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Customer Experience Strategist - Store Experience

On-site - Plano, TX

Upbound Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: UPBD) is a technology and data-driven leader in accessible and inclusive financial solutions that address the evolving needs and aspirations of underserved customers. The company's operating units - Acima, Brigit, and Rent-A-Center - enable consumer transactions across both digital and store-based channels, including more than 2,300 retail locations in the U.S., Mexico, and Puerto Rico.

Upbound Group, Inc. is headquartered in Plano, Texas.

JOB OVERVIEW

The Customer Experience Strategist plays a central role in designing, optimizing, and transforming critical experiences across Upbound's ecosystem. Reporting to the Director of Customer Experience Strategy, this role serves as the subject matter expert and owner of the Rent-A-Center store experience, with responsibility for identifying opportunities, shaping experience strategy, leading roadmaps, and aligning cross-functional teams around improvements that deliver measurable customer, coworker, and business value.

This role will help evolve how customers and coworkers interact with Rent-A-Center across physical stores, digital touchpoints, store technology, centralized support, and emerging AI-enabled experiences. The Strategist will identify opportunities to simplify experiences, clarify roles and handoffs, and determine how technology, AI, call centers, and store coworkers can work together to deliver a more seamless and effective experience.

A significant area of focus will be supporting the transformation of customer support and service responsibilities - including identifying opportunities to shift appropriate activities from store coworkers to AI-enabled and centralized support solutions while ensuring the overall customer experience remains connected, human, and aligned to the brand promise. This includes understanding the implications for coworker workflows, training, technology, processes, and standard operating procedures.

The ideal candidate combines strategic thinking, customer empathy, design thinking, operational understanding, and strong problem-solving skills. They are comfortable navigating ambiguity, translating insights into action, and influencing across functions to transform complex experiences.

This is a full-time, on-site position based at Upbound's Plano, TX headquarters.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIESJourney Ownership & Experience Strategy

• Serve as the journey owner and subject matter expert for the Rent-A-Center store experience, spanning customer, coworker, operational, and technology touchpoints.
• Develop and maintain an experience roadmap that identifies key pain points, opportunities, dependencies, and strategic priorities across the store journey.
• Translate customer and coworker insights, feedback, operational data, and behavioral data into actionable improvements and strategic initiatives.
• Identify opportunities to simplify and connect experiences across stores, digital channels, contact centers, AI-enabled support, and other customer touchpoints.
• Partner with Design, Product, Marketing, Operations, Technology, and other functions to align on shared outcomes and execution.

Experience Design & Optimization

• Lead journey mapping, service blueprinting, and opportunity-framing workshops to uncover moments that matter and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Apply design thinking and human-centered design principles to reimagine customer and coworker processes, communications, interactions, and support experiences.
• Identify opportunities to simplify, automate, centralize, or redesign activities while balancing customer needs, coworker experience, operational efficiency, and business value.
• Help define the future-state experience across human and technology-enabled touchpoints, including AI agents, call centers, store technology, and coworker interactions.
• Define success metrics and use data to measure and improve experiences over time.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to pilot, test, refine, and scale experience enhancements.

Store & Operating Model Transformation

• Partner with Store Operations and functional leaders to understand how changes to the customer experience affect coworker roles, workflows, training, processes, and standard operating procedures (SOPs).
• Help identify which customer and support activities are best delivered by store coworkers, centralized teams, technology, or AI-enabled solutions.
• Design and document future-state journeys and operating experiences that create clear roles, responsibilities, and handoffs across channels and teams.
• Identify opportunities to reduce unnecessary coworker effort while preserving the human interactions that create meaningful customer value.
• Support change initiatives by translating experience strategy into actionable requirements for training, communications, technology, and operational teams.
• Ensure new experiences are practical, scalable, and capable of being consistently delivered across the Rent-A-Center store network.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Bring together cross-functional stakeholders to align on priorities, resolve dependencies, and co-own outcomes.
• Lead working sessions with stakeholders across Store Operations, Product, Technology, Digital, Marketing, Customer Care, Data, and CX.
• Partner with the Growth Office, Voice of Customer, Insights, and Analytics teams to ensure insights inform experience strategy and prioritization.
• Influence journey-related technology and data priorities that enable more connected, personalized, and consistent experiences.
• Build alignment across teams with different priorities, incentives, and perspectives - leading without direct authority.
• Communicate progress, recommendations, and strategic insights to leadership through clear storytelling and visualization.

Continuous Improvement & Innovation

• Champion a culture of experimentation, learning, and continuous improvement across journey teams.
• Identify opportunities for automation, AI, simplification, and innovation that improve both customer and coworker experiences.
• Establish feedback loops to understand how changes perform in-market and continuously refine the experience.
• Document and share best practices, frameworks, and learnings that can scale across other experience domains and Upbound brands.
• Stay current on emerging technologies and evolving customer expectations relevant to retail and service experiences.

You should apply for this role if you are:

• A compelling storyteller with an insight-to-action mindset, who can energize teams around opportunity areas with clear, data-backed narratives and help partners define how to address them.
• An exceptional problem framer, able to structure ambiguous and complex problem spaces, align stakeholders, and surface insights that validate opportunities for cross-functional teams to solve.
• A systems thinker who can understand how customer, coworker, operational, technology, and business considerations interact across an end-to-end experience.
• A self-starter and highly curious, comfortable with ambiguity and the ability to operate effectively in evolving, loosely defined roles.
• A leader who can guide and delegate work across levels and functions, including leading without direct authority and building strong partnerships across the organization.
• A strategic thinker who understands how to connect customer and coworker needs to operational, technology, and financial outcomes.
• Someone who is energized by transforming how work gets done, including exploring where AI, automation, centralized support, and technology can improve experiences without losing the human connection.
• Comfortable moving between strategy and execution - able to define the future-state experience while also understanding the operational details required to make it work.

SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS

• 5-8 years of experience in customer experience, service design, digital strategy, product management, operations strategy, or a related field.
• Proven success owning and improving complex, end-to-end customer or service journeys that deliver measurable impact.
• Experience working across physical and digital experiences, ideally within retail, financial services, hospitality, healthcare, telecommunications, or another customer-facing service environment.
• Strong understanding of journey mapping, service design, design thinking, and human-centered design.
• Experience translating customer or coworker needs into future-state processes, experiences, or operating models.
• Demonstrated ability to partner with Product, Technology, Operations, Marketing, and other cross-functional teams to drive change.
• Experience with automation, AI-enabled experiences, digital transformation, or service model transformation is strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of how changes to customer experiences can affect employee/coworker workflows, training, processes, and operational execution.
• Excellent facilitation and collaboration skills; able to influence across diverse functions and levels.
• Analytical mindset with the ability to connect qualitative insights and quantitative data to business outcomes.
• Strong presentation and storytelling skills with executive-level polish.
• Experience in fintech, retail, or customer-facing service industries preferred.
• Passion for customers, empathy-driven innovation, and building experiences that are simpler, more connected, and more human.
• Must be available to work on-site at Upbound's Plano, TX headquarters.