Halfords

About us

Halfords is on a journey - building the future of motoring and cycling and looking for people who want to help shape what comes next. We’re a place for co‑creators: people who want to make a real impact, take ownership and be part of something that’s still evolving.

As the UK’s leading retailer of motoring and cycling products, we’re supported by one of the country’s largest independent vehicle servicing, maintenance and repair networks through Halfords Autocentres. This breadth gives us a strong, stable foundation - and the freedom to keep innovating and growing.

That means real variety for our colleagues, along with the opportunity to learn, stretch and develop as the business moves forward. Whatever your role, you’ll be part of a team focused on delivering exceptional service - using your expertise to solve problems, guide customers and help keep the nation moving with confidence.

About the role

We're looking for an experienced Customer Insight Manager to join Halfords on a 12-month contract, working 3 days per week, during a pivotal period for the business. As Halfords makes a number of high-stakes strategic decisions that will shape our future customers, propositions and growth opportunities, you'll play a critical role in ensuring those decisions are informed by clear, credible and actionable customer insight.

Working with senior stakeholders across Marketing, Category and Proposition, you'll lead our customer insight capability, manage key research and agency partnerships, and champion the voice of the customer across the organisation. This is an opportunity for someone who thrives on influencing important decisions, translating evidence into action, and helping leaders understand not just what customers think and do, but how confident we should be in the decisions we make as a result.

Key responsibilities

• Lead customer insight that drives business decisions, ensuring research and evidence directly supports strategic choices across Marketing, Category and Proposition.
• Champion the voice of the customer, bringing clear, balanced and credible customer understanding into key decision-making forums.
• Own and evolve core customer insight assets, including segmentation, trackers and panels, ensuring they remain relevant, trusted and actionable.
• Manage and inspire external insight partners, setting decision-led briefs and ensuring output is focused on impact, not activity.
• Translate complex evidence into clear recommendations, helping stakeholders understand implications, trade-offs and levels of confidence.
• Provide transparency on the strength of customer evidence, highlighting where insight is robust, limited, ageing or incomplete.
• Partner with insight and analytics specialists across Halfords, aligning customer insight activity to the organisation's most important priorities.
• Drive learning and continuous improvement, tracking outcomes and ensuring insight contributes to better future decisions as well as today's.

About you

• Extensive customer insight experience, ideally gained in complex, multi-category, multi-channel or customer-led organisations.
• A proven track record of managing insight agencies as strategic partners, ensuring research is focused on business impact and decision quality.
• Strong commercial and strategic acumen, with experience influencing decisions that shape customer, proposition and growth strategies.
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills, with the credibility and confidence to engage, challenge and influence senior leaders, including Executive-level audiences.
• Sound judgement when evaluating evidence, able to balance rigour, pace and practicality while being clear about confidence levels, risks and limitations.
• A calm, credible and objective approach, comfortable challenging assumptions and holding the line when evidence is incomplete or inconvenient.
• A collaborative mindset, working effectively alongside Analytics, CX, UX, Commercial and Customer teams to build a holistic view of customers and markets.
• A decision-first mentality, focused not on producing insight for its own sake, but on shaping better business decisions through trusted customer and market understanding.

Reward & benefits

• A fair and competitive salary evaluated against market data, annual discretionary bonus scheme, pension, life assurance, 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays and enhanced family leave.
• Commitment and dedication to your ongoing personal and professional development. We help you to own and grow your potential so you can be at your best in your current role and to support your future career aspirations.
• You will have access to a wealth of employee discounts across the Halfords suite of products and services.
• Wellbeing and inclusion are at the heart of our colleague experience. We offer resources and ongoing support to enhance your wellbeing at work and active Colleague Networks supporting inclusion initiatives across Halfords.

Not sure you meet all the criteria? We'd encourage you to take the wheel and apply anyway! At Halfords we are committed to creating an inclusive workplace for our colleagues. We're an equal opportunities employer and proud to welcome applications from all backgrounds and embrace diversity within our one Halfords Family.

We operate a hybrid working model, with flexibility to work from our Support Centre and from home depending on business needs. Given the nature of this role, there will be regular opportunities to collaborate in person with senior stakeholders across the organisation while maintaining flexibility in how and where you work.