Ashlee Thomas Email & Phone Number

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

As Director of Strategic Insights and Portfolio Management in the Experience Management team at WestJet, I lead the development and execution of enterprise-wide customer experience insights and strategies to drive significant growth across the business. My role focuses on understanding and amplifying the voice of the customer through quantitative and qualitative research, intake, and prioritization of customer experience initiatives, and comprehensive end-to-end journey mapping. I am currently building a customer experience audit program to enhance operational efficiency and drive strategic decision-making, resulting in an improved and more consistent customer experience.In addition to customer experience insights, I work closely with marketing to provide strategic brand and advertising research, ensuring that our brand experience is aligned with market expectations and competitive dynamics. This research informs key brand initiatives and strengthens WestJet’s positioning in the market. Furthermore, in partnership with HR, I oversee employee research, including the employee pulse and leadership effectiveness research programs, providing critical insights to support employee engagement and organizational leadership.I collaborate cross-functionally with senior leadership to align insights with business goals and foster a culture of continuous improvement and customer centricity. By spearheading initiatives such as transactional surveys, social listening, employee listening, and experience audits, I enable the organization to remain responsive to customer needs and market trends, contributing to sustainable growth and brand health.

Calgary, Canada Area

Led high-performing strategic insights team, reporting directly to the President. Responsible for all market research and competitive benchmarking efforts.Identified emerging issues and trends, analyzed their impact on business lines, and translated findings into actionable strategies.Established and monitored brand, advertising, product and customer experience KPI's through varied qualitative and quantitative techniques.Drove continuous improvement by exposing actionable drivers of KPI's, and working collaboratively to influence execution against insights.Established the Modernized Experience Forum, an executive sponsored program where customer experience priorities were determined based on research findings. Through it, customer's ease and success activating services was improved, (customer effort score increased by 43 pts. and 1st-time activation success by 25 ppts.) while also reducing hardware swaps (resulting in operational savings of 52%).Created CustomerPulse, a Voice of the Customer program allowing CX improvements to be actualized through access to real time insight. In under a year agent satisfaction improved by 16 ppts, the average speed of answer improved by 6 minutes and resolution time for escalations was reduced by 23 hours.Advised on strategic brand direction, rebrands, and product launches. Helping to develop and align operational enhancements, product, pricing, go to market, advertising and retention strategies with overall brand objectives.Elevated customer centricity by advocating for their voice across the organization so that they remained central to all decisions.

Calgary, Canada Area

Responsible for all research practices across the organization enabling a deeper understanding of the market, competitors and customer/employee experiences.Established Shaw’s in-house employee listening program PeoplePulse. Strategies developed out of the insights led to an improvement in Employee NPS (eNPS) of 15 pts. in the first 18 months.Provided a comprehensive and unified understanding of customer, competitive, and market landscape through the synthesis of various data sources including research, operational data, and product analytics.Informed the mobile market expansion/network investment. Research and financial analysis were completed to help determine which routes would be a better investment.Supported B2B forums for senior management to review and act on qualitative and quantitative customer experience trends for SMB and enterprise level customers. Strategies developed from findings resulted in increased customer satisfaction and subsequently improved retention rates.

Research and analytics expertise leveraged and selected to establish the organization’s first integrated research and digital analytics team; the team provided cross-organizational market research insights along with digital marketing and website analytics across all online properties.Established two online customer insight communities comprised of over 15K customers (Shaw/Freedom Mobile ThinkTank). This resulted in more than 60% in cost savings and a 15 times quicker speed to insight.Co-led the business case and subsequent approval of Shaw’s marketing cloud implementation resulting in a reduction in the cost of acquisition by 30% and a 20% increase in conversion within 6 months.Supported key strategic wireless projects and decisions. Led an extensive market analysis that informed the rebrand from Wind to Freedom Mobile.

Analyzed and interpreted operational, campaign and point of sales data to determine fact based recommendations to support achievement of sales and marketing objectives. Key account responsibilities included Safeway, Save-On, Co-op, Metro Ontario, Metro Quebec,Earls, Joeys, A&W, White Spot, Keg, Macs, & 7/Eleven.Conducted market research and analyzed business and consumer trends, developed growth strategies, and provided recommendations for internal and external stakeholders.Led category review processes, ensuring objectives for distribution, shelving, and pricing were met.Monitored progress towards achievement of business objectives and effectiveness of tactics, developed fact based plans and presented to senior management internally and externally.

Built extensive brand strategies by account and worked closely with Key Account Managers to execute against.Responsible for all account promotions including developing point-of-sale, advertising creative, coordinating product demonstrations and organizing prizing for major promotions.Utilized data analysis to develop action plans for Key Account Managers to achieve sales goals, list new products and grow their business.Worked with the National Marketing Directors to determine regional pricing, promotions, and product variability and consumption trends.

Analyzed and tracked sales in order to make decisions on product assortment and product placement across all Safeway stores.Responsible for the creation and maintenance of shelving principles and design across key categories.Supported Category Managers regarding introduction and placement of new products, utilizing market trends to determine which products to list and delist.Worked on 5 different major category reviews done in partnership with vendors and category managers to review and improve a category through intense and detailed financial, merchandising, pricing and promotional analysis.