Established in the 1930s as a trading business, Al-Futtaim Group today is one of the most diversified and progressive, privately held regional businesses headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Structured into five operating divisions; automotive, financial services, real estate, retail and healthcare; employing more than 35,000 employees across more than 20 countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, Al-Futtaim Group partners with over 200 of the world's most admired and innovative brands. Al-Futtaim Group’s entrepreneurship and relentless customer focus enables the organization to continue to grow and expand; responding to the changing needs of our customers within the societies in which we operate. By upholding our values of respect, excellence, collaboration and integrity; Al-Futtaim Group continues to enrich the lives and aspirations of our customers each and every day Overview of the role: This role is responsible for the end-to-end customer journey, ensuring customer centric decisions and processes are followed instore and online to achieve and maintain customer service excellence and further drive sales. Driving excellence across all customer touch points, defining our customer profile and mapping a seamless customer journey.

The job holder is responsible for customer service excellence across 7 markets. Markets covered are: UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait, KSA.

What you will do:- Description of Accountability: Business Planning

• Work to define and shape the customer experience strategy across all products, platforms and systems
• Work cross-functionally with peers/colleagues and teams across M&S to align methodologies, insights, and prioritize customer experience enhancements
• The role will connect all customer journey channels including all functional and departmental units, ensuring full collaboration
• Work with key stakeholders and assess customer experience efforts for ongoing opportunities to improve operational efficiencies
• Exhibit a deep understanding of the user experience and the tone of our brand, drive the customer experience with new ideas that are product focused.
• Understand customers’ perspectives and advocate for customer value company-wide / share insights / drive results as a customer advocate.
• Engage with the AFG contact center to driving Brand understanding and periodic training
• Ensure great knowledge and commercial understanding on the NPS process internal and with external competitors to better drive engagement with customers
• Right Product for Right customer in the right place

People & Commercial

• Leads the representatives in store who will act as ambassadors driving the commercial customer agenda (NPS, BLUE, Serve Sell, Create Magic)
• Develop a specific action plan for ambassadors to ensure the drive of customer spend, retention and loyalty in all markets by all ambassadors and sales teams
• Develop creative opportunities to drive sales in a customer focused, cost effective and efficient way
• Support customer journey ambassadors and sales team of the store with coaching and sharing of best practice
• Ensures an excellent level of customer service is always a priority by executing and achieving customer excellence through regular assessment, coaching and follow-up with team - maintains visibility and leads by example on the selling floor
• Work with HRBP to deliver targeted people solutions to create employee engagement, compliance to HR Policies and local legislation
• Listens to and actively seeks feedback from customers on service standards and uses the information to drive improvement
• Oversee and support resolution of customer queries / complaints
• Ensures customer complaints are dealt appropriately with in a timely manner and risks are identified.
• Walks the customer journey ensuring a high execution of visual standards across the store.

Corporate and Brand

• Ensure M&S Brand integrity at all markets, levels and touch points
• Promote the M&S behaviours and brand values to ensure company policies and procedures are followed; including behaviour set out in the M&S code of ethics and ensures the business complies with all relevant legislation, regulation and good corporate governance practices

Customer Profiling

• Develop and create a detailed customer profile of the M&S customer to gain a greater understanding of M&S customers and identify opportunities to improve the customer experience and build customer loyalty
• Support with customer profiling action plan to guide in M&S MENA brand positioning in order to build clear targeting tools and enhance the customer experience.
• Provide relevant customer data and help enrich our customer database by deriving data from social media, the customer digital footprint and their purchase history to align the customer profile
• Collect, analyze, and interpret customer interactions data to identify requirements and information useful in optimizing customer experience.

Required Skills to be successful:-

• Experience in a multi-channel and multi-geography retail environment
• Understanding of customer research and the ability to recommend change/ implement new initiatives to improve the customer experience.
• Deep expertise and passion of the retail industry
• Ability to deal effectively with pressure and stress
• Must have excellent interpersonal and communication skills both oral and written
• Excellent organizational skills and ability to show initiative
• Self-motivated, reliable and confident
• Positive attitude and ability to work well with others
• Good knowledge of MS Office products

What equips you for the role:

• 8+ years of experience in the retail industry of which a minimum of 5 years should be at managerial level.
• A results-driven, energetic individual who values teamwork as an integral part of achieving great results
• Positive attitude, determined, energetic and taking ownership
• Ability to lead people in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural environment
• Excellent communication and customer service skills
• Decision making and stake holder management skills

About Al-Futtaim Retail Al-Futtaim Retail has established itself as one of the leaders in Retail across the Middle East, Africa & Asia over the past 30 years. We have developed partnerships with some of the biggest and most respected Brands in the world including IKEA, ACE and Toys R Us in the Middle East and the Inditex Group of Brands (Zara, Mango, Bershka and P&B) across Asia. We are also one of the largest Global partners of Marks and Spencer’s in both regions with over 75 stores offering both fashion & food options.

Most recently we have been responsible for bringing brands to the Middle East for the first time with the exciting launches of Watsons and B&Q and we aim to continue to be agile and adaptive to our markets with new launches and further development. For this to be possible we aim to recruit the best talent from all backgrounds who will continue to challenge and develop our diverse workforce which includes over 100 nationalities across 12 countries. Join us today and make a difference…