Customer Experience Business Partner (Information)

Who are we?

South Western Railway (SWR) operates over 1,500 services each weekday across the network and employs more than 5,000 people. We provide easy and convenient mobility, connecting people and communities in South West London, southern counties of England, and the Isle of Wight.

Join our team and help us continue to bring people together to get the most out of life.

About the job

Reporting to the Customer Information Strategy Lead (CISL), this role is responsible for planning and delivering improvement projects in the Customer Information Strategy. The role is responsible for ensuring customer information projects achieve the desired outcomes, drive value for money, and offer the maximum benefit to customers and colleagues. The role will share our customer insight with the rest of the business and take on board colleague feedback on customer information and projects they are working on. The post holder will continually review, challenge, improve or change current processes to deliver efficient and robust improvements. The post holder will be required to have excellent project management skills to track and manage delivery of the Customer Information Strategy, and SWR's involvement in the SISJ programme, reporting to the CISL and the Customer Information Working Group.

The role feeds into SWR's purpose by improving information during times of disruption and therefore enhancing customers' trust in the network. They will also bring colleagues together to improve as a collective.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Passionate about improving the customer experience, with a specific focus on delivering improvements to information during disruption.
• Proactively seek feedback and insight from the rest of the business, for example by analysing customer research data, attending Incident Learning Reviews, and participating in other functions' forums including operational calls.
• Identify deficiencies / gaps in the experience related to information and work with the CISL and internal / external stakeholders to refine the Customer Information Strategy, set objectives and improve the customer experience with information.
• Work closely with key stakeholders and specialist teams to support the delivery of the Customer Information Strategy. This includes the industry Smarter Information Smarter Journeys (SISJ) programme; the role holder will be responsible for managing SWR's involvement in SISJ projects.
• Apply knowledge of rail industry information and retail systems to engage in technical conversations and liaise with suppliers to deliver enhancements.
• Coordinate the administration of the Customer Information Working Group alongside the CISL, including collating updates from various stakeholders and teams, updating the Customer Information Strategy project plan, and recording minutes and actions.
• Successfully deliver all projects and tasks set out in the Customer Information Strategy, as assigned by the CISL, according to key project milestones and SWR business objectives. Communicate progress against projects and tasks in line with appropriate governance structures, to the CISL and key stakeholders.
• Forge cross-functional relationships to influence the delivery and outcomes of any investment, recommended process change, or project delivery, ensuring that valuable insight and input is gathered for relevant projects.
• Identify improvement opportunities, suggests new initiatives or widens project scopes that drive forward SWR business objectives, reviewing issues and opportunities through all customer feedback channels to identify necessary improvements.
• Identify risks and opportunities to projects (including any anticipated resistance to change) and determines appropriate mitigation, ensuring that BAU performance levels are maintained throughout.
• Provide expert support as required to other parts of the Customer Strategy function.
• Identify opportunities within their projects and shares and ascertains best practice with other functional project teams and across the CX directorate.
• Work with front line teams to support change implementation.

You'll need to be:

• Educated to a good standard of education.
• Has a strong commercial focus and is financially astute.
• Ability to work independently or as part of a team and successfully adapt to changing priorities.
• Outstanding communication, presentation and influencing skills are a must, including the ability to effectively communicate proposals and strategies to senior leaders across the business.

Beneficial:

• Holder of either a project management qualification or project management experience in a relevant industry.
• Relevant experience in the successful support of programmes or projects within the rail industry.
• Experience of managing process change.

Working pattern

On average you will work 37 hours across 5 days per week, typically, office hours.

The Reward

In return we offer a competitive salary and a variety of valuable benefits, including:

• Free duty and leisure travel on SWR services for employees
• Free leisure travel for spouse/partner and dependants (criteria dependent)
• 75% discount on many other train operating companies
• Full training and support with development
• Excellent pension scheme

We all belong at SWR. Our vision is to provide an inclusive environment for all colleagues, ensuring all candidates have an equal opportunity to access meaningful employment.

We value our differences such as age, gender, LGBTQIA+, ethnicity, religion, and disability. We maintain a zero tolerance towards any form of prejudice towards our colleagues, customers, and future talent.

We celebrate and encourage diversity of thought, progressive ways of working and seeing all our colleagues grow and thrive.

If you require additional support to complete your application due to a disability or neurodivergent condition, for example, dyslexia, dyspraxia, or autism, please follow the links below.  We encourage you to share any additional needs you may require so we can provide a fair and equal process for all who apply.

https://exceptionalindividuals.com/neurodiversity/

https://www.healthassured.org/blog/neurodiversity/