Vice President - Customer Operations Loyalty (UAE Nationals)

The VP – Customer Operations is responsible for owning and scaling the end-to-end customer operations strategy for Darna, ensuring a consistent, high-quality member experience across all physical and digital touchpoints. The role oversees service delivery models, loyalty systems operations, partner enablement, and operational risk, while driving continuous improvement and readiness for rapid growth of the Loyalty Programme. This position ensures operational excellence, platform stability, regulatory compliance, and customer-centric execution across the full loyalty lifecycle—from onboarding to redemption and issue resolution.

Roles and Responsibilities

Strategic Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end customer operations strategy, designing and managing service models that deliver a consistent, high-quality experience across all Darna touchpoints, including contact centres, in-mall desks, and digital support channels.

• Champion operational excellence by defining and governing processes, SLAs, and KPIs to continuously improve response times, resolution rates, and member satisfaction.

• Lead the scaling of operational capabilities, designing resourcing, outsourcing, and technology models to support targets without compromising service quality or cost efficiency.

• Act as the senior escalation point for operational risks, service failures, and customer experience issues impacting members, partners, or regulators.

Functional Responsibilities

• Oversee loyalty systems operations, ensuring day-to-day performance, uptime, stability, and security of core platforms including LMS, CRM, card linking, receipt scanning, and gift cards, in compliance with regulatory and data-security requirements.

• Drive continuous improvement of member journeys across onboarding, earn, redemption, tier management, and complaints handling to build trust, engagement, and advocacy.

• Lead partner and merchant operations, ensuring seamless onboarding, integration, training, and ongoing support for Aldar tenants, merchants, and ecosystem partners to maximise adoption and minimise operational friction.

• Manage the operational delivery of innovative solutions, including receipt scanning, card-linking, and gift card capabilities, ensuring readiness, reliability, and scalability.

• Embed voice-of-customer (VOC), analytics, and feedback loops into operational decision-making to enhance processes, reduce cost-to-serve, and elevate customer satisfaction.

• Implement robust operational risk and compliance frameworks, including controls to mitigate fraud, card misuse, and data privacy risks, and ensure audit and regulatory readiness.

People Development

• Build, lead, and develop high-performing customer operations teams with clear accountability, KPIs, and performance management frameworks.

• Coach and mentor team members to build strong operational, service management, and problem-solving capabilities.

• Foster a culture of customer obsession, continuous improvement, and operational discipline across all customer-facing teams and partners.

Qualifications & Skills

• Minimum 10+ years of experience in customer operations, service delivery, or operations leadership ideally within loyalty.

• Loyalty Programs and Platforms, CRM and Customer Service Technologies, Partner and Merchant Operations.

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Strong understanding of service management, SLAs, KPIs, and operational governance.

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Experience managing complex vendor and partner ecosystems.

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Strong analytical mindset with ability to use VOC and data to drive decisions.

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Proven ability to scale operations in high-growth environments.

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Excellent stakeholder management and executive communication skills.

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Strong risk awareness and compliance orientation.

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Bachelor’s degree in business administration, Operations, or related field.