Customer Experience Team Lead

KatKin's Opportunity

What we do at KatKin

For uncompromising cat parents who want the best, KatKin is revolutionising cat health by transforming the lives of cats through superior nutrition. We’re Europe’s first fresh-cooked cat food, made with 100% human-grade meat, gently cooked and frozen to lock in freshness. As a disruptor in the $185bn pet food market, KatKin was founded to challenge the low standards set by the traditional cat food industry. The concept for fresh food is well established in the US, particularly in Dog, with the Farmers’ Dog surpassing >$1B in sales proving the scale of the opportunity.

KatKin is vertically integrated across R&D, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. To date, we've delivered around 35 million fresh meals to over 200,000 happy, healthy cats across the UK. Our team of over 130 spans all locations, including Clerkenwell, London, the US, and our state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Haverhill, Suffolk. We also have customer service teams in both London and South Africa.

KatKin operates a direct-to-consumer (D2C) model supported by a first-class, dedicated customer service team, allowing us to build valuable relationships and foster a passionate customer community. In addition to our eCommerce channel, our Fresh food and Pantry products are also sold through a growing number of select third-party platforms, including Ocado, Amazon, and Pets at Home.

Where the competition cuts corners, catfishes customers, and puts profits over health, KatKin puts cat well-being first. No shortcuts. No secret recipes. We’re cutting the fluff, thinking fresh, and channelling hardcore love into industry-wide change. So cats live long and cat parents can love hard without compromise.

Why You’ll Love Working With Us

We’re all-in for cats, and it shows: our energy will blow you away from day one. You’ll be surrounded by knowledgeable scientists, big creative thinkers, astute business minds, and a whole team of hardcore cat parents. All on a mission to make hardcore love the new standard in cat care – with a fresh take on every product in the cat industry.

The Role

As a Customer Experience Team Lead at KatKin, you will be responsible for executing the vision and strategy for KatKin’s end-to-end customer experience. You’ll manage a team of 8-10 Cat Experts while leading ad hoc projects to enhance efficiency and service quality, all with an obsessive focus on a customer-first approach.

Understanding the deep love and uncompromising nature of cat parents, you will inspire your team to bring that passion to every interaction—whether through calls, emails, or social channels. In a fast-paced environment, you will focus on coaching, development, and performance management to ensure that productivity and quality KPIs are consistently met. By facilitating ongoing training and fostering a positive team culture, you’ll collaborate with management to implement meaningful process improvements.

Your role will also involve analysing customer and team behaviour to identify areas for enhancement and seeking inspiration outside of KatKin to drive innovative improvements. A key part of your mission will be to shift your team’s mindset to prioritise customer growth, encouraging a proactive approach to initiatives that enhance engagement and satisfaction. You will align team efforts with KatKin's core principles, continuously elevating our customer experience and helping cats everywhere live their best lives.

Key ownership areas

• Team Coaching & Development: Coach, motivate, and develop your team through regular one-on-ones and team meetings to ensure continuous growth.

• Operational Management: Oversee day-to-day activities, prioritising and assessing risks within existing processes to achieve service level agreements (SLAs).

• Team Culture: Leverage company methodologies, team feedback, and your own initiative to cultivate a positive team culture and boost morale.

• Performance Culture: Foster a performance-driven culture with an emphasis on self-ownership among team members.

• KPI Definition: Implement and monitor established KPIs and performance expectations set by senior management, ensuring alignment with overall business goals.

• Customer Support Leadership: Serve as a subject matter expert and first line of defence in troubleshooting operational issues, escalating as necessary and collaborating with relevant teams to ensure customers receive top-notch support and satisfaction.

• Customer Growth Initiatives: Shift the team's mindset to prioritise customer growth by encouraging a proactive approach to outbound initiatives that enhance engagement and satisfaction.

• Industry Awareness: Continuously gather insights from the pet care, customer experience, and startup sectors to understand best practices, sharing this knowledge with the team to enhance strategies and decision-making.

• Positive Change: Collaborate with management to identify and implement positive changes and efficiencies within the Customer Experience team.

• Customer Insights: Analyse trends in customer behaviour and identify opportunities to eliminate friction points.

Who we are looking for:

• Team Leadership: You have a minimum of 1-2 years of experience managing a Customer Experience or Customer Care team, driving performance, and fostering growth.

• Training & Development: Proven ability to deliver effective onboarding and continuous training programs, ensuring team improvement and success.

• Performance & KPI Management: Experienced in setting and maintaining KPIs, consistently driving your team to meet or exceed productivity and quality standards.

• Analytical & Process-Oriented: You have strong analytical skills, using data to identify patterns, solve problems, and make informed decisions. You also seek out process improvements to enhance efficiency.

• Customer-Centric: You demonstrate strong emotional intelligence and a customer-first mindset, always striving for solutions that prioritise customer satisfaction.

• Prioritisation & Time Management: You understand the importance and urgency of tasks at hand, working collaboratively with fellow leads to achieve all your goals on time.

• Tech & AI Savvy: You embrace technological and AI advancements to improve team performance and operational effectiveness.

• Alignment with Core Principles: You align with KatKin’s core principles: Customer First, Think Big, Relentlessly High Standards, Never Give Up, and One Team.

Nice to haves

What We Offer

• Career-Defining Opportunity: Play a pivotal role in scaling our brand quickly.

• Competitive Package:

• Competitive salary

• AXA Health Insurance, including optical and dental coverage

• Annual personal development budget

• Company-contributed pension

• Culture and Perks:

  • A small, close-knit team with no egos

  • 33 days of holiday each year (inclusive of bank holidays) plus your birthday off

  • 4-week Work From Anywhere (WFA) policy

  • 12-week maternity/paternity leave policy

  • Up to 2 days WFH (Work From Home) every week

  • Discount on KatKin fresh meals

  • Cat (and dog) friendly office

To Apply

Send your CV and brief responses to the following questions to nikki@katkin.com:

• Can you describe your experience managing a Customer Experience or Customer Care team? What specific strategies did you implement to drive performance and foster growth?

• Can you provide an example of how you used data to identify a problem within your team or customer interactions? What actions did you take based on your findings?

• How do you prioritise tasks and manage time in a fast-paced environment? Can you share an example of a situation where you had to quickly adapt to changing priorities?

• Which DTC brand has delighted you the most, and what did they do? What specific actions or approaches made a lasting impact on you as a customer?

• (Optional) If you have a pet, how would your experience as a pet parent influence your approach to customer experience?