Customer Service Manager

Job Title: Customer Services Manager

Our client's aspiration is to be, and be recognised as, the number one heating and renewables business in Hereford and the surrounding areas. This will be achieved by delivering exceptional services to our customers and providing an effortless, end-to-end customer experience.

Functional Strategy

The Customer Services Manager is responsible for delivering all operational back-office and customer service functions and has direct line management responsibility for planners, schedulers, administrators, and customer service advisors.

The role ensures a seamless customer journey by collaborating with the Field Operations Management Team to deliver all projects, installations, servicing, and repairs on time, every time.

About the Department

The Customer Services department is a fast-paced, dynamic team of professionals working collaboratively to deliver excellent customer outcomes across heating, repair, servicing, and renewable installation services.

The department supports the full customer lifecycle, including:

• Taking sales orders

• Installation and service scheduling to include follow-up of estimates

• Booking and coordinating repairs

• Taking payments and managing aged debt

• After-sales service

• Managing customer satisfaction and complaints
  
  

About the Role

The Customer Services Manager is the senior operational lead for customer service and customer delivery activity. The role sits as part of the Senior Leadership Team and plays a critical role in delivering operational excellence, customer satisfaction, and profitable business growth.

Principal Accountabilities

Customer & Service Delivery

• Put the customer at the centre of everything we do.

• Act as the lead person for all customer service and customer delivery-related activity.

• Ensure service delivery is on time, every time, driving improvement where required.

• Take ownership of high-level customer escalations and complaints.

• Deliver against key KPIs, SLAs, and contractual performance requirements, including commercial and social housing clients.

Leadership & People Management

• Lead, motivate, and inspire consistently high performance across customer service and administration teams.

• Oversee daily office operations to ensure efficiency and productivity.

• Direct and support administrators and planners, working closely with engineer management to optimise engineer diaries and workloads.

• Manage employee absence, sickness, appraisals, reviews, and performance management.

• Identify resource, skills, and training requirements to support departmental growth.

• Lead recruitment activities including interviewing, onboarding, induction, and training.

Operational & Process Management

• Ensure effective coordination of daily workloads and planning of engineer diaries.

• Implement and maintain key operational policies, priorities, and procedures.

• Improve, automate, and optimise systems and processes, ensuring service and install management systems are used to full capacity.

Utilise CRM management software to manage and take ownership of:

• Outstanding office tasks

• Aged debt

• Service compliance

• Install conversions

• Develop a business-focused administration service that meets stakeholder needs with robust and efficient processes in place.

Performance, MI & Continuous Improvement

• Significantly improve management information (MI), including refreshing and replacing legacy MI methods.

• Establish measures of performance through the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data.

• Establish regular review cycles and drive continuous improvement across customer service functions.

• Identify change and improvement initiatives and successfully implement solutions.

Stakeholder Management & Collaboration

• Build and maintain strong, productive relationships with internal teams, suppliers, customers, and external stakeholders.

• Manage external stakeholders, including suppliers and social housing clients.

• Work closely with departmental managers to ensure company targets and SLAs are met.

• Identify and manage interdependencies across the organisation, ensuring alignment with business priorities.

• As part of the Senior Leadership Team, collaborate and take collective responsibility for delivering profitable growth.

Communication & Influence

• Engage and influence stakeholders to take collective ownership of excellent customer service delivery.

• Produce robust business cases to secure resources for change initiatives where required.

• Clearly articulate key messages to a variety of audiences.

• Produce written materials for internal and external audiences, including procedures, handbooks, and reports.

• Circulate high-level information effectively, ensuring understanding of key messages.

About You

Essential Skills, Knowledge & Experience

• Demonstrable experience delivering excellent customer service.

• Proven track record of leading, motivating, and developing teams.

• Strong organisational skills with the ability to prioritise and deliver to tight timescales.

• Proven experience developing ideas and implementing change.

• Proven ability to build and sustain relationships at all levels.

• Experience managing external stakeholders.

• Excellent communication skills, written and verbal.

• Strong problem-solving and root cause analysis skills.

• Experience handling customer complaints and difficult situations confidentially and professionally.

• Experience planning, prioritising, and scheduling workloads for yourself and a team in a busy environment.

• Comfortable with a hands-on leadership approach.

• Able to thrive in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment.

• Strong IT literacy, including Microsoft 365 applications.

• A proactive, positive, and “can-do” attitude.

Desirable

• Qualification in Customer Service.

• Qualification or substantial experience in change management.

• Previous experience in the heating, renewables, or a related sector.

Key Competencies

• Customer-focused leadership

• Operational excellence

• Strategic planning and execution

• Data analysis and performance management

• Influencing and stakeholder engagement

• Continuous improvement mindset

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills