Head of Customer Experience Strategy – Bus Franchising in Birmingham

West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) is seeking an exceptional customer experience leader to shape and deliver the customer vision at the heart of one of the UK's most significant public transport transformations. As Head of Customer Experience Strategy, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring that customers remain at the forefront of every decision made throughout the Bus Franchising Programme. Acting as the organisation's customer champion, you will define and embed the customer strategy, commitments and end‑to‑end customer proposition, ensuring they are fully integrated into the design and delivery of future bus services across the West Midlands.

Key responsibilities

• Provide customer experience expertise, insight and challenge to the Bus Franchising programme and workstreams
• Support the Bus Reform Director to ensure customer commitments are a key part of decision making at all important milestones of the programme
• Ensure the WMCA delivers a clear and financially sustainable integrated customer proposition for the delivery of bus franchising
• Engage and support operational teams to embed customer commitments across each Franchise tranche
• Responsible for customer specific budgets
• Work closely with other accountable leads in the customer workstream, ensuring that insight is commissioned, used and embedded in a strategic way
• Support the delivery of a relevant and effective public engagement throughout the phased approach to bus franchising

Essential qualifications / experience

• Strong track record of achieving growth through the delivery of customer experience improvements
• Successful experience of developing customer experience strategies
• Success in leading effective multi‑partner engagement in an organisation with complex governance
• Strong track record of developing collaborative and productive partnerships
• Successful experience of driving customer focused and innovative service quality improvements utilising comprehensive data, customer insight and technological transformation
• Engaging and impactful leadership skills
• Clear communicator
• Customer focused
• Educated to degree level or with equivalent levels of experience

Contract

2 year fixed‑term contract (FTC).

Location

16 Summer Lane with at least 2 days a week spent in the office.

Salary and benefits

We advertise salary ranges, with new appointments typically starting at the lowest salary point. In exceptional cases, the salary point may be adjusted to secure the best candidate. This approach allows for potential year‑on‑year salary increases, offering progression and appropriate rewards to employees. Requests for salaries above the maximum advertised range will not be considered.

• Local Government Pension Scheme (one of the most generous pension schemes in the UK)
• Shared Cost Additional Voluntary Contribution scheme where you can build an additional pot of money alongside your pension with contributions exempt from Income Tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs)
• 28 days paid annual leave (with an option to purchase more) + Statutory days
• EV car benefit scheme
• Healthcare plans
• Discounted gym membership, will writing, and mortgage advice
• Option to buy a bicycle, including e‑bikes and adapted pedal cycles, at a discounted rate
• 3 days of paid leave each year to volunteer
• Interest‑free financing through SmartTech to buy the latest technology
• Discounted shopping with over 2,000 big‑name retailers, and more
• Boundless unlocks unlimited entry to top‑rated UK attractions and loads of extra benefits and discounts
• Eye Care Scheme, offering a free eye test and a financial contribution towards your glasses

Equal opportunity, diversity and reasonable adjustments

WMCA holds diversity accreditations, such as the RACE Code Quality Mark, Armed Forces Covenant (Gold status) and is recognised as one of the Inclusive Top 50 Employers and The Times Top 50 Employers for Women. We are a Disability Confident Employer with ‘Leader’ status, committed to interviewing applicants with disabilities who meet all the essential role criteria. We are also a Ban the Box employer, which means we do not ask about criminal convictions at the initial application stage and only ask after an offer is made as part of our onboarding checks. We recognise that certain groups, such as women and people of colour, may be less likely to apply for roles if they feel they do not meet all the requirements, and therefore encourage individuals who are passionate about the role to still apply. We also provide reasonable adjustments to enable people with a disability to access the recruitment process and comply with the rights granted under the Equality Act 2010.