Continuous Improvement Manager Watford, East of England, England
Job description
We're ASOS. We blend our flair for fashion with our love of cutting-edge technology, but more importantly were interested in how we can bring the best out of you.
We exist to give people the confidence to be whoever they want to be, and that goes for our people too. At ASOS, you're free to be your true self without judgment, and channel your creativity into a platform used by millions.
Through our Fashion with Integrity strategy we are driving diversity, equity and inclusion across every aspect of ASOS and ensuring every ASOSer can be their authentic self at work. We want our people to be whoever they want to be, because we believe people who bring their best selves to work, do their best work.
Continuous Improvement Manager
Location: Leavesden
Department: Customer Change
Level: Guide
Reports to: Senior Customer Improvement Manager
About the Role
- Leading large scale improvement changes with clearly defined Return on investment.
- Coaching their team (and those in the wider Customer Care function) to ensure that our continuous Improvement activity focuses on the right opportunities, is approached with a data led lens, uses best in class methodologies and that each member of the teams improvement activity is both optimised and supported. This coaching role will provide support and guidance to team members so that we are improving the customers end to end journey and/or driving Operational efficiency and effectiveness.
- Providing subject matter expertise on ASOS strategic change and at times being aligned to new technical initiatives
- Being a skilled and effective coach/leader, providing guidance on the full lifecycle of continuous Improvement from approach, analysis, delivery and measurement in-line with appropriate Lean/Six Sigma and general change methodologies, as appropriate to the change.
- Defining, creating and maintaining a change dashboard and will have the overview position of managing the benefits all changes from their own delivery and across the team.
- They will also act as wider coach and role model across Customer Care to facilitate a Continuous Improvement mindset & culture, to support our Model office.
- Championing, enabling and developing the growth and best practise sharing of a talent pool of yellow/greenbelt accredited in Lean/Six sigma thinkers, providing guidance, encouragement and structure. This will ensure that we become well versed in the identification of qualified insights/customer friction points as an enabler to the CC Customer Improvement Board.
- The CI Manager will also be a lynch pin to engage with other teams across ASOS where change may have a positive impact on the customer journey and could reduce our customers the need to seek help, and/or improve propositions removing customer friction.
About the Team
Our Customer Care vision is to deliver a frictionless service proposition, whereby through locally relevant, digital first interactions, we deliver truly value-led experiences. The quality of our Customer Care and the after-care experience is core to our brand proposition. This is underpinned by our Customer Experience Principles which are fundamental to our transformational journey. Our principles guide us in what our “fashion-loving twenty-somethings” care about the most when it comes to help and support and are embedded in everything that we do.
The Customer Change function sits within Customer Care (CC) and is the conduit for all change affecting Customer Care. We forge strong, lasting working relationships with key partners within CC and across the wider ASOS organisation to manage and deliver change and transformation. The current areas of responsibility across Customer Change include:
- Customer experience strategy & management
- Continuous improvement management & operational readiness
- ASOS growth change demand, PMO & operations change delivery
- CC strategy transformation & delivery
We review change end to end, from design through to post implementation, using a controlled impact assessment process to evaluate change with considerations to our customers, people, technology, and processes. We work hard to push the CC strategic change agenda, prioritising and delivering with our partners across the business as well as controlling and governing change which is generated elsewhere from the wider business. We have a defined process to manage all change regardless of where it originates and where needed, we provide governance and management through project professionals who track and deliver change based on the full project lifecycle.
What You’ll be Doing
Strategic Thinking
- Creating a CI Roadmap with clear view of which Problem/Friction points are in discovery through to delivery/measurement with their expected benefit and measurement KPIs
- Actively promoting/nurturing and shaping through coaching activities at a group or individual level (at both a direct report and wider ASOS CC level) on how to lead continuous Improvement.
- Develop strong relationships and influence business stakeholders, including; Customer Journey Manager, Knowledge Management, Customer Change and wider business contacts e.g. Delivery Solutions, Delivery Partners, Returns Working Group, Operations and Planning
Functional Knowledge
- Be expert in all aspects of customer journey and the functions and elements which can influence and improve those journeys
- Using LEAN and Six Sigma methodology, to identify and quantify critical customer friction points through detailed root cause analysis
- Define, create (with I&A resource) and monitor key metrics to show benefit from Continuous Improvements and Initiatives.
