Lead Guest Experience Specialist – Luxury Women’s Photography

Overview

Lead Guest Experience Specialist – Luxury Women’s Photography Jobs in South Africa at Body & Soul Studios

Title: Lead Guest Experience Specialist – Luxury Women’s Photography

Company: Body & Soul Studios

Location: South Africa

Meet Body & Soul Studios

We’re a luxury women’s intimate portrait studio in East London. We help everyday women transform how they see themselves through powerful portrait experiences and artwork they keep for life.

We’ve already guided more than 1,900 women through this journey. For many, it’s been the most important, confidence‑shifting thing they did that year.

We’re now turning our flagship London studio into a machine so we can scale it, while protecting the standard that makes the work special. If you believe in high standards, hard work, and helping others win, you’ll feel at home here.

About The Role

The guest journey doesn’t start when she walks through the door — it starts the moment she books.

As our Lead Remote Guest Experience (GX), you own that journey and the GX function. You’re the warm, steady presence that turns a nervous woman into a show‑up‑ready guest and makes sure every studio day runs full, prepared, and on brief.

This is a player‑coach role:

• At first, you’ll personally own a full guest portfolio and run the core calls (onboarding, styling, wobbles).
• In parallel, you’ll turn what already works into clear SOPs, training, QA and reporting so we can add and ramp more GX team members under you.

All calls are with women who have already booked. There is no cold calling in this role.

You’ll focus on fewer, deeper conversations (typically four to six structured calls per day) plus proactive follow‑up and problem‑solving for your guest portfolio. This is high‑focus, high‑emotional‑labour work, not background noise in a ticket queue.

Who This Is For

• 3+ years in high‑touch, emotionally intelligent roles: luxury hotel or lodge, travel/experience planning, aesthetics or patient coordination, or B2B client success.
• You’ve been the informal “go‑to” person in your team: People come to you to fix processes, train new joiners, and handle the hardest guests.
• Process‑driven: clean notes, structured follow‑ups, and a CRM that actually tells the story.
• You enjoy real conversations with real people, not hiding behind tickets and canned replies.
• Comfortable holding your ground kindly when someone is upset — you don’t crumble, over‑promise, or go defensive.
• Hungry to own a function, not just do a job: you like building playbooks, not just following them.

What You’ll Do

Player‑coach GX work

• Run warm, structured onboarding calls with newly booked guests to understand their story, calm their nerves, and set expectations.
• Run pre‑shoot styling calls to remove last‑minute doubts and make sure she arrives ready.
• Capture studio‑ready CRM notes that tell the photographer, HMUA, and sales team everything they need to know before she walks in.
• Manage your guest portfolio proactively: check in on anyone who goes quiet, nudge incomplete forms, and send the right prep resources at the right time.
• Support our guests‑only WhatsApp community: spot concerns early, spark useful conversations, and flag recurring patterns so we can improve the journey.
• Take first‑line ownership of upset or anxious guests and use clear guardrails to navigate reframe, reschedule, and refund‑adjacent conversations — and know when to escalate.

Build the GX function

• Turn our existing working process into written SOPs, checklists, call flows and CRM standards.
• Build a repeatable onboarding and training path for future GX hires (call libraries, practice scenarios, QA rubrics).
• Own the GX scorecard (show rate, guest satisfaction, pre‑pay participation, CRM quality) and report on it weekly.
• Partner with Abbey on hiring, 3‑day trials, and onboarding for future GX team members as we expand.

How We Measure Success

Your performance and bonus are tied directly to:

• Show rate for the guests you and, later, your team handle
• Post‑call satisfaction scores
• Pre‑payment participation in a healthy band
• CRM audit quality and on‑time, complete handovers

You reduce cancellations and escalations by how you and your systems handle wobbling or upset guests — studios feel supported, not dumped on.

Requirements

• 3+ years in a high‑touch role: luxury hotel/lodge, travel/experience planning, aesthetics or patient coordination, or client success.
• Evidence you’ve trained others or improved processes in a previous role.
• Fluent, nuanced English — tone and empathy matter as much as grammar.
• Comfortable being measured on outcomes, not just activity.
• Strong with modern tools: CRM, email, calendar, WhatsApp, basic spreadsheets.
• Quiet, professional home setup with reliable high‑speed internet.
• Based in South Africa, working UK business hours.

Compensation

• Base: £18,000–£20,400 per year (paid in ZAR equivalent)
• On‑target earnings (OTE): £20,850–£23,250 per year once fully ramped

Benefits

• 28 days of paid holiday per year, plus South African public holidays.
• Paid sick leave in line with SA law – if you’re ill, you rest.
• Fully remote, South Africa‑based, working UK business hours (no night shifts).
• Home‑office support: monthly internet contribution plus a once‑off setup stipend after probation.
• Structured training and ongoing coaching in emotional communication, objection handling, and our systems.
• Clear progression path into Senior/Lead team management as we open more studios.
• Quarterly performance bonuses for hitting targets on show rate, guest satisfaction, and data quality.
• London studio immersion trips for top performers (flights and accommodation covered).
• A culture that takes emotional labour seriously, with regular check‑ins and support.