Senior Customer Experience Specialist

El Pollo Loco•Costa Mesa, CA

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Customer Experience Specialist serves as a strategic leader and subject-matter expert within the Customer Experience (CX) team. This role represents the voice of the guest and is instrumental in translating customer insights into impactful operational, brand, and process improvements across the organization. The Senior Customer Experience Specialist leads the resolution of complex, high-impact customer cases, and performs advanced analysis of customer trends to identify risks, opportunities, and systemic gaps. This role partners closely with cross-functional leaders to influence decision-making, strengthen guest loyalty and protect brand reputation. This position also supports CX leadership through reporting, actionable insights, and strategic recommendations while driving the evolution of tools, workflows, and best practices that enhance the end-to-end guest journey.

Requirements

High School Diploma required; Bachelor’s degree in Communications, Business, Hospitality, or related field strongly preferred.
3–5+ years of progressive experience in customer experience, call center, hospitality, or restaurant support environments.
Demonstrated experience handling escalations, data analysis, and cross-functional collaboration.
Advanced knowledge of customer experience principles, service recovery strategies, and brand reputation management within a multi-unit, consumer-facing organization.
Working knowledge of operational processes, risk considerations, quality standards, and regulatory or compliance implications as they relate to customer interactions and resolutions.
Strong understanding of customer data analysis, trend identification, and root-cause methodologies across service, food quality, digital ordering, and delivery platforms.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence outcomes, cross-functional partners, contribute to strategic initiatives, and present findings to leaders with clarity and credibility.
Ability to proactively identify emerging trends, risks, and opportunities and take initiative to escalate, recommend, or implement solutions.
Ability to adapt high level of independent judgment and approach based on evolving business needs, guest expectations, and organizational priorities. Advanced proficiency in Excel and comfort working with CX platforms and CRM systems.
Ability to evaluate competing priorities and determine appropriate courses of action without reliance on detailed instructions or constant oversight.
Strong attention to detail with the ability to see both the big picture and root causes.
Ability to work flexible or rotational schedules (e.g., 8:00 AM–5:00 PM or 10:00 AM–7:00 PM).
Ability to work on-site at the Support Center as required and in alignment with the hybrid work policy.

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary escalation authority for complex, sensitive, or high-risk customer cases, ensuring timely resolution aligned with brand standards, risk considerations, and operations realities.
Model and champion El Pollo Loco’s CARE model at an advanced level, transforming challenging guest interactions into opportunities to strengthen trust, loyalty and brand advocacy.
Exercise independent judgment in determining customer resolutions that may have implications for brand perception, financial risk, or operational practices.
Lead analysis of CX data across food quality, service, digital ordering, delivery, and location-specific trends to identify root causes and systemic opportunities.
Translate guest insights into clear, actionable recommendations that influence operational improvements, training strategies, and policy updates.
Develop and deliver recurring and ad-hoc reports for CX leadership and cross-functional partners using advanced Excel skills (pivot tables, XLOOKUP/VLOOKUP, trend analysis).
Partner with the Customer Experience Manager to define KPIs, track performance, and measure the impact of CX initiatives.
Act as a strategic liaison between CX and Operations, Risk Management, QA, Marketing, Digital/Product, and Regional Leadership.
Proactively surface emerging guest trends, risks, and insights to Operations Leaders to support timely, informed decision-making.
Support enterprise initiatives by providing the customer perspective during pilots, rollouts, or process changes.
Oversee and continuously improve administrative workflows including complaint tracking, documentation accuracy, follow-ups, and reporting consistency.
Identify and drive enhancements to CX tools, templates, and knowledge base content to ensure consistent, high-quality responses across all channels.
Maintain ownership of omnichannel customer interactions (email, phone, web, mail) as needed.
Other duties as assigned by supervisor