Fractional Director of Consumer Insights & Voice of the Customer (CPG/DTC)

Work Industries•Orange, CA

12d

About The Position

Work Industries is seeking an experienced Consumer Insights leader for a growing, approximately $50M direct-to-consumer consumer products company with a significant subscription-based business. The company has substantial quantitative customer data but needs to understand the 'why' behind customer behavior. This role will establish the qualitative Consumer Insights and Voice of Customer capability, generate actionable insights through initial research, and build a sustainable framework for future internal leadership. The focus is on defining learning objectives, selecting methodologies, conducting research, synthesizing findings, and integrating insights into business decisions.

Requirements

Significant experience leading Consumer Insights, Customer Insights, Voice of Customer, or closely related functions within consumer-facing organizations.
Deep expertise in qualitative consumer research and demonstrated ability to select and apply appropriate research methodologies.
Strong ability to connect qualitative findings with quantitative behavioral and transactional data.
Experience translating consumer behavior into an understanding of underlying motivations and decision drivers.
Experience building or significantly evolving a Consumer Insights and/or Voice of Customer capability.
Demonstrated ability to translate research into actionable business recommendations.
Experience working cross-functionally with senior leaders across Product, Marketing, Customer Experience, Innovation, and/or Analytics.
Comfort operating in a hands-on fractional environment without the infrastructure or resources of a large corporate insights organization.
Executive-level communication and synthesis skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience within DTC, e-commerce, subscription, or other data-rich consumer businesses strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Assess existing customer information, quantitative data, research and feedback sources to understand current knowledge and identify gaps.
Partner with executive and functional leadership to identify and prioritize business questions for Consumer Insights.
Translate quantitative customer behavior into qualitative research hypotheses and questions.
Develop an initial Consumer Insights and Voice of Customer research roadmap.
Determine appropriate qualitative methodologies for priority business questions (e.g., in-depth interviews, focus groups, customer journey research, concept testing, ethnographic research).
Design and execute or oversee initial qualitative research initiatives to explore customer motivations, needs, drivers, expectations, perceptions, barriers, product experiences, subscription behaviors, retention drivers, and churn reasons.
Identify opportunities to understand current customers, former customers, prospects, and non-purchasers.
Synthesize qualitative findings with existing quantitative and behavioral data for a complete consumer understanding.
Translate research findings into clear, actionable implications for Product, Innovation, Customer Experience, Marketing, and Retention.
Establish an ongoing Voice of Customer framework, including feedback channels, research cadence, methodologies, insight repositories, and sharing mechanisms.
Recommend how Consumer Insights should interact with existing data, analytics, customer service, marketing, product, and other functions.
Define the capabilities, responsibilities, and profile for a permanent Consumer Insights leader.
Support the evaluation and selection of the permanent hire and facilitate knowledge transition.