Defining a customer leadership role.

The challenge

Air New Zealand’s new Customer Touchpoints tribe lead role covered the end-to-end customer journey, from booking through the flight experience and disembarkation. It included physical and digital interactions, making a conventional title or industry match an incomplete way to define the search.

The role reported to the Chief Customer Officer and had a strong relationship with the Chief Digital Officer. Different stakeholder priorities meant the required profile was not straightforward. An internal product/customer leader was covering the responsibilities and remained a candidate for the permanent role.

My responsibility

I worked through what the tribe lead needed to own, explored the candidate market and advised the stakeholders on possible profiles. I had a stronger relationship with the Chief Digital Officer, while the corporate People GM had a strong relationship with the Chief Customer Officer. We worked together to progress alignment.

The task involved both assessment of the role and practical search work: identifying relevant experience, bringing candidates into consideration and working through whether an appointment could be made.

What I did

Each tribe also had a digital lead responsible for technology leadership. I reasoned that the tribe lead needed strong customer and journey leadership, commercial breadth and enough digital fluency to lead in that environment, without duplicating the digital lead’s technical ownership.

That interpretation widened the market. I explored people with customer leadership across physical and digital channels, including candidates from aviation and banking. My preferred external candidate was a US-based leader combining airline operations, customer leadership and technology-enabled commercial experience.

I worked through the relevance of that experience and advocated for the candidate as a serious option. I do not now recall the detailed assessment evidence well enough to recreate a particular interview finding or individual score.

Working through feasibility

There was a substantial difference between the candidate’s US technology remuneration and the package available at Air New Zealand. I worked iteratively with remuneration colleagues and stakeholders to understand what might be possible. The process did not reach a formal offer.

Relocation and adjustment to the local working environment were also considerations. Her previous Australian experience and motivation to return to aviation were relevant to those discussions. I did not identify a specific behavioural red flag.

Outcome and learning

The external candidate withdrew after personal circumstances prevented relocation. The internal candidate was appointed. I left the business soon afterwards and do not know the appointee’s subsequent performance. The available evidence does not establish that one candidate would have performed better than the other.

Later, at Qantas, I referred the external candidate to the search firm running a Jetstar Chief Customer Officer search. She reached its shortlist or short group, but again could not relocate following a change in circumstances. I did not run that search.

The later shortlist supports the relevance of the profile. The broader lesson is that a compelling candidate is one part of an appointment: stakeholder alignment, decision pace, remuneration and relocation feasibility matter too. Personal circumstances caused the withdrawal; I cannot attribute it to the length of the process.