CX Activation Lead

Upbound Group•Plano, TX

3d•Onsite

About The Position

The CX Activation Lead will help shape the future of the Rent-A-Center store experience and advance Upbound Group’s goal of making customer-centricity a driver of growth. The role focuses on how store experiences are delivered, how technology enables them, and how coworkers serve customers. The Lead diagnoses journey friction, translates customer needs into business opportunities, helps derisk decisions, and supports business changes that better meet customer needs. Working with CX Insights, the role develops a deep understanding of customers and supports strategic research to inform leadership decisions about the role of stores and changing customer expectations. The Lead also partners with the CX Activation Lead for the Rent-A-Center digital experience to create a connected journey across digital and store experiences. The position requires a commercially minded, customer-focused person who can shape strategy with senior leaders and bring cross-functional teams together to test ideas and implement change. The role is on-site at Upbound’s headquarters in Plano, Texas. Candidates must be authorized to work in the U.S.; Upbound does not offer employment-based immigration sponsorship for this role, including OPT or CPT.

Requirements

5–8 years of experience in customer experience strategy, business transformation, service design, product strategy, innovation, digital strategy, management consulting, or a related discipline.
Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional projects that turn complex customer or business problems into strategies, experiments, roadmaps, or operational changes.
Strong business acumen and ability to connect customer needs to business opportunities and outcomes.
Experience influencing cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders without direct authority.
Strong problem-framing, facilitation, and structured-thinking skills.
Experience with rapid prototyping, concept validation, experimentation, or test-and-learn approaches.
Ability to synthesize qualitative customer understanding with quantitative, operational, and business data.
Experience developing business cases, investment recommendations, ROI assessments, or measurable success criteria.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including ability to simplify complex ideas for senior leaders.
Experience supporting adoption of new experiences, technologies, processes, or ways of working.
Must be available to work on-site at Upbound’s Plano, Texas headquarters.
Must be authorized to work in the U.S.; employment-based immigration sponsorship, including OPT or CPT, is not offered.

Nice To Haves

Experience in retail, fintech, financial services, digital products, or another complex customer-facing business.

Responsibilities

Own the business perspective of the end-to-end Rent-A-Center store journey and help define how it should evolve for customers and coworkers.
Lead cross-functional projects that define how store experiences, technology, processes, policies, and coworker interactions work together to serve customers; diagnose friction and clarify needed changes.
Partner with the digital CX Activation Lead to create a connected customer journey across digital and store experiences.
Work with CX Insights to synthesize customer needs, expectations, behaviors, journey friction, and business context into evidence-based opportunities and narratives for leadership.
Support strategic research that informs leadership decisions about the role of the store and how it should address evolving customer expectations.
Bring Product, Marketing, Operations, Data, Engineering, and Design together to make customer-centered decisions, align priorities, and turn redesigned experiences into action.
Influence roadmaps and priorities without relying on formal authority.
Identify and test critical assumptions through rapid prototyping, concept validation, experimentation, and other test-and-learn approaches.
Translate learning into recommendations on whether to advance, adjust, further test, or reconsider an opportunity.
Structure ambiguous opportunities by clarifying the customer problem, what needs to be learned or decided, and the strategic, operational, and financial implications.
Quantify the potential customer and business value of key opportunities; build business cases and ROI models to support investment decisions.
Define measurable customer and business outcomes and partner with Data and other teams to assess whether changes achieve intended impact.
Help teams adopt new ways of operating to deliver better experiences; identify and address barriers as experiences, technologies, and practices are introduced.
Help coworkers understand their role in delivering the intended customer experience.
Reinforce and scale customer-centered practices so customer needs increasingly influence organizational decisions and operations.