Head of Customer Services

As our new Head of Customer Service, you will be managing and enhancing operational customer service delivery across the company, including during critical and emergency situations.

This vital role focuses on ensuring high customer satisfaction, improving service and cost efficiency, and leading a team to meet the company's customer service vision, objectives and commitments.

You will foster a strong culture of continuous improvement, playing a key role in shaping the customer experience, handling complex customer issues, reviewing and improving processes and implementing initiatives that align with the company's vision and goals.

You will be required to travel to a variety of customer teams across the Wessex Water region.

You will:

• maintain leading customer satisfaction performance, ensuring that service delivery, including in our call centre, customer relations, customer care, feedback, case handling and scheduling teams, meets or exceeds customers' expectations and aligns with our strategy
• seek and drive efficiency and effectiveness throughout areas of responsibility, including cost optimisation and savings, while maintaining sector-leading performance
• identify and address any pain points in customer journeys and promote a culture of continuous improvement, reviewing and improving processes to enhance the customer experience
• manage the effective resolution of customer complaints, including complex or escalated complaints, ensuring they are handled efficiently, to the customer's satisