Head of Customer Experience & Service Design

Role overview

Strategic responsibilities

• Define the experience design vision and multi-year roadmap across physical, digital, and phygital channels.
• Build the experience design function, including methodology, standards, tools, governance, and talent.
• Turn customer intelligence, trends, and journey insights into differentiating design interventions for portfolio brands and the Amber loyalty programme.
• Set the design agenda for department stores, online flagships, Amber, new concepts, and other retail formats.
• Govern related investments and contribute design perspectives to business cases and OKRs.

Functional and leadership responsibilities

• Own end-to-end journey mapping and service design across the customer lifecycle, connecting strategy, CX design, UX, and UI.
• Deploy Design Thinking methods and onboard stakeholders to the approach.
• Design signature moments balancing creative differentiation with commercial impact.
• Collaborate with Customer Intelligence on personas, trends, insights, concept testing, and customer co-creation.
• Partner with teams to track and continuously improve key journeys, with clear ownership at each stage.
• Manage and coach the Experience Design unit; align its work with brand and business priorities.
• Work with Digital and IT to ensure designs are technically feasible and implemented.
• Work with stores, customer care, and frontline teams to ground design in operational reality.

Experience and qualifications

• 8–10+ years in experience or service design; luxury retail, hospitality, or premium omnichannel experience is ideal.
• Fluency in design frameworks, experience design, and UX design.
• Proven track record designing and scaling a customer or experience design practice.
• Proven ability to share knowledge, inspire, influence, and shape culture; outstanding collaboration abilities.
• Strong ability to connect business strategy, creative design, trends analysis, brand strategy, and financial outcomes.
• Ability to work strategically with senior stakeholders while contributing hands-on and guiding a team.
• Retail experience is mandatory.