Customer Experience Business Partner

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 Senior CX Manager, this role is responsible for planning and delivering multiple improvement projects on behalf of the Commercial, Customer and Communities Directorate to drive improvements in the Customer Experience. The role is responsible for ensuring their projects achieve the desired outcomes, driving the value for money of projects whilst offering maximum benefits to customers and colleagues. The role will share insight from the rest of the business about the current customer experience, and to ensure these are shared with stakeholders as part of the reporting frameworks. Post holders will continually review, challenge, improve or change current processes to deliver efficient, robust improvements

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Proactively seek feedback and insight from the rest of the business, for example by attending Stations, Fleet and Guards briefings to learn about observations on the current customer experience and to ensure these are shared with stakeholders as part of the reporting frameworks.
• Identify deficiencies / gaps in the experience and work with the appropriate individuals / teams to set objectives and improve the experience.
• Works closely with key stakeholders and specialist teams teams to determine the direction and desired outcomes from improvement initiatives
• Forge cross functional relationships and work closely with key internal and external stakeholders 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
• Identifies 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.
• Identifies risks and opportunities to projects (including any anticipated resistance to change) and determines appropriate mitigation, ensuring that BAU performance levels are maintained throughout
• Provides expert support as required to other parts of the CX function
• Identifies opportunities within their projects and shares and ascertains best practice with other functional project teams and across the CX directorate
• Works with front line teams to support change implementation
• Manage the relationship with the Customer Council
• Organise/co-ordinate the Meet the Manager arrangements across the network

You'll need to be:

• Educated to a good standard of education together with an understanding of working within a trade union environment is required
• Holder of either a project management qualification or project management experience in a relevant industry (preferred).
• Relevant experience in the successful support of programmes or projects within in the rail industry is desirable.
• Has a strong commercial focus and is financially astute
• Must have the 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
• Experience of managing process change is desirable.

Working Pattern

Working on average 37 hours per week with out of hours on-call commitments. 

Standard office hours but with some requirement to work as per business needs

Travel between London / Southampton 

Applicants who require a visa, must have at least 6 months remaining at the time of their appointment.

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/