Customer Experience Manager

Main purpose

The successful incumbent will be responsible for defining, owning and continuously improving the end-to‐end customer journey across the company’s products (Store Card, personal loans, digital self‐service, insurance) and channels (web, mobile, in-branch/partner retailers). At RCS, this role touches both financial services and retail finance, so a key emphasis is on experience in digital credit, self-service, partner-retail interactions and loyalty/retention.

Key Responsibilities

• Map the full customer journey for RCS’s core offerings (Store Card, Loans, Insurance, Mobicred) — from first awareness through application → on-boarding → usage → servicing → renewals/retention. 
• Identify key “moments of truth” and friction points (e.g., online loan application process, card activation, checkout with store card, self‐service portal login, mobile app interactions) and drive initiatives to reduce effort and improve satisfaction.
• Define, monitor and report on CX metrics: e.g., Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Effort Score (CES), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), digital channel abandonment rates, retention/churn, conversion rates from application to approval, onboarding time, self‐service adoption.
• Lead Voice-of-Customer (VoC) programmes: solicit feedback such as surveys, interviews, customer forums, monitor complaints and resolution data, extract insights to feed into journey improvement, product design and operations.
• Collaborate cross-functionally: work with Product, Digital/UX, Marketing, Retail Partnerships, Operations, Risk & Compliance to ensure a consistent and delightful customer experience across channels and products. 
• Own improvement initiatives: e.g., rollout of new self-service features on RCS App and Self-Service Portal which the company already offers. 
• Develop pilot programs, test & learn, scale successful initiatives.
• Define and embed CX standards and culture: train front-line teams such as customer service, collections, retail partner and sales staff on CX principles, create CX champions, ensure CX is part of the decision-making around product launches, channel changes, partner integrations.

Partner with UX/Digital teams to ensure that digital touchpoints are optimised for usability, accessibility, and alignment with customer journey needs:

• Present regularly to senior leadership on CX performance, key improvement backlog, business-case for investment.
• Budgeting & resource planning: define CX function budget, resource needs and ensure ROI on CX initiatives.
  

Key Performance Indicators:

• NPS / CSAT improvement across key segments e.g., first‐time loan customers, store card customers, self‐service users.
• Reduction in customer-effort score or reduction in key friction/abandonment metrics
• Increase in self‐service adoption and reduction in cost-to-serve.
• Improvement in retention/churn for credit products 
• Cross‐channel consistency metrics: e.g., % of customers reporting a “seamless experience” across digital and retail partner checkout.
• Time to resolution of complaints/feedback items and % of feedback items addressed via improvement initiatives.
• Business outcomes: revenue impact via improved experience e.g., higher approvals, higher usage, higher spend per customer, up‐sell of insurance/loans.
• ROI on CX initiatives e.g. cost savings, increased lifetime value, improved partner satisfaction.

Key Competencies

• Customer-centric mindset: empathy, how to design for end-users, reduce effort, increase delight.
• Project management skills: able to run improvement initiatives from concept through to delivery, evaluation and scale.
• Excellent interpersonal and influencing skills: able to work across functions, manage stakeholder relationships 
• Strong analytical skills: comfortable with data, metrics, managing dashboards, deriving insights and presenting to senior leadership.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree or Advanced degree in business, marketing, human‐centered design, psychology or similar
• 5–8+ years of experience in customer experience, journey mapping or digital product/UX in a consumer-facing business preferably financial services or retail
• Understanding of digital channels, omnichannel retail environment, mobile apps, self-service portals.
• Familiarity with financial services industry/regulation especially in South Africa 
• Knowledge of UX and usability best practice, or ability to partner closely with UX teams.