Head of Customer

The Head of Customer will be responsible for setting and executing the customer strategy across National Gas, ensuring an exceptional and seamless experience throughout the customer journey.

This role encompasses leadership of customer service across multiple directorates, stakeholder management, including achieving advocacy for key policy and regulatory decisions from customers and stakeholders alike, digital engagement, and retention and growth strategies through customer intelligence, strategic relationships, and delivery of high customer performance.

Responsible for a customer centric culture across the organisation, ensuring services consistently meet or exceed expectations of the regulatory regime, existing and new customers while aligning with regulatory and operational targets.

Leading small to large teams, with direct and indirect management dependent on programmes of works. Establishing a clear, well sized and outcome minded customer strategy for National Gas business, and future business development opportunities, ensuring the effective delivery and embedding of the strategy delivery of connection growth and market share outperformance, CSAT, NPS, and broader metric performance improvements.

Enabling new markets such as biomethane and data centres and optimising opportunities through leading innovative change programmes across the organisation such as connections reform. Responsible for ensuring services, policies, contracts, and ways of working in the business align to new needs of National Gas customers while delivering an efficient delivery cost aligned to regulatory and shareholder expectations.

Deliver best in class diversion and connections works in a competitive market, achieving reduced costs and time for activities aligned to customer expectations and delivering significant growth in these markets. Optimising OpEx and CapEx expenditure, with direct and indirect budgetary responsibility; prioritising commercial sensitivities including customer performance, strategic value, licence delivery and EBITDA benefit.

Key accountabilities:

• Creation, approval, and execution of pragmatic, holistically informed, and variable to market customer strategy.
• Support development of corporate strategy change through market insight and real hand experience with government, regulators and market participants.
• Establish and nurture effective and collaborative internal relationships with key stakeholders and colleagues, developing and embedding a clear RACI and process across multiple disciplines to deliver optimised results effectively and efficiently. Focus areas with COO, NESO, Corporate Affairs and Strategy teams.
• Build, mentor, and lead a high performing, effective and efficient team. Set clear goals, provide coaching, monitor performance and drive individual development to ensure team success.
• Develop and lead the customer strategy aligned with the company's mission, regulatory obligations, and growth objectives.
• Oversee the design and continuous improvement of end to end customer journeys, including onboarding, billing, issue resolution, and service changes.
• Lead and manage contracts team, ensuring high performance, cost efficiency, and consistent delivery of KPIs (e.g., response times, Net Promoter Score, complaints handling, regulatory performance, outperformance of competitors).
• Collaborate with IT and digital teams to enhance digital self service channels and customer engagement platforms.
• Leverage customer data and feedback to drive decision making and personalise customer interactions.
• Ensure compliance with relevant regulations (e.g., Ofgem standards or equivalent where applicable), including dispute resolution.
• Act as the voice of the customer in executive forums, influencing business development, policy decisions, and business priorities. Ensuring embedded relationships through performance with stakeholders to enable insight and future advocacy and partnerships.
• Track and analyse key metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of customer strategy initiatives.
• Provide regular reports and insights to executive leadership on progress and outcomes.
• Develop strategic relationships with customers and stakeholders, developing long term beneficial outcomes across advocacy areas such as policy, gaining sensitive insight and fostering business development opportunities.
• Transform contract and diversion process across organisation delivery optimum performance through system, process, RACI, OpModel, governance and reporting.

About you:

• Creation and maintenance of scale, senior management level relationships across key market participants. Developing long term informal and formal partnerships of mutual benefit supporting the delivery of energy market commercial and policy development.
• History of performance utilising a commercial and analytical mindset, with experience utilising complex and scale market insight and relations to form holistic strategies with clear optioneering, leverage and relevant risk / reward considerations.
• Demonstrate experience of delivering, creating, developing, and delivering customer strategy in utilities and specifically energy sector. Infrastructure within regulatory rather than merchant market preferred.
• Exceptional communication skills at various managerial and executive level. The ability to take complex and uncertain information, and communicate it for c suite consumption and decision making in a credible and holistic manner.
• High emotional intelligence and the ability to adapt and be agile to changing situations and stakeholder relationships. Exceptional stakeholder management and demonstrable delivery in developing and maintaining high value relationships and partnerships.
• Excellent communication, negotiation, and interpersonal abilities.
• Leadership experience, developing a culture and environment where a core team and project partners can thrive and succeed.
• High level of commercial acumen, able to navigate commercial tensions and develop pragmatic delivery models for works across the organisation.
• Ability to recruit and manage direct and indirect talent and flexible workforce across multiple projects.

What we can offer you:

• Salary c£95,000 base salary, dependent on experience
• Performance bonus up to 20%
• Double match pension - for every £1 you put in, we add £2
• Private medical cover
• 36 days' holiday (including statutory days) - plus option to buy/sell 5 additional days
• Financial protection with 10x salary death in service
• Excellent family friendly provisions

At National Gas, we're committed to building a workforce that reflects the communities that we serve. We celebrate the different experiences our colleagues bring and encourage applicants of all backgrounds to apply. To that end we want to support you during the interview process, please advise your recruitment partner if you require any reasonable adjustments.