Product Manager - Customer Services

Overview

We believe anyone can improve their home to make life better. From our Southampton Store Support office (SSO) we equip our stores, our people, and our whole business with everything it takes to help our millions of customers create a home they’ll love.

Role Purpose

As a Product Manager within the wider Supply Chain, Fulfilment and Customer Services domain, you will initially be responsible for working with stakeholders from across B&Q and Kingfisher to identify and deliver technology that supports the strategic transformation of our Customer Services experience. Working alongside the Customer Services Transformation Manager, you will create a prioritised backlog of initiatives that use technology to improve our proposition with input from stakeholders from across B&Q, Kingfisher and our BPO partner. Successful delivery of this transformation will help us improve customer and colleague experience, reduce operational costs, and ensure a strong technology foundation to support future development.

Key Accountabilities / Responsibilities

• Develop and deliver against a prioritised backlog for tech development working closely with key business stakeholders and aligning to the B&Q strategic priorities, supported through knowledge of retail and customer service/customer care best practice, trends and innovation.
• Support early design work alongside the Architecture Team to estimate effort & cost and identify appropriate delivery route for new requirements (including creating new projects, changes to existing products, and through our rapid response channel for small changes and service requests).
• Use data and research to identify and quantify opportunities, including spending time in our retail and logistics networks, as well as with our contact centres to truly immerse yourself in our operations.
• Work closely with Group Technology teams to provide input from B&Q to support planning and prioritisation.
• Prepare initiatives for funding through the approval process, optimising returns on the B&Q technology investment and keeping within the budget (capex, revex and opex) with support from Finance and Programme teams.
• Identify innovation that may be of interest to B&Q and the Kingfisher Group and collaborate around potential adoption opportunities.
• Support with the selection of technology providers (e.g., software, devices, infrastructure) as required.
• Help create an agile / product-led culture within the B&Q business, particularly within business areas involved in technology projects – demonstrating how technology can help deliver value and outcomes iteratively.
• Support the identification of improvements that can be made to ways of working around B&Q and Kingfisher group in developing and deploying technology.

Key Business Relationships

This role will be based within the B&Q Technology Team and will require you to build effective working relationships with the stakeholders across B&Q, Kingfisher, our BPO and software partners. You will need to develop a good understanding of the business processes in these areas and the technology that supports them, to enable you to identify and understand how technology can enable and drive better ways of working. The role will also work closely with various teams in Group Technology to represent B&Q in planning, design and prioritisation discussions, as well as being part of the relevant governance and prioritisation forums. The role will also be outward looking and understand the broader retail technology landscape including recent innovation and how other retailers are using technology to drive a better customer experience and operations. This will require developing relationships with new and existing technology vendors/partners. The role is a key part of the B&Q Product & Technology team which owns the technology roadmap for B&Q to enable the future growth of the business, ensure efficiencies and create competitive advantage.

What We Need Skills & Experience

• Experience of digital product management and the delivery of tech initiatives.
• Preferred experience in working with customer services and contact centre teams and their associated technology platforms.
• Experience in backlog management and prioritisation frameworks.
• Demonstrable evidence of building relationships and influencing across work levels, up to and including senior leadership.
• Business case development and budget management.
• Track record of being a structured problem solver able to see, develop and focus on the bigger picture.
• Be a product thought leader and help to embed a product-led culture in B&Q.
• Comfortable navigating with ambiguity to identify opportunities for technology to support with the business strategy.

Whilst this role is a Product Manager role, we would also love to hear from you if you have delivered software in a product‑led/agile way as a Delivery or Project Manager.

What’s in it for me?

As part of a great team, you’ll be valued for who you are. We’re committed to making B&Q more diverse and representative of the communities we serve, where everyone can feel they belong and have equal opportunities. You will have access to a range of networks that represent our colleagues and allies and help us to continue to put diversity and inclusion at the heart of our business. We also recognise that wellness means different things to different people, and we want to help colleagues be at their best and feel well by offering a range of benefits to help you. As well as a competitive salary, our benefits package includes an award‑winning pension scheme, bonus, ShareSave options, 6.6 weeks holiday, payroll giving, an Employee Assistance Programme, shopping discounts, colleague wellbeing benefits and lots more!

So we can support you during the application or interview process, please contact recruitment@b-and-q.co.uk for any recruitment adjustments.