Lead Customer Understanding Researcher

Lead Customer Understanding Researcher

Contract Type: Permanent ¦ Full - Time

Location: London, Bradford, Chatham or Petersfield

Working Pattern: Hybrid—typically a couple of days a week in the office. Flexible arrangements are considered to support work-life balance. A fear of losing your current working flexibility shouldn't hinder you from applying for new opportunities, which is why we aim to match your existing flexible working arrangements where possible.

What We Offer:

• Holidays: 25 days holiday up to 30 days (depending on service)
• Pension: We know it is important to save for the future, that is why we will contribute up to 10%
• Maternity/Paternity: We realise that family time is important, we offer enhanced maternity (after successful completion of probation) and 4 weeks paternity leave
• Workations: opportunity to work abroad 20 days a year (approved list of countries) enabling you to visit family and friends or extend your trip
• Volunteering: 2 paid days to ‘give back’ to the charity of your choice
• Development: LinkedIn Learning for all
• Finance: Snoop Premium available to all colleagues
• Opportunities to connect: via quarterly socials, in-person and virtual company updates
• Medical: Opportunity to opt in for Private Medical Insurance
• Bonus: Discretionary annual bonus

You and Your Team:

Have you ever considered the potential to improve people's relationship with their finances? Do you feel that financial institutions often fall short in truly supporting their customers, leaving a gap in the market for value-driven organizations that prioritize customer needs? Our Purpose is simple: To deliver caring banking so our customers can make the most of life’s opportunities.

This is your opportunity to make a meaningful impact, fully supported by the CEO and ExCo, with a clear mandate to implement our new customer-centric strategy. It's a unique chance to challenge the status quo in financial services and demonstrate it is possible to do “banking with heart”.

As a Lead Customer Understanding Researcher, you will report to the Senior Manager of Customer Understanding. As a Lead Customer Understanding Researcher, you will play a crucial role in developing and championing our customer vision and strategy across VBG through gathering, synthesising and delivering actionable insights to drive strategic decision-making across the organisation. This multifaceted role encompasses both qualitative and quantitative primary and secondary research.

In your day-to-day role as a Lead Customer Understanding Researcher, your will responsibility can be shown as the following:

• Customer Research: design and lead customer research with a particular emphasis on quantitative research through various methodologies. Lead in-depth interviews and ethnographic research, surveys and usability testing to understand customer wants, needs, pain points and Jobs to be Done. Collaborate with teams across the organisation to translate research findings into actionable recommendations. Continuously monitor and evaluate user feedback to iteratively improve the customer experience.
• Market Research: conduct market analysis to identify trends, opportunities and threats within the competitor landscape. Utilise both qualitative and quantitative research methods to gather insights on market dynamics, competitor activities and customer preferences. Synthesize market research findings to provide strategic recommendations.
• Customer Understanding: serve as a single source of truth for customer understanding, using existing feedback channels, surveys and social media monitoring. Work in collaboration with stakeholders across the organisation to set the strategy for customer metrics (e.g. CSAT/NPS) and other relevant measures across the customer journey. Use customer feedback to identify common themes, sentiments and areas for improvement. Act as the voice of the customer within the organisation, advocating for customer centric decisions and initiatives.
• Customer Panel: develop our VBG customer panel to solicit direct customer input and create actionable plans that drive better experiences for customers.

You will be a true customer champion, passionate about great customer experience and how to get others excited about it.

What will make you stand out?

Essential:

• Experience of conducting quantitative research
• Previous experience in CX / UX research, market research and related fields, with a proven track record of success
• Experience of market research / competitor research
• Experience in interrogating secondary research and in-house analytics.
• Good commercial understanding and business acumen.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and oral, with the ability to convey technical information to non-technical stakeholders.

Desirable:

• Experience of working in a regulated environment or similarly complex environment
• Previous experience of working in financial services preferred
• Experience in behavioural change and behavioural science is a plus

The interview process:

• Up to 30-minute telephone call with a member of the Talent Acquisition team.
• Up to 1-hour technical based interview with the hiring manager.
• Up to 30-minute final interview with the senior manager + another manager of the team to present a case study of choice that best represent your skillset.

Our average process takes up to 4 weeks, but we will always work around your availability. You will have the chance to speak to our recruitment team throughout the process.

Offers are subject to satisfactory background checks, including credit, fraud, and employment references.

Who We Are:

At Vanquis, we have a simple purpose: to deliver caring banking so our customers can make the most of life’s opportunities. Established in 1880, we’re now a FTSE All Share company and leading specialist bank. We lend responsibly, providing tailored products and services to over 1.69 million UK customers.

Vanquis has been named one of the Financial Times UK’s Best Employers 2025, ranking in the top 50 nationwide and seventh in Banking and Financial Services. This recognition is based on independent employee feedback, reflecting our strong workplace culture, career growth opportunities, and commitment to our people. Our dedication to making a real difference for customers and supporting our colleagues remains at the heart of what we do.

We take care of our colleagues as well as our customers, working hard to create a rewarding and supportive work environment. That means competitive salaries, benefits, and a Group-wide recognition scheme. Everyone can enrol in our pension and after six months, you can join our ‘Buy as You Earn’ scheme.

We’re about more than financial rewards though. We give everyone a voice in the business and room to be their authentic self. And we know you’re here to build your career, so we help every colleague with training and development opportunities. Making sure there’s always something new to learn.

Vanquis Bank is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Here at Vanquis Banking Group, we embrace everyone’s unique strengths and identities to be themselves at work. Regardless of how you identify yourself, your sexual orientation, martial or civil partner status, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national background, faith, disability, or age – your experiences and background help enrich our teams, and most importantly help support our customers in the best way possible. At the end of the day, it's our people that help us to fulfil the reason why we’re here in the first place: to help put people on a path to a better everyday life.

If there’s anything we can do in the recruitment process to help you achieve your best, get in touch. Whether it’s a copy of our application form in another format or additional assistance, we’re available to help. You can contact us at [email protected]