Volkswagen hires first Australian customer experience chief

Former Target Australia customer experience chief, Jason Bradshaw, has taken up a new post as the first director of customer experience for Volkswagen Group Australia.

Bradshaw has been the head of customer experience at Target Australia for nearly two years. Prior to that, he spent a year working as a senior commercial manager at Fairfax Media, and was also formerly director of procurement transformation at NSW Department of Finance and Services.

General manager of communications for Volkswagen Group Australia, Karl Gehling, said the director of customer experience position was created in recognition of the importance of customer service to the business.

“This new role brings together responsibility for all customer touchpoints in the business encompassing call centre, roadside assistance, customer satisfaction and loyalty,” he said.

Bradshaw’s key priorities are to deliver improvements in customer experience across every touchpoint in the business. He officially commenced the role in October 2015 and reports directly to the managing director, Michael Bartsch.

The appointment comes as Volkswagen globally reels from an emissions scandal that originally broke in the US in September and has since caused shockwaves around the world. The scandal centres around software used within its engines that tells each car to go into ‘clean mode’ when it detects the car is being tested for emissions.

The Australian company has confirmed it will recall at least 91,000 cars in Australia affected by the diesel emissions scandal.

More on the rise of the chief customer officer:

• Chief customer officer: Threat to the CMO, or the ultimate modern marketer?
• Westpac Group appoints first chief customer officer
• CMOs, CIOs increasingly see chief customer officer as relationship saviour
• Why GoDaddy needs a CMO and a chief customer officer
• Virgin's customer chief: Customer experience comes down to your people
  

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