Customer Experience Lead (inbound)

For uncompromising cat parents who want the best, KatKin goes all-in for cat health. We’re pioneering a new category of fresh cat food: 100% human-quality meat, made daily in Suffolk, fresh to your fridge. Where the competition cuts corners, catfishes customers and puts profits over health, we put nutrition and cat wellbeing first. No shortcuts. No secret recipes. We’re cutting the fluff, thinking fresh, growing rapidly and fighting for industry-wide change — and longer cat lives.

As a disruptor in the $185bn pet food market, KatKin was founded to challenge the low standards set by the traditional cat food industry, which is worth $50bn globally and is this fastest growing segment in the pet care market. The concept for fresh food is well established in the US, particularly in Dog, with the Farmers’ Dog surpassing >$1B in sales proving the scale of the opportunity. KatKin operates a direct-to-consumer (DTC) model supported by vertically integrated R&D, manufacturing, sales, and marketing teams. To date, we’ve delivered over 60 million fresh meals to over 250,000 happy, healthy cats across the UK. Our team of over 150 spans several locations, including London and our state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Haverhill, Suffolk.

Why you’ll love working with us

We’re a fast-paced startup making serious waves and bursting with energy. You’ll be surrounded by big creative thinkers and brand minds, a world-first team of cat scientists and nutritionists, business brains who’ve been there before, and a whole team of hardcore cat parents. All on a mission to make 100% fresh, real healthy food the new standard in cat care.

About your role

As Customer Experience Lead, you are responsible for the day-to-day performance and operational excellence of KatKin’s Inbound Customer Experience (CX) function. In addition, you will set the operational direction as we scale, building and evolving the CX roadmap to support long‑term service excellence and sustainable growth. Reporting into the Head of CX, you will lead our CX Managers, overseeing a team of Seniors and Cat Experts delivering customer support across phone, email, chat and socials. Your focus is ensuring the team consistently delivers best in class customer service while meeting defined service levels, satisfaction targets and productivity standards. This is a hands‑on operational leadership role.

Key ownership areas

• Team Leadership and Development: Directly manage and develop CX Managers, overseeing Seniors and Cat Experts. Coach CX Managers to lead high‑performing, accountable teams. Set clear expectations and ensure the team is enabled to deliver against KPIs. Drive a culture of ownership, accountability and continuous improvement.
• Team Performance Management: Embed structured performance management processes, including regular reviews, calibration and feedback. Hold CX Managers accountable for consistent team performance against KPIs and KatKin operating principles. Act decisively on underperformance, implementing clear improvement plans to protect service levels.
• Day‑to‑day Operational Excellence: Run the daily execution of the CX team across all inbound channels. Own staffing (including hiring), scheduling and workload distribution to maintain operational stability. Ensure consistent application and continuous improvement of policies, procedures and service standards.
• KPI Ownership, Delivery and Reporting: Own and consistently deliver on CX KPIs including SLAs, CSAT, cat expert quality and productivity metrics and compensation targets. Maintain strong reporting cadence and accountability to senior leadership.
• Crisis Management and Escalations: Own escalation processes for complex or high‑impact customer issues. Support CX Managers in handling escalations and ensure customers are given timely and thoughtful resolutions. Provide operational leadership during service disruptions or high‑volume periods.

Who you are:

• Experienced leader: You have 2-3 years of experience leading customer experience teams, driving performance and customer satisfaction in a fast paced environment. You have a proven track record of delivering against KPIs and managing managers. You know how to motivate and develop high‑performing frontline teams.
• Operationally Strong - Data & KPI Driven: You are confident in owning service KPIs such as SLAs, CSAT, QA and productivity. You can translate targets into clear expectations and consistent team delivery. You identify trends in KPIs and customer data to drive proactive improvements.
• Strong People Manager and Coach: You lead with clarity, accountability and empathy. You are skilled at performance management, coaching and developing managers and senior team members. You act quickly on underperformance while maintaining a supportive team culture.
• Calm and Customer Focused: You are comfortable handling complex escalations and making fair, thoughtful decisions. You bring sound judgment, calm and consistency, especially during high‑volume or challenging periods.
• Process Orientated and Quality‑Minded: You care deeply about delivering accurate, high quality support every time. You continuously strengthen team standards, service consistency and operational effectiveness through structured, scalable processes. You are comfortable working with customer support tools and performance systems, leveraging them to improve efficiency and quality.

What We Offer:

• Career-defining opportunity: Play a pivotal role in scaling our brand quickly.
• Competitive package: AXA Health Insurance, including optical and dental coverage.
• Culture and perks: A small, close‑knit team with no egos. 33 days of holiday each year (inclusive of bank holidays) plus your birthday off. 2‑week Work From Anywhere (WFA) policy. 12‑week maternity/paternity leave policy.