Senior Customer Services Manager (O912989)

Overview

Our Client are a leading communications brand with an outstanding reputation for customer service and value commitment. An opportunity has now arisen within their team for a Senior Customer Services Manager.

As Senior Customer Services Manager you will be responsible for operational customer service performance across the company's Consumer operations in Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.

You will lead the CSC through three CS Team Leaders, with responsibility for service outcomes, workforce management, productivity, quality, coaching, formal customer complaints and continuous operational improvement. A core expectation is to develop and empower the Team Leaders to take clear day-to-day accountability for their teams, creating a scalable operation with strong delegation, cross-training, succession and operational resilience.

Reporting to the CCO your duties will include:

CSC service performance

• Own day-to-day CSC service outcomes across relevant channels, including service level, answer rate, abandonment, response times, backlog and quality measures
• Maintain clear performance routines and ensure material service risks are identified and acted on quickly
• Deploy resources appropriately across islands, teams and contact types to meet customer demand
• Provide concise operational insight and recommendations to the CCO and relevant stakeholders
• Work with BI & Data to improve data capture quality and trusted operational dashboards to reduce manual reporting

MVNO service delivery

• Own operational service delivery for supported MVNO partners, including resource allocation, day-to-day call and ticket performance, operational escalations and readiness for partner product, campaign and process changes
• Maintain effective operational relationships with relevant MVNO partner contacts and work with Wholesale on contractual, commercial or service-performance matters where required
• Own the operational management of CSC platforms used for MVNO service delivery, including licensing, configuration and service continuity

Workforce, productivity and people leadership

• Lead, coach and develop the three CS Team Leaders and, where applicable, the Provisioning Team Leader, building their capability and confidence to take clear day-to-day accountability for their teams
• Operate through the Team Leaders wherever appropriate, delegating effectively while maintaining clear standards, accountability and escalation routes
• Own workforce planning, scheduling principles, productivity, quality and coaching standards
• Build cross-trained capability across the CSC so that customer contact, complaints, escalations and other critical activities can be managed by multiple appropriately skilled people
• Identify and actively reduce single points of failure through cross-training, documented knowledge, deputy coverage and clear development and succession plans for Team Leaders and other key colleagues
• Build a resilient, engaged and customer-focused service culture with the capability to scale as customer and business needs change
• Manage recruitment, capability and performance issues with HR support where required

Provisioning - where applicable

• Own Provisioning performance as part of the Customer Operations remit
• Ensure orders are progressed accurately and within agreed timescales, with clear management of exceptions and dependencies
• Work with Sales, CTO and other operational teams to resolve recurring provisioning friction and reduce avoidable hand-offs
• Ensure provisioning performance, backlog and failure reasons are visible and actively managed

Formal complaints and escalation

• Own the formal customer complaints process and ensure complaints are handled consistently, fairly and within required timescales
• Ensure escalated customer issues have clear ownership and resolution paths
• Use complaint themes to identify operational improvement opportunities
• Work with Legal & Regulatory on any matter that becomes a regulatory complaint, regulator/OFT enquiry or requires formal regulatory interpretation
• Ensure complaint handling and customer remedies operate within agreed authority and governance
• Build complaints-handling capability across the operation so that formal and escalated complaints can be managed effectively by a sufficiently broad group of trained colleagues, avoiding dependency on individual specialists

Quality, knowledge and coaching

• Set and maintain quality standards for customer interactions and case handling
• Ensure training, knowledge and coaching are targeted to recurring customer issues and performance gaps
• Use quality insight to improve first-time resolution, consistency and customer experience
• Support adoption of agent-assist, knowledge and QA tools where they improve service and productivity

Contact strategy, self-service and workflow improvement

• Own the operational customer-contact strategy for the CSC, including channel use, triage and self-service opportunities
• Drive practical improvements that reduce avoidable contact, repeat handling and manual work without creating poor customer outcomes, including AI-enabled capability where it demonstrably improves service or productivity
• Lead operational adoption of IVR/voice, Zendesk and relevant workflow improvements
• Work with CTO on technical fixes where system or platform issues create avoidable service effort
• Work with CX on customer pain points and journey priorities, translating relevant insight into operational improvements

Change and operational readiness

• Ensure the CSC and, where applicable, Provisioning are operationally ready for product launches, network changes, system releases and other customer-impacting change
• Represent CSC and, where applicable, Provisioning requirements in relevant change forums
• Ensure frontline teams have accurate knowledge, processes, tools and escalation routes before material changes go live
• Monitor the customer and operational impact after launch and ensure issues are escalated quickly

The ideal candidate for the role of Senior Customer Services Manager will have:

• Strong leadership experience in customer service, contact-centre or customer-operations environments
• Demonstrable experience leading through managers or team leaders, including coaching and developing first-line leaders to take effective accountability for their teams
• Proven ability to delegate effectively, set clear accountabilities and build management capability rather than retaining operational decision-making centrally
• Demonstrable experience managing service levels, workforce, productivity, quality and frontline performance
• Experience building cross-trained, resilient teams, with effective succession planning, deputy coverage and knowledge transfer to reduce key-person dependency and operational single points of failure
• Strong understanding of formal complaints handling and experience developing wider team capability to manage complaints and escalations effectively
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability, with experience translating operational insight into action through process improvement, workflow redesign, self-service or technology-enabled change
• Strong customer focus and excellent stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to balance service quality, resilience, efficiency and scalability across operational, commercial and technical teams

Highly Desirable