Senior Manager

JOB DESCRIPTION

Senior Manager – IROP Excellence – Customer Experience

Location: Gurgaon (Air India Express HQ)
Function: Customer Experience (CX)
Travel: Periodic domestic travel during disruption events

About the Role

The Senior Manager of IROP Excellence is the single accountable leader for how the group cares for guests during disruption. The role owns the end-to-end disruption journey from first proactive alert through rebooking, duty of care, service recovery, and loyalty repair  and is the permanent customer voice inside operational command.

Key Responsibilities

1. Strategy & Governance

• Own and evolve the IROP Customer Experience framework, delivering harmonised and differentiated standards across Air India Express.
• Define and govern the Disruption Experience Charter, codifying guest entitlements, communication standards, and duty-of-care commitments.
• Architect and operationalise a tiered disruption response model, enabling fast, consistent, and empowered frontline execution.
• Ensure alignment with DGCA CAR and applicable international regulatory frameworks.
• Present IROP CX strategy, OKRs, and investment priorities to executive leadership.

2. Live Operations – Voice of the Guest

• Represent the “voice of the guest” within the Integrated Operations Control Centre (IOCC), influencing real-time decisions on cancellations, diversions, and recovery planning.
• Quantify customer and commercial impact in real time, ensuring balanced decision-making beyond cost and recovery metrics.
• Own the end-to-end guest communication ecosystem across digital, airport, and contact centre channels, ensuring a single source of truth.
• Lead cross-functional CX response during major disruption events as incident commander.
• Monitor live sentiment signals and translate insights into immediate operational actions.

3. Service Recovery & Post-Disruption

• Design and scale structured recovery programmes, including tiered goodwill, premium guest handling, and compensation frameworks.
• Govern automated apology, compensation, and loyalty restoration in partnership with Finance, Legal, and Loyalty teams.
• Lead post-event analysis and root-cause reviews, driving systemic fixes across Operations and Digital.
• Partner with Revenue Management and Loyalty to retain high-value customers through targeted re-engagement.
• Oversee resolution of escalated regulatory and consumer cases.

4. Performance, Insights & Technology

• Own the IROP CX scorecard, insights engine, and reporting cadence to leadership.
• Build advanced analytics capabilities spanning sentiment, call drivers, social listening, and disruption intelligence.
• Define and deliver the CX technology roadmap, enabling self-service recovery, proactive communication, and agent-assist tools.
• Integrate guest-impact scoring into decision-support platforms (Jeppesen, Sabre AirCentre, Altéa, IBS iFlight).

5. Leadership & Capability Building

• Lead a multi-disciplinary team across Governance, Live Operations CX, Recovery & Insights, and Technology Enablement.
• Build enterprise-wide disruption readiness through simulations, OCC immersion, and frontline training.
• Develop future CX leaders and embed a customer-first culture across IOCC, Ground Operations, and Contact Centres.

6. Regulatory & External Representation

• Represent the organisation with DGCA, BCAS, MoCA, and airport operators on disruption management and passenger rights.
• Shape CX narrative for executive communications and media during high-impact disruption events.

What We’re Looking For

Essential Experience

• 15–18 years across airline operations, customer experience, or operational consulting, with a minimum of 7 years in senior leadership roles owning disruption management, service recovery, or operational CX at scale.
• Demonstrable track record of building or transforming an airline IROP CX function, or leading a comparable service-recovery portfolio at a full-service or large LCC carrier.
• Direct experience leading guest experience through at least one major fleet, network, weather, geopolitical, or IT disruption event — with evidence of measurable guest and commercial outcome.
• Proven ability to influence at ExCo level, with fluency across Operations, Digital, Commercial, and Regulatory functions.
• Experience managing and developing multi-disciplinary teams of 10+ colleagues across technical and customer-facing skill sets.

Preferred Experience

• Exposure to both full-service and value-carrier operating models; experience with airline merger or post-integration CX harmonisation is a distinct advantage.
• Working knowledge of IROP and network platforms — Jeppesen, IBS iFlight, Sabre AirCentre, Amadeus Altéa, NetLine.
• Experience with CX tooling — Qualtrics, Medallia, Sprinklr, Redsmart, Salesforce Service Cloud, Genesys.
• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification or CX / Service Design Thinking accreditation.
• International hub experience across GCC, Southeast Asia, Europe, or North America.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in aviation management, Business, Engineering, or a related field (required).
• MBA or Master's in a relevant discipline (strongly preferred).

Leadership Competencies

• Guest Obsession — makes every decision through the guest lens, including when it is the harder commercial call.
• Calm Command — decisive, composed and credible under crisis conditions; the leader others look to when the situation is moving faster than the data.
• Cross-Functional Influence — moves Operations, Commercial and Digital without relying on positional authority; builds coalitions across functional lines.
• Data-Driven Judgement — pairs deep operational understanding with quantitative rigour; comfortable interrogating data and challenging assumptions.