Customer Experience Manager
Reports to: Head of Operations
Woking Theatres & Cinema is one of the most exciting hospitality and live entertainment venues in the South East. Sitting under the ATG Entertainment group, the venue operates three distinct brands under one roof: Woking Theatre, the intimate Rhoda McGaw Theatre, and Nova Cinema — each with its own audience, energy and commercial ambition.
This is not a role for someone who wants to maintain the status quo. We are in active pursuit of a step-change in how customers experience this venue — from the moment they walk through the door to the last drink poured. Admissions are growing, ambitions are higher still, and the commercial infrastructure to support that growth is being built right now.
We need a Customer Experience Manager who understands that exceptional experience and exceptional margin are not opposites — they are the same thing. Someone who will own the commercial performance of everything that surrounds the show / film. If you have ever wanted to put your genuine stamp on a hospitality business, this is that job.
This is a hands-on senior leadership role with full functional accountability for the customer-facing commercial operation, its strategy, people, financial performance and continuous development.
The right candidate will have a proven track record of growing hospitality margin and will be fluent in SPH, GP% and cost of sales— and crucially, will know how to move them. You will have operated in a high-volume, fast-paced environment such as theatre, cinema, stadium, hotel or attraction.
Please note, your role may involve working with children or vulnerable people.
Key responsibilities
Leadership & Operations
- Act as a core member of the Venue Senior Leadership Team, shaping hospitality strategy and taking collective accountability for commercial, operational and customer outcomes.
- Lead the Customer Experience management team, setting clear accountabilities and developing managers to lead confident, consistent and commercially focused teams.
- Strengthen management capability and create a high-performance culture across the department.
- Set the staffing model and oversee rotas, payroll and operational planning to ensure an efficient, resilient and responsive operation.
- Hold accountability for compliance with Health & Safety, licensing, food hygiene and venue policies, ensuring robust controls and timely corrective action.
- Act as a key-holder, Risk Champion and senior advocate for accessibility and inclusion across the venue.
- Act as the senior accountable leader for the venue when required, making timely operational, commercial and safety-critical decisions.
- Direct security, hospitality, retail and customer experience operations to deliver safe, high-quality events and experiences across the three venues.
- Lead cross-departmental planning to ensure seamless delivery across performances, cinema, events and wider venue activity.
Commercial Performance & Revenue Growth
- Hold departmental accountability for customer-facing revenue, gross profit, spend per head, labour productivity, cost of sales and stock performance.
- Deliver commercial plans, budgets and forecasts, taking decisive recovery action where performance is below target.
- Use management information, customer insight and operational data to identify opportunities, make evidence-based decisions and drive sustained profitability.
- Make strategic decisions on staffing models, service standards, product mix, pricing opportunities and resource deployment.
- Own stock control, retail operations, sales reporting, purchasing and supplier performance, ensuring strong controls and commercial discipline.
- Develop, test and scale hospitality propositions, premium experiences and new revenue streams that increase spend per head and audience engagement.
Customer Experience
- Lead the end-to-end customer journey across theatre, cinema, hospitality and events.
- Create a coherent customer and commercial strategy across three distinct brands, adapting the operating model to their different audiences and trading patterns.
- Set and assure exceptional, inclusive and customer-focused service standards across all venue activity.
- Represent the customer experience and commercial operation in internal and external forums, influencing visiting companies, suppliers, partners and central teams.
- Translate customer, team and commercial insight into prioritised improvement plans with clear measures of success.
Your skills, qualities, and experience
Essential
- Proven ownership of a sizeable, high-volume customer-facing operation and departmental budget.
- A demonstrable track record of delivering revenue growth, margin improvement, labour productivity and effective cost control.
- Substantial experience leading managers and large, varied teams, with evidence of developing capability, succession and high performance.
- Strong commercial literacy, including budgeting, forecasting, interpreting management information and taking corrective action.
- A track record of leading significant service, operational or commercial change across a complex, multi-use or multi-brand environment.
- Experience developing hospitality or customer propositions from concept and business case through to implementation and evaluation.
- Confidence presenting performance, risks and recommendations to senior leaders and influencing a broad range of stakeholders.
- Strong organisational judgement and problem-solving skills, with the confidence to make autonomous operational and commercial decisions.
- A demonstrable commitment to exceptional customer experience, accessibility, inclusion and compliance.
Desirable
- Experience within live entertainment, hospitality, cinema, retail or events.
- Knowledge of venue operations, Health & Safety and licensing compliance.
- Experience with staffing, payroll, KPIs, stock control or hospitality operations.
- Experience working across multi-use or customer-facing venues.
About Us - Our values
ATG Entertainment’s values set the tone for how we work, how we treat one another, and the culture we continue to build across the UK and the wider organisation.
- THRIVE doing what we love (with passion and dynamism)
- CONNECT through every act (with collaboration and kindness)
- DARE to do different (with curiosity and courage)
- PERFORM at our best (with customer focus and ownership)
Our Corporate Social Responsibility pillars
Everyone at ATG Entertainment is expected to play their part in achieving our goals and upholding our Corporate Social Responsibility priorities:
- Inclusion: Committing to creating and upholding a positive, inclusive culture that nurtures potential and supports well-being.
- Sustainability: Playing your part in reducing our environmental impact and finding more sustainable ways of working.
- Next Generations: Encouraging the next generation in live entertainment by contributing to our outreach and training programmes, including mentoring students and trainees, and supporting our Creative Learning and Community Partnerships work.
Our culture
You’ll help us uphold a positive culture around meeting our obligations, by having a positive attitude to health and safety, legal and insurance requirements and take care to understand our policies and procedures.
We are all expected to participate actively in the life of the company, and opportunities will arise for you to collaborate with others across the business. Everyone at ATG Entertainment is expected to be flexible and adapt as the needs of the business change, taking on new or different responsibilities as the need arises.
Our Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access Mission Statement - A Stage for Everyone
Our stages are a platform for compelling stories – stories that are for all, by all, and of all. We shine our spotlight on our differences and believe that understanding and celebrating these differences makes us better global citizens. We are passionate about the pursuit of true diversity and equality. We strive to make our venues beacons of these ideals in our communities. Onstage and off, we hold ourselves accountable for nurturing an inclusive culture, one in which everyone can bring their authentic selves. At ATG entertainment, we provide a stage for everyone.
We recognise that we do not have all the answers; but we strive to listen, to learn and to change in order to ensure ATG Entertainment becomes a truly inclusive organisation. We therefore welcome and encourage applications from individuals from the widest possible range of backgrounds and particularly welcome applications from those currently underrepresented in our workforce.
We are a Disability Confident Committed Employer, which means that we are taking action to ensure that people with disabilities and long-term health conditions feel supported, engaged and able to fulfil their potential in the workplace. We will offer an interview or recruitment event to disabled candidates who tell us they wish to participate in the scheme and who demonstrate in their application that they best meet the essential criteria for the role. Where we receive more applications than we are reasonably able to interview for any given role, we will retain applications for the next available interview opportunity wherever possible.
If you’d like to discuss accessibility prior to applying, please email [email protected] for a confidential discussion.
This role closes 13/09/2026, 23:59.
13-09-2026 at 23:59
