Interim Chief Executive — Customer Confidence and Delivery Recovery

Restore credibility through commitments that are kept

The leader will take executive responsibility within an agreed mandate. They must work directly with commercial, operational and finance leaders rather than create a separate recovery team disconnected from the people who run the business.

Start with the commitments already made

Establish a reliable account of customer obligations, service failures, backlogs and unresolved disputes. Identify where commercial expectations exceed operating capability and where delivery issues have been hidden by inconsistent reporting. Prioritise corrective action according to customer consequence and business viability, not solely the volume of complaints.

Reset the promise

Lead decisions on what can be offered, which commitments require renegotiation and how customers will be kept informed. Ensure communications are specific and credible. Avoid using optimistic recovery dates to postpone difficult conversations when the underlying constraints remain unresolved.

Rebuild the ability to deliver

Resolve cross-functional ownership, capacity and prioritisation problems. Establish a management rhythm that tracks commitments to completion and makes exceptions visible early. Align incentives so that sales, delivery and support are accountable for the same customer outcome.

Experience required

Candidates need chief executive, managing director or equivalent enterprise leadership experience through a period of operational or commercial underperformance. They should have evidence of restoring customer trust through substantive operating change. Strong financial literacy is necessary to distinguish a sustainable recovery from service improvements achieved through uneconomic effort.

Applicants must be able to communicate difficult information calmly and hold leaders accountable without encouraging concealment. Relevant sector requirements will be assessed separately; the role calls for general-management recovery capability rather than an assumed specialist background.

Success will be measured in the reliability of commitments, the quality of customer relationships and the economics of delivery. The handover should leave clear ownership, dependable information and a leadership team capable of maintaining the improved performance. Major strategic, financial or structural decisions remain subject to approval, and unresolved risks must be explicit so that permanent leadership inherits an honest operating position rather than a temporary improvement dependent on exceptional intervention.