Home. There’s no place like it. And there’s no feeling like helping people create the joy of feeling truly at home. At Dunelm, that’s what we do. We’re the UK's number one choice for homewares because we make home life lovelier for our customers. And the caring and supportive culture we've created makes this a place you'll feel right at home too.
We are the UK’s Number One homewares retailer offering c100,000 products building a consumer-focused total retail business that delights customers through our multichannel operation.
We are ambitious in our plans to drive further expansion of the business to more customers, shopping more frequently, with more choice, enhanced digital and physical services, and new capabilities to innovate and operate at pace in a fast-changing landscape. In developing the business for the long-term benefit of our customers, we are investing in our supply chain, stores and technology to improve the customer proposition as we move forward.
Department Overview
Dedicated to embedding the Customer within the broader Dunelm business. From directly in the customer team in knowing the customer, to building key strategic focus areas and then work to cross functionally with Commercial, Stores, Supply chain etc to delivery seamless omnichannel experiences that delight, support customers through purchase and build loyalty across Dunelm.com website, the App or through Stores.
The Head of Customer strategy and experiences is a senior, transformation leadership role responsible for defining and shaping the organisation’s end-to-end customer strategy and experience.
This role will establish a clear, evidence-based customer proposition across all channels, develop a structured framework for measuring and managing customer experience, and translate strategic intent into a practical, phased transformation roadmap.
A critical objective is to embed the outputs into the organisation, enabling a successful transition to a permanent capability.
1. Customer Strategy & Experience Definition
- Develop a customer strategy, articulating target customer segments, needs, and experience principles.
- Define the end-to-end customer experience vision, spanning all key journeys (e.g. discovery, purchase, fulfilment, service).
- Identify the implications of the customer strategy on proposition, experience design, and commercial priorities.
2. Baseline & Measurement Framework
- Establish a baseline view of current omni-channel customer experience, including:
- Key journeys across store, digital, and contact channels
- Existing proposition strengths and gaps
- Define a simple, scalable framework to track customer experience, such as:
- Journey-based metrics (e.g. conversion, drop-off, satisfaction)
- Core KPIs (e.g. NPS, CSAT, repeat purchase, fulfilment experience)
- Introduce practical tools and dashboards to monitor performance and progress.
3. Experience & Proposition Architecture
- Translate strategy into a clearly defined customer proposition and experience architecture, including:
- Target experience standards by journey
- Design principles and guardrails
- Facilitate cross-functional workshops to co-create and refine the experience vision, engaging stakeholders across:
- Trading, Digital, Marketing, Supply Chain, Stores, Customer Care, Technology
- Ensure alignment between customer experience, commercial goals, and brand positioning.
4. Target State Alignment (Process, Tech & People)
- Define the target state operating model implications of the customer experience vision across:
- Processes (e.g. fulfilment, service recovery, returns)
- Technology (e.g. platforms, data, customer insight capability)
- People & capability (e.g. roles, skills, behaviours)
- Identify critical dependencies and enablers required to deliver the target experience.
5. Transformation Roadmap (1–5 Year Horizon)
- Develop a phased roadmap showing how the customer experience and proposition evolve over time:
- Short-term (Year 1): foundational improvements and quick wins
- Medium-term (Years 2–3): core proposition and capability shifts
- Long-term (Years 4–5): differentiated, best-in-class experience
- Link roadmap phases to clear KPI improvements and outcomes over time.
- Provide clarity on sequencing, investment priorities, and measurable benefit realisation.
6. Risk Identification & Management
- Identify and document key risks to delivery, including:
- Customer detriment risks
- Operational or technology constraints
- Change fatigue and capability gaps
- Establish a risk tracking and mitigation approach linked to the roadmap and governance.
7. Governance & Transformation Guidelines
- Design and implement governance frameworks to support customer experience transformation, including:
- Decision-making structures
- Design authority / sign-off processes
- Clear accountabilities across functions
- Develop guidelines and principles to ensure consistency in future experience changes:
- Customer-centric design standards
- Proposition development guardrails
- Enable ongoing governance beyond the life of the project.
8. Embedding & Handover
- Ensure all frameworks, tools, and approaches are embedded within core business processes.
- Support the definition of a permanent customer experience leadership role and capability.
- Deliver a structured handover plan, including:
- Documentation
- Key artefacts (journey maps, frameworks, roadmap, KPIs)
- Stakeholder alignment
- Build internal capability to sustain and evolve the customer experience strategy.
- Proven experience leading customer experience or transformation programmes in retail or omni-channel environments.
- Strong understanding of customer journeys, CX metrics, and experience design.
- Experience aligning strategy to operating models (process, tech, people).
- Ability to translate strategy into executable roadmaps and measurable outcomes.
- Skilled facilitator of senior stakeholder workshops and cross-functional alignment.
- Experience setting up governance, frameworks, and capability for sustainable change.
- Commercially minded with strong appreciation of trading and operational realities.
Leadership Behaviours:
- Customer Obsession
- Role model a customer first culture
- Be an active champion of external and internal customers and their experience
- Continually look through a customer lens to shape thinking and action
- Empower Performance
- Create and deliver solutions that drive improved performance
- Always commercially focused
- Enable Growth
- Identify opportunities for innovation and growth, enabling teams to deliver against strategic priorities
- Proactively assess capabilities required within the team to drive the agenda forward
- Purposeful Connection
- Build effective cross functional relationships to deliver at pace
- Influential and credible at all levels
- Collaborative approach with strong communication & influencing skills
- Impactful Change
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity and driving change at scale
- Courageous in challenging and improving ways of working
