Senior Customer Experience (CX) Strategist

Senior Customer Experience (CX) Strategist

VML UK | London | Hybrid

About VML

At VML, we bring together brand experience, customer experience and commerce to create connected brands and drive growth.

Our strategy team works across brand, creative, data, technology and experience design, helping clients understand their customers and develop experiences that make a meaningful difference to their businesses.

We're looking for a Senior Customer Experience (CX) Strategist to join our London team.

The Opportunity

We're looking for someone who understands how to turn customer insight into experience strategy.

Someone who can look beyond individual campaigns and touchpoints to understand the full customer journey, identify where experiences can be improved and develop strategies that connect customer needs with business objectives.

You'll work across a range of clients and challenges, helping shape customer experience strategies, propositions and connected journeys across digital and physical channels.

This is a hands-on strategic role, working closely with our wider strategy, creative, data and experience design teams.

What You'll Be Doing

Customer Experience Strategy

• Develop end-to-end CX strategies that connect customer needs, brand objectives and commercial opportunities.
• Identify opportunities to improve experiences across acquisition, onboarding, engagement, retention and loyalty.
• Define customer experience propositions and strategic recommendations that help clients create more relevant, connected experiences.
• Translate complex business and customer challenges into clear strategic thinking and actionable recommendations.

Customer Research & Journey Mapping

• Use qualitative and quantitative research, customer data and behavioural insights to understand customer needs, motivations and pain points.
• Develop customer journey maps, experience frameworks and strategic recommendations that identify opportunities across the customer lifecycle.
• Understand how customers interact with brands across digital, CRM, social, content, commerce and physical touchpoints.
• Turn research and insight into practical opportunities for experience improvement and innovation.

Connected Experiences

• Develop strategies that connect brand experiences with customer engagement and lifecycle communications.
• Identify opportunities for personalisation, improved engagement and stronger customer relationships.
• Work with data to understand customer behaviours, segmentation and opportunities across the lifecycle.
• Help define how connected experiences can improve customer satisfaction, loyalty and commercial performance.

Creative & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with brand strategists, creatives, UX/UI designers, data specialists and technology teams.
• Develop strategic briefs and frameworks that inform the design of customer experiences, products, services and communications.
• Present strategic thinking and recommendations to clients, explaining the insight, rationale and potential business impact.
• Contribute to pitches, workshops and the development of new client opportunities.

What We're Looking For

We're specifically looking for someone with hands-on experience developing customer experience strategies, rather than someone whose background is primarily focused on delivering campaigns, managing CRM platforms or implementing technology solutions.

You'll ideally bring

• Experience working as a CX Strategist, Experience Strategist, Customer Strategy Consultant or in a closely related strategic role, ideally within a creative agency, digital agency, experience consultancy or client-side strategy team.
• Demonstrable experience developing end-to-end customer experience strategies, not just optimising individual digital touchpoints or communications.
• Strong experience in customer research, behavioural insight and translating findings into strategic opportunities.
• Practical experience creating customer journey maps, identifying pain points and developing experience improvements.
• Experience developing customer propositions, experience principles, strategic frameworks and briefs.
• An understanding of CRM, customer engagement, lifecycle strategy and how different channels work together to create connected experiences.
• Experience working with creative, UX, design, data and technology teams to bring strategic recommendations to life.
• Confidence presenting strategic thinking and recommendations to clients and senior stakeholders.
• An understanding of how CX strategy contributes to business performance, customer satisfaction, engagement and loyalty.

Experience That Would Be Particularly Relevant

We'd be interested in hearing from people who have worked on projects involving:

• End-to-end customer journey transformation.
• Customer experience and service proposition development.
• Customer lifecycle, loyalty and retention strategy.
• Connected digital and physical customer experiences.
• Customer research, journey mapping and experience design.
• Experience measurement and effectiveness.

Experience within automotive, FMCG or other complex consumer-facing sectors would be useful, but isn't essential.

A Little More About the Role

This is a Senior Strategist position, rather than a Strategy Director or senior management role.

We're looking for someone who enjoys being hands-on with the work, can independently develop strategic recommendations and is comfortable collaborating with different disciplines.

You don't need to have worked exclusively in CX throughout your career, but you should be able to demonstrate clear examples of customer experience strategies you've developed, the insights behind them and how they influenced the resulting experience.

Working at VML

You'll join a collaborative strategy team working alongside specialists in brand, customer experience, CRM, data, creative and experience design.

Our London office is based at Sea Containers House, and we operate a hybrid working model.

We welcome applications from people with different backgrounds and experiences who can bring relevant strategic thinking and a strong understanding of customer experience.