running of some existing accounts within the team, focussed around financial services and consumer healthcare. The wider team works across sector including telecoms, technology, travel, transport, leisure, utilities, B2B, financial services, employee and government sectors.

The main focus of the role will be as the day-to-day lead across three key ongoing accounts within CX, running and developing those in conjunction with the Research Director and other team members.

This role could be offered on a full time or part time basis for the duration of the initial one-year fixed term contract.

This role will offer hybrid working from our office 3 days a week and the rest from home.

**_What will I be doing?_**
This will be a varied and interesting role including:
- Working on a mix of quantitative research, including both ad hoc and tracking projects, with all focusing on the understanding, measurement, modelling and management of customer relationships.
- Working closely with three other key functions - our Project Management team, our Client Success team and our Centre of Excellence. All projects have allocated PMs, meaning your focus is on research design and impact. Our Client Success team are the bridge between clients and technology - your role is more on the design and insights side, while CS work to translate that to platform effectiveness. The COE offers many advisory capabilities such as analytical modelling, measuring CX maturity, target setting, to name but a few, and you will have the opportunity to partner with them on advisory work, meaning your role covers the full breadth of our CX offer.
- Supporting at workshops with client stakeholders to ensure the research is aligned to their needs and that action is driven off the back of the findings, at times working with our specialist CX advisory team.
- Supporting the team in generating new business, writing client proposals, being a key member of speculative client meetings and pitches.
- Insightful reporting will be a key element of the job and you will often working alongside graphic designers to create impactful client outputs.
- Coaching and developing the skills of junior members of the team, overseeing the quality of work of executives allocated to your accounts
- There are many opportunities to get involved in workstreams that suit your individual skills and interest, or which help to make CX famous. As examples these could be around the trial of new innovative research techniques, marketing activity, speaking at conferences, best practice quality processes or staff welfare.

**What do I need to bring with me?**
To be successful in this role you will need the following skills and experience:
- Proven quantitative experience in both ongoing and ad hoc work with a solid background in running and developing research programmes to achieve client objectives, and delivering impactful presentations.
- Passionate about Customer Experience
- at the very least you will be CX literate but ideally you will be an expert in the field. You know what you are talking about when it comes to “what makes a great customer experience” and - crucially - why;
- Consistently deliver with impact and maintain the highest professional standards.
- Ideally you’ll be experienced in working with technology platforms such as Medallia and Qualtrics (though note this role does not require technical/ programming skills
- You’ll also bring experience of international / multi-country programmes / projects;
- Ability to nurture client relationships, demonstrating a genuine interest in clients and their business issues.
- Experience and confidence in designing, planning and facilitating research projects.
- Confidence and track record in juggling multiple client needs.
- A willingness and