Chief Customer Officer, UK Hydrographic Office

SilverShoots; Taunton; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

The UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) is seeking a Chief Customer Officer to deliver and sustain strong commercial performance, building on the Admiralty navigation business. You will lead customer-centric strategies, harness insights to shape strategy, product development and commercial decisions, and embed customer-centricity across the organisation to drive growth.

You will oversee a diverse, multi-disciplinary team, collaborate with senior leaders, and champion inclusive leadership while guiding

Qualifications

• Senior-level experience delivering customer outcomes across sales, marketing, commercial, digital and product functions.
• Proven ability to develop and deliver customer-centric commercial strategies that drive revenue growth and market expansion.
• Experience using customer insights to inform product, service or go-to-market decisions.
• Experience building customer-centric cultures across teams to enable high performance and innovation.
• Demonstrated commitment to diversity and inclusion in leadership roles.

Responsibilities

• Provide strategic commercial and customer leadership as a member of the Executive Leadership Team (ELT).
• Drive revenue sustainability and growth, including value growth across products and services.
• Lead the Customer Division and oversee a team enabling collaboration across the organisation.
• Develop and deliver the Customer Division and overall customer strategy aligned to corporate plans.
• Champion customer advocacy and ensure high-quality end-to-end customer journeys.

Skills

Senior customer leadership

Strategic commercial strategy

Digital and data-driven

Cross-functional collaboration

Diversity and inclusion

Job description

Locations: This role is based in Taunton, Somerset. This role offers a combination of office and home-based working. This is a non-contractual arrangement where all office-based employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in office, subject to capacity and any required workplace adjustments.

The post holder is expected to attend our office in Taunton three days a week. Requirements to attend other locations for official business, or work in another MOD office, will also count towards this level of attendance.

Advertised working pattern: Flexible working, Full-time

Job summary

The UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) is a world-leading centre for hydrography, delivering trusted data and expertise to support safe, secure and thriving oceans. Supporting safe navigation is at the heart of what we do. Through our Admiralty portfolio, we provide a leading range of navigational products and services which are trusted by over 90% of large ships trading internationally today.

We collaborate with a wide range of partners and peers across the globe to collect, process and publish hydrographic and marine geospatial data from seabed to surface. In addition, we represent the UK government internationally as an authority on hydrography and seabed mapping.

As an executive agency of the Ministry of Defence, our expertise also supports vital defence operations, maritime security and marine development in the UK and worldwide.

The primary purpose of the Chief Customer Officer role is to deliver and sustain strong commercial performance, meeting revenue targets across the existing customer base, while identifying and developing new business and revenue growth opportunities that build on our core Admiralty navigation business.

Along with the role holder’s ELT peer group, the CCO role will lead the building and embedding customer‑centricity across UKHO as a means to this commercial end, shaping how the UKHO operates and delivers through a deep, data‑led understanding of our customer’s needs.

The role holder will drive the use of customer insight and strengthened customer relationships to inform strategy, product development and support high‑quality commercial decision‑making.

Job description

The role spans seven areas of accountability, across the Executive Leadership Team, the Customer Division and the wider organisation:

• Executive Leadership Team - Provide strategic commercial and customer leadership as a member of the Executive Leadership Team (ELT), ensuring that revenue sustainability and growth, customer‑centricity, customer data and insight and market understanding are key to decision‑making and overall organisational strategy.
• Revenue sustainability & growth - Accountability for delivering sustainable revenue performance, including revenue growth, customer retention and value growth including, but not limited to, across the UKHO’s Admiralty digital products and services, through identifying new product innovation, entering adjacent or new markets and enhancing customer experience.
• Leadership - Providing empowering and inspiring leadership across the Customer Division (circa 100 colleagues) with direct line management responsibility for a small team of Senior Leadership Team (SLT) members, indirect line management for the rest of the division and fostering collaboration across a wider network through dotted line reporting relationships.
• Strategy - Leading the development and delivery of the Customer Division and overall customer strategy, aligned to the UKHO’s Corporate and Business Plans and the Vision for 2034. This includes ensuring that our brand remains competitive and a brand of choice within a changing operating environment.
• Culture - Provides empowering and inspiring leadership within the Customer Division and across the organisation, by acting as a role model for ‘The UKHO way’. The role holder will create a supportive environment of trust and accountability, where people are inspired, confident and empowered to achieve every day.
• Customer experience advocate - Provides direction and clarity of focus by setting and embedding a customer strategy across all functions and touchpoints and will design and continuously improve end‑to‑end customer journeys based on insight and feedback. Will drive consistent, high‑quality experiences across all aspects of the customer journey and will champion customer advocacy at executive level and across the organisation.
• Product management - Ensures that strategy aligns with customer‑centricity through understanding customer insights and integrating these into product design and continuous improvement. Will oversee product roadmap prioritisation and will ensure collaboration with multi‑disciplinary teams across the organisation to develop products and services.

Person specification

• Experience of senior customer leadership at Director level (or equivalent), delivering customer outcomes by bringing together multidisciplinary teams across sales, marketing, commercial, digital and product functions.
• Demonstrable experience of developing and delivering customer‑centric commercial strategies that have directly driven revenue growth, business development, market expansion, and increased market share. Evidence of identifying and converting new business opportunities, building sustainable income streams, and delivering measurable commercial growth whilst enhancing customer experience, engagement, and long‑term organisational sustainability.
• Experience of operating in digital and data driven organisations, using customer insights to inform product, service or ‘go‑to‑market’ decisions.
• Experience of building and sustaining customer‑centric cultures, working effectively across teams to promote an entrepreneurial and commercial mindset.
• Experience of championing diversity and inclusion and creating inclusive environments that enable high performance and innovation.

Leadership Behaviours

• A collaborative strategic leader, able to work across organisational boundaries to set direction and policy.
• Can deliver and drive customer‑centric and digital transformation, preparing the organisation to deliver against evolving and changing market and user needs.
• Shapes outcomes through clear, inclusive communication, clarity of focus and effective influencing and negotiating, building trust and credibility with a diverse group of stakeholders.
• Can develop high‑performing multi‑disciplinary teams that use customer insights, data, technology, innovation and entrepreneurial thinking to create capability to focus on delivery and outcomes for the UKHO’s customers.