Head of Customer Experience

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, which is worth $50bn globally and is this fastest growing segment in the pet care market. 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

In this role, you will lead the vision and strategy for KatKin's end-to-end customer experience, with an obsessive focus on a customer-first approach. Reporting directly to the CXO and founder, you’ll build and scale the team across multiple locations, foster cross-functional collaboration, leverage data-driven insights, and implement innovative tools to enhance efficiency and service quality.

Your responsibilities include establishing and optimising the customer experience team, managing crises, developing KPIs, and ensuring continuous improvement. You will own and build out our physical customer experience and service team, currently a team of 20, driving the team towards customer growth through outbound-oriented initiatives. Additionally, you'll be tasked with elevating the team's capabilities in data, insights, and technology while spearheading global expansion efforts, including launching into new EU countries in the next couple of years. You’ll also adapt processes for international markets and stay ahead of industry trends to deliver exceptional customer journeys.

You will also work closely with key leaders in KatKin and external stakeholders to build and develop business plans.

Key ownership areas

• Set the Vision: Establish and execute the vision for the end-to-end customer experience, the CX team, its culture, and its operations. Develop and implement a concrete strategy to achieve these goals.

• Team Strategy and Design: Develop and implement strategies to scale, staff, and design a best-in-class customer experience team across multiple locations. Ensure streamlined processes, effective change management, outstanding service, and a commitment to continuous improvement. Set the standard for customer experience as a revenue-generating function rather than a cost centre, and guide the team towards driving customer growth through outbound-oriented initiatives.

• Cross-functional Collaboration: Facilitate collaboration between the customer experience team and other business functions to contribute to the design of growth marking experiments. Identify opportunities for proactive customer outreach to drive customer acquisition and retention, and deliver an exceptional end-to-end customer experience across all touchpoints.

• Data-Driven Decision Making: Lead the effort to gather and analyse customer experience data while building the team's capability to synthesise customer insights. Ensure these insights are effectively shared with other business teams to inform broader decision-making across the company. Leverage insights and feedback to support strategic decisions and foster a data-driven, high-quality decision-making culture within the customer experience team, aimed at removing friction from the customer journey.

• Efficiency and Automation: Enhance reactive customer service operating efficiency by analysing opportunities and pain points. Implement automated and AI-driven tools to enable faster operations effectiveness while maintaining high-quality, thoughtful, and delightful experiences for every customer.

• KPIs and Continuous Improvement: Develop and maintain key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of customer experience initiatives. Make relevant recommendations for iterations and improvements.

• Crisis Management: Establish and manage a robust crisis management plan to handle customer issues swiftly and effectively, ensuring negative experiences are turned into positive outcomes.

• Global Expansion: Develop strategies to adapt and optimise customer experience processes for international markets, considering cultural differences and local customer preferences.

• Innovation and Trends: Stay ahead of industry trends and innovations in customer experience. Ensure the team adopts best practices and cutting-edge tools to enhance the customer journey.

Who we are looking for:

• Jack-of-all Trades: You have 8+ years of being a highly motivated jack-of-all-trades working in a deeply customer-centric environment. Experience in management consulting, investment banking, data analytics, customer experience, growth, operations or entrepreneurial endeavours is valued.

• Analytical Skills: You possess a strong analytical background with problem-solving skills and an ability to identify patterns and translate data into actionable insights.

• Project Management: You excel at managing multiple projects simultaneously and thrive in a time-sensitive, fast-paced environment.

• Emotional Intelligence: You demonstrate strong emotional intelligence, prioritise a customer-first approach, and are obsessed with customer satisfaction, ensuring the customer is always at the forefront of your solutions.

• Autonomous and Collaborative: You can work autonomously while effectively collaborating with a wide range of partners and stakeholders.

• Tech and AI Embrace: You embrace technological and AI advancements to measure and improve operational effectiveness.

• Alignment with Core Principles: You align strongly with KatKin’s core operating 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

  • EMI equity option grant

• 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:

• How have you used data and insights to inform strategic decisions? Describe a situation where your data-driven approach led to meaningful improvements in outcomes.

• Share an example of how you improved operational efficiency in a previous role. What tools, technologies, or processes did you implement, and how did they enhance the overall experience for stakeholders?

• Which DTC brand has delighted you the most, and what did they do?

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