VOLKSWAGEN Group Australia has announced that after almost six years, its director of customer experience and marketing Jason Bradshaw has left to pursue his own customer experience business.

His replacement is Rick Whaite as general manager of customer experience. Prior to joining Volkswagen, Mr Whaite was national marketing and partnerships manager for Alinta Energy and before that, was group business director for Innocean Worldwide for five years.

He was also the co-founder of the first Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) in Australia, Boost Mobile.

Mr Bradshaw became Volkswagen Australia’s first dedicated director of customer experience at the end of 2015, having built his marketing and customer credentials across brands including Fairfax Media, Target and NSW Department of Finance and Services.

He took on the marketing role as an additional responsibility at Volkswagen in January 2019.

In 2020 and 2021 he was voted as one of the world’s top 30 “gurus” on Customer Service/Experience.

He said it was “only natural that my journey includes the formation of my own agency, POWER OF CEX, focused on supporting individuals and organisations to accelerate their growth with an intentional focus on the experiences they deliver across customer, employee, product, and brand.”

He said he was extremely proud of the work his division at Volkswagen has delivered during his tenure and noted an overall improvement in customer experience to very positive territory across all touchpoints.

Mr Bradshaw said this work involved delivering CX & EX programs to over 5000 participants, a full replacement of their CRM systems, significantly increasing the number of Australians that positively engaged with the brand and the launch of an innovative e-commerce platform that resulted in over a 1000 customers being served in the first 9 months and $36 million in revenue.

By Neil Dowling