Business Expertise
- Able to define, create and nurture a continuous Improvement culture that identifies and challenges friction for our customers, advisors and network of CI champions
- Fosters a customer centric approach to continuous improvement
- Good negotiator to influence other teams roadmaps where key enablers to improve processes and customer outcomes
- Leading medium to large scale changes and overseeing improvements agreed via the CC Customer improvement board
Leadership
- Leads, define, propose and business case improvements that will drive up brand and Customer experience, to reduce business churn
- Leading a team of CI professionals working in an Agile environment to deliver collaboratively and at pace
- Bring to life with data/examples and their friction points in order to stimulate and drive change
Problem Solving
- Uses Data and analysis from a variety of sources and guides the analysis of this to then generate ideas of scale. Will propose, recommend, review options and build robust business cases which illustrate benefit to key CC metrics such as TNPS and Customer Resolution Rate
- Work closely with I&A and core strategic pillar squads to identify, decipher, articulate and create well defined improvement activities to the core journey, based on fact
Nature of Impact
- Collaborating with all relevant functions across ASOS to ensure that Improvements initiated by any team, support insights and will drive a holistically improved Customer Experience, that is measurable and impactful.
Area of Impact
- Work collaboratively, guiding key stakeholders across the business to improve our customer end to end journeys to improve brand, reputation and reduce churn
- Engage and Challenge teams who are responsible for areas that need fixing or improving to define and implement appropriate changes
Interpersonal Skills
- A great networker and collaborator, bringing together pockets of insights, knowledge and teams and galvanise key stakeholders across depts and functions into action, to improve each element of the journey
Who We’d Like to Meet
Essential
-
Experience in identifying and driving Continuous Improvement
Confident to define, create and nurture a continuous Improvement culture that identifies and challenges friction for our customers, advisors and network of CI champions - A great Coach, collaborator and networker
- Good negotiator to influence other teams roadmaps where key enablers to improve the customers end to end journey
- Strong analytical skills, familiar and confident with different sets of data and how to identify trends and root cause
- Studying or accredited at green belt or above in both Lean/Six sigma methodologies
- Confident and able to oversee and shape a wide range of change initiatives at any time
- A clear, confident and engaging communicator
- A great networker and collaborator, bringing together pockets of insights, knowledge and teams and galvanise key stakeholders into action
- Focused and driven, happy to challenge the status quo and propose unique improvements to drive success
- Takes lead, shapes and owns the overall view of improvements, that will enhance the journey, holds others to account.
Desirable
- Questioning to understand every facet of an issue or problem and able to propose improvements that are both quick and longer term
- Comfortable with numbers and how to navigate and distil them into a simple Dashboard with clear and concise summaries
Company values / culture
- A genuine passion and curiosity about our customers, able to understand each step of a journey from a customers shoes and understand how each element impacts on the overall customers view
- An energy and presence that nurtures focus and a desire to drive change
- Able to work in a fast paced and agile environment
- Ability to juggle multiple priorities and stakeholders at the same time
- Ability to influence and succinctly put their point of view across
- A collaborative mindset, someone who is a good listener and open to feedback & learning
Additional Information
What’s in it for you?
- Employee discount (hello ASOS discount!)
- ASOS Develops (personal development opportunities across the business)
- Employee sample sales
- Access to a huge range of LinkedIn learning materials
- 25 days paid annual leave + an extra day for your birthday
- Discretionary performance related bonus scheme
- Private medical care scheme
- Flexible benefits allowance - which you can choose to take as extra cash, or use towards other benefits
Our Commitments
We want our people to be whoever they want to be. That’s why we’re committed to creating a truly inclusive culture at ASOS, but how are we doing it?
We’re proud members of Inclusive Companies, are Disability Confident Committed and have signed the Business in the Community Race at Work Charter. We’ve also recently been placed 8th in the Inclusive Top 50 Companies Employer List too.
We have several employee networks that operate as safe spaces, to help support and celebrate our people - find out more here.
Do you need any reasonable adjustments? Our recruitment team will be happy to support you in the best way possible if you feel comfortable raising this. It’s also our policy to interview all candidates with a disability who meet the minimum requirements for roles they have applied to.
If you have any questions about the policies we have in place to support our employees (e.g. our parental leave approach), just let our Talent team know.
