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We are working with francesca’s in their search for a Director of Customer Experience based in Houston, TX. francesca’s is one of the fastest growing specialty retailers in America. The firm’s retail locations are designed and merchandised to feel like independently owned, upscale boutiques and provide its fans with an inviting, intimate and differentiated shopping experience.
francesca’s believes in offering compelling value with a diverse and uniquely balanced mix of high-quality, trend-right apparel, jewelry, accessories and gifts at attractive prices. When shoppers visit francesca’s, they find that each boutique is a treasure chest of gifts, apparel, home accessories and jewelry that reflects the most fashionable styles and coolest stuff from all over the world.
The Director of Customer Experience will be responsible for cultivating customer relationships and serving as the brand advocate through all contact points including email, phone, live chat, and social platforms. The position will report to the Vice President, Direct to Consumer.
HARRY’S COMMENTS: francesca’s is a publicly traded Houston-based retailer of trend right women’s clothing, jewelry, shoes, accessories, and gifts. Most of its customers are surprised by how broad francesca’s assortment is given the small footprint of its 400+ boutiques located across the US.
According to francesca’s senior management team, the Brand builds strong emotional connections with its existing customers and it offers a special and highly social experience. The senior management team is committed to rapidly growing the Direct to Consumer channel and has stated to Wall Street that online retail is one of its top priorities. And analysts are noticing.
Indeed, online retail is a natural fit with the company’s target demographic of 18 to 35-year-old women, and with less than 2% of the company’s business taking place online, francesca’s management believes there is significant short-term and long-term growth opportunities.
Given the social nature of francesca’s fans, the company is adding a Director of Customer Experience to lead its contact center that will support its presence online, in boutiques, and throughout social media channels. Essentially, the effort will be to bring its brand to life one conversation at a time. The basic idea is that you would build a team of contact center reps who love fashion and are genuinely hardwired to help customers.
You know what I’m talking about.
In some contact centers you can feel the energy as soon as you walk in the door. This energy can take many forms: fun, pride of workmanship, a feeling of camaraderie, solid planning, tight coordination and the willingness to go the extra mile for the customer. Everybody knows how to do their job and is pulling in the same direction. The contact center “clicks.”
None of this is random.
As the leader of francesca’s contact center, you’ll be responsible for developing and supporting a culture that personifies the brand, and you will understand that your people are the key to success. As such, you will spend an inordinate amount of time training your team not only in effective customer service techniques, but you’ll teach them how to be a go-to resource for fashion trends and information.
Your people will need to live and breathe this stuff.
A typical day for one of your reps will be to answer inbound calls, chatting with customers online and solving problems, all the while looking at social media dashboards to see what is being said about the brand online and managing that conversation in a way that is friendly, helpful, and brand appropriate. francesca’s is pursuing new, “best of class” technology platforms to support the contact center, all of which will provide reps with dashboards to track everything.
You’ll be responsible for shaping francesca’s customer access strategy whether customers are placing orders, exchanging orders, checking account status or seeking the resolution to a problem. Your reps will be serving well informed and diverse customers and will need to adjust to frequent changes in products, services, and technologies while operating in a time sensitive, multimedia environment.
You’ll need to establish a world-class climate for service as well as a climate for employee well-being. All of this will flow naturally from hiring people who might otherwise be francesca’s customers: People who love guilt-free shopping and appreciate francesca’s boutique experience.
This will be your baby.
And it will be up to you to ensure that francesca’s contact center reps are accessible, courteous, responsive, prompt, well-equipped, proactive, commitment oriented ethical, and do things right the first time. Obviously, that’s a tall order. But francesca’s will give you the authority and resources to be successful.
If all of this sounds fun and exciting to you — and you’ve got the chops to pull it off! — then we’d love it if you applied below.
Essential Functions
- Play an active role in the francesca’s Direct to Consumer leadership team, communicating regularly with Marketing, Product Content, Merchandising, Order Fulfillment, IT, and other departments.
- Assist with the development and continual refinement of the customer experience strategy.
- Create key performance metrics to measure customer experience and brand awareness.
- Design, maintain and continually optimize departmental processes that address business needs and that ultimately yield an excellent and brand-appropriate customer experience.
- Develop well-written, effective, and brand-appropriate templates to be used across the Customer Experience department.
- Develop, build and scale in-house and outsourced customer contact centers that handle call, email, and chat traffic.
- Demonstrate and foster a sense of urgency and entrepreneurial commitment to achieving goals.
- Build a strong, positive team culture and create disciplined groups that work well together.
- Recruit, train, and lead an exceptional customer experience team.
- Serve as a primary customer advocate within the organization.
- Manage the Customer Experience Department P&L.
- Capture customer behavior and fashion tendencies, analyze results, and develop cross-departmental recommendations.
- Partner with loss prevention to minimize online fraud activity.
- Oversee processing of all Direct to Consumer returns and exchanges.
Qualifications
- BA or BS required. MBA degree a plus.
- 5+ years in customer service management, preferably with 2+ years of director-level experience (preference of retail e-commerce and fashion experience).
- Experience in staffing and managing a highly motivated and effective customer service team.
- Must appreciate the francesca’s customer base, brand, and culture.
- Experience in structuring and facilitating customer research.
- Results oriented leader who is also willing to be “hands on” when necessary.
- Must have a strong knowledge of social media and customer support technologies including: phone systems, CRM platforms, workforce management software, etc.
- Excellent communicator with superior verbal, written, interpersonal, and presentation skills.
- Must have a strong desire to continuously improve the customer experience across all functions.
- Ability to think critically and problem solve in a fast- paced, entrepreneurial environment.
- Experience with executing loyalty programs is a plus.
Applications for this position are being coordinated by Harry Joiner. To apply, CLICK HERE. Candidates, please be sure to email Harry for a packet of market research and company / competitive intel that will differentiate you in your candidacy. Due to the intensely competitive nature of this search, thorough preparation for these interviews with this proprietary material is strongly recommended.
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