Head of Performance Improvement

Company Description

Parcel2Go is a private equity backed business with revenue of over £100 million and ambitious growth plans.

In the UK, historically people have used the Post Office to send parcels. However, Post Offices are not always open at convenient times, and they are often significantly more expensive than the alternatives. Despite this they dominate a market for consumers and small / micro businesses worth £1.5 billion, with 12 million potential customers and over 90% market share.

In 2001, Parcel2Go's founders decided the Post Office needed some competition and founded Parcel2Go.com as a lower cost and more convenient alternative. At the heart of the offer is an easy to use comparison website that helps customers quickly compare and choose the best delivery option for their needs. Parcel2Go does not handle the physical collection or delivery of parcels - this is done by our network of over 20 carriers including DPD, UPS and Evri. Unlike other comparison sites, Parcel2Go's customer service team supports the customer throughout the shipping journey, from before the parcel is sent through to safe delivery.

Parcel2Go.com is now the UK's leading parcel delivery comparison website, has helped over 2 million customers and also operates in Spain and Ireland. The Group also runs a white-label arm providing technology, marketing and customer service to 13 carrier brands across Europe, and a pallet delivery arm following the 2017 acquisition of National Pallets.

Reason for the Role

This role has become available due to internal role changes. The vacancy creates an opportunity to reset the brief around what we now see as the single biggest lever for Operations performance over the next three years: aggressive, intelligent exploitation of AI.

Parcel2Go is investing heavily in AI to transform how Operations runs - from automating customer demand and self-serve journeys, to AI-led forecasting, scheduling and intraday decisioning, to agent-assist, knowledge automation and AI-driven claims and courier exception handling. We expect this role to own that agenda inside Operations, set the pace, and hold the business honest on AI delivery and value capture.

Alongside the AI mandate, the successful candidate will own the management information, board reporting, commercial and operational analysis, budgeting, payroll calculation and resource planning disciplines that turn AI investment into measurable cost, service, margin and customer experience improvement.

Purpose of the Role

Parcel2Go is seeking a commercially minded, AI-first Head of Performance Improvement, Operations to lead the AI transformation of our Operations function and own the management information, planning and analytical disciplines that turn it into measurable value. The role exists to make Parcel2Go Operations materially better, faster and cheaper through AI - and to give the Operations Director, the Board and the Executive a single, trusted view of performance, plans and the value being delivered.

Role Brief

Lead the Performance Improvement Operations team to deliver an AI-led step change in the way Parcel2Go plans, measures, reports, automates and operates - whilst owning the day-to-day disciplines that hold the function together:

•    AI-led automation, deflection and self-serve - own and drive the Operations AI roadmap end to end. Identify, prioritise, ship and scale AI use cases that automate customer demand, intelligent self-serve, agent assist, knowledge automation, AI-driven claims and courier exception handling, and AI-supported planning. Make AI Parcel2Go Operations' default route to lower cost, better service and better customer experience - and own the business case, value tracking and pace of delivery.

•    Operations management information - own the operations team MI suite end to end, including the key business processes such as claims management and courier performance reporting. Define KPIs, drive data quality and make MI the daily heartbeat of the Operations function.

•    Board reporting - produce the Operations content for the monthly Board pack and Executive reviews. Translate operational detail into a clear commercial narrative covering performance, risk, opportunity and progress against plan.

•    Commercial and operational analysis - lead deep-dive analysis on cost-to-serve, claims exposure, courier profitability, channel margin, contact reasons and lane-level economics. Act as the 'Voice of the Customer' inside Operations and across the Executive - owning customer experience reporting, contact and complaint root-cause analysis, Trustpilot and CSAT insight - and convert findings into prioritised actions that protect revenue, reduce cost and improve the customer experience.

•    Budget planning - own the Operations budget cycle including bottom-up build, scenario modelling, board submission, in-year tracking and variance commentary. Partner closely with Finance.

•    Payroll calculation - own accurate, on-time calculation of Operations payroll inputs including hours, shift premia, overtime, bonus and absence. Drive automation and controls to remove manual effort and risk.

Resource planning - lead the full resource planning cycle for Operations - long-range forecasting, capacity planning, scheduling, intraday management and contact routing - to match supply to demand at the lowest sustainable cost and the right service level.

Scope of Role

•    Ownership of the Operations AI and automation roadmap

•    Leadership of the Performance Improvement Operations team

•    Operations MI, board reporting and analytics across the Parcel2Go Group

•    Voice of the Customer and customer experience reporting for Operations

•    Operations budget ownership, working in partnership with Finance

•    Payroll calculation for the Operations population

•    AI-supported forecasting, scheduling, routing and intraday for customer-facing operations

•    Claims process MI, courier performance reporting and AI-driven exception handling

Skills and ExperienceEssential

•    Demonstrable experience deploying AI and automation in a customer operations or service environment - covering contact deflection, self-serve, agent assist, knowledge automation or AI-driven decisioning - with measurable cost or service value delivered

•    Strong commercial instinct for where AI creates real value and where it does not; able to prioritise the AI roadmap ruthlessly against P&L impact and run a disciplined value-tracking process

•    Proven track record leading a performance improvement, planning or analytics function in a high-volume service or operations environment

•    Strong commercial and analytical thinking, graduate level or equivalent, with the ability to move from raw data to a Board-ready narrative

•    Experience owning operational MI, KPI design and management reporting at executive level

•    Experience of resource planning - forecasting, scheduling, intraday and routing - in a contact centre or operations setting

•    Budget ownership experience including build, tracking and variance analysis

•    Experience leading and developing high-performing teams in a fast-changing, AI-disrupted environment

Preferred

•    Science or Engineering degree from Working knowledge of modern LLM-based architectures (RAG, agents, fine-tuning, evaluation) and the build versus buy trade-offs

•    Experience selecting, contracting and managing AI vendors and platforms

•    Experience embedding AI into forecasting, scheduling, routing or intraday decisioning

•    Lean, Six Sigma or systems thinking background, applied alongside AI rather than instead of it

•    Experience of a digital, multi-brand or marketplace service environment

•    Experience of payroll calculation, controls and automation

•    SQL or equivalent data fluency; comfortable interrogating warehouses and BI tools directly.

Location and Reporting

•    Location: Greater Manchester / North West of England

•    Reports to: Operations Director

Core Measures of Success

•    AI value capture - cumulative £ benefit delivered through AI and automation initiatives, tracked against business case

•    Pace of AI delivery - AI use cases shipped to production per quarter and time from idea to live

•    Contact automation rate and self-serve adoption - proportion of customer demand handled without human intervention

•    Accuracy, timeliness and credibility of Operations MI and Board reporting

•    Delivery of Operations budget - cost-to-serve, cost per contact and headcount efficiency

•    Forecast accuracy and adherence; service level achievement at the lowest sustainable cost

•    Payroll accuracy and on-time delivery

•    Customer satisfaction and Trustpilot score for Operations-owned journeys