Principal Advisor - Customer Experience

This is an exceptional opportunity to play a pivotal role in shaping how customers interact with services, products, and digital channels across the organisation. You will be empowered to drive operational enhancements, design user-centred solutions, and foster a culture of continuous improvement and learning. The organisation offers a supportive environment where your expertise in customer experience, user research, and stakeholder engagement will be highly valued.

What you'll do:

As Principal Advisor Customer Experience based in Wellington, you will be entrusted with driving impactful change across the organisation’s customer lifecycle. Your day-to-day activities will involve leading strategic initiatives that enhance operational processes while developing innovative solutions tailored to diverse user needs. You’ll collaborate extensively with internal teams - ranging from data science to communications - and external partners such as technology vendors or design agencies. By facilitating workshops, conducting research, presenting recommendations to senior leaders, and delivering training programmes, you’ll ensure that every touchpoint reflects a commitment to excellence in service delivery. Success in this role means fostering trust among stakeholders, promoting knowledge sharing across teams, and embedding best practices that result in measurable improvements for all customers.

• Take full responsibility for customer experience initiatives, projects, and workstreams by providing comprehensive support from initial research through to product creation and ongoing training.
• Focus on operational improvements to current processes and products that have an immediate positive effect on customer satisfaction and organisational outcomes.
• Lead and support programmes that capture the voice of the customer, including designing surveys and collaborating with analytics staff to inform priorities.
• Conduct user research and usability testing using best-practice methodologies, communicating findings effectively to influence senior stakeholders.
• Apply hands-on design thinking and co-design practices throughout project lifecycles, utilising journey mapping, personas, needs analysis, and customer insights.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams such as UX, Web, Learning Design, Digital, Data Science, Policy, and Operations to ensure seamless customer experiences.
• Use industry-standard design tools like Figma, Miro, Adobe XD to prototype solutions and communicate design intent clearly across teams.
• Maintain a pragmatic approach by balancing desirability, feasibility, and viability when recommending changes based on customer experience research.
• Build strong relationships internally with managers and externally with vendors or other government departments to support coordinated service delivery.
• Deliver organisation-wide training, mentoring, and embedded support to uplift CX/UX maturity and human-centred design capability.

What you bring:

Your proven background as Principal Advisor Customer Experience will enable you to thrive in this multifaceted role. You bring deep expertise in both CX/UX methodologies and stakeholder management - allowing you to bridge gaps between technical specialists and business leaders. Your interpersonal skills are complemented by your ability to coach others through change while maintaining empathy for different viewpoints. You understand how public sector organisations operate; this enables you to navigate complex environments with sensitivity towards privacy policies and information management standards. Your enthusiasm for continuous learning ensures you stay abreast of industry developments so you can introduce fresh ideas that benefit both colleagues and customers alike. With your commitment to collaboration and knowledge sharing, you’ll help create an environment where everyone feels supported in delivering outstanding service.

What's next:

If you’re ready to make a real difference while growing your own career within a supportive team environment - this is your chance!

Apply today by clicking on the link below; take the next step towards an exciting future where your expertise truly matters.

Robert Walters endeavours to review all applications in a maximum of five working days. If you have not received correspondence in this timeframe please do not hesitate to contact Sean Caulfield on +64 4 471 9732.