The UK’s capital has over 500 percent more vacancies in senior customer experience leadership roles than the global average, according to new research. Contributor Steph Heasman, Director of Customer Success – Feefo.

London takes pole position as the top city globally for senior customer experience (CX) job opportunities, research by global reviews and customer insights technology company Feefo has found.

The research was conducted by crawling more than 120,000 job listings from ten leading countries, retrieving senior customer experience job roles and analysing them. The research reveals that London, with 2,668 vacancies, has over five times (532 percent) more senior CX job opportunities than the average of 422 for the rest of the world. The research also shows there is wide fluctuation in the opportunities available in different cities.

The top five cities advertising the most jobs

• London: 2,668
• Seattle: 2,555
• New York: 2,344
• Toronto: 694
• Sydney: 388

Analysis of salaries on offer in both the UK and U.S for those in senior roles, found that in the UK 33 percent  of senior customer experience jobs offer a salary of £50,000 or higher versus only 25 percent  in the U.S. This could reflect the greater sense of urgency felt in the U.K for recruiting customer experience professionals.

“Customer experience is overtaking price and product as the number one differentiator for business and in response to this, the CX sector has grown massively in London over recent years,” said Steph Heasman, Director of Customer Success Feefo. “The number of senior job opportunities now available is a reflection of the commitment businesses are making to improve the customer journey”, continued Steph. “To drive this forward, businesses must now consider the transformative role of technology, as maximising the customer journey requires insight as well as human resources.”

The job roles with the highest demand in the UK were:

• Customer experience manager – 42 percent 
• Head of customer experience – 22 percent 
• Digital customer experience manager – 15 percent 
• Head of customer insight – 14 percent 
• Head of customer trust – 7 percent 

The results align with research from the Economist Intelligence Unit which, last year, reported that more than one in four (26 percent) UK companies have increased investment in customer experience by more than 25 per cent in the last three years.

The companies advertising the most senior customer experience job roles in the UK were:

• Amazon – 46 percent 
• BT – 17 percent 
• Vodafone – 16 percent 
• HSBC – 11 percent 
• Barclays – 10 percent 

The findings indicate that while London is placing much importance on CX development and recruitment, the UK as a whole could have some catching up to do. The US has 316 senior roles vacant per million of the working population, and Canada 103, but the UK is a distant third with just 70.

The lack of CX leadership opportunities for the UK compared with the wealth of opportunities in London suggests that not only is the UK’s capital ahead of many countries in CX investment and recruitment but that it is also ahead of the rest of the country.

Other European countries such as France have a mere of 2.9 (senior CX job vacancies per million), and Germany 6.9. This may well change as the Economist Intelligence Unit predicts investment in customer experience across Europe will increase by 10 percent  in the next three years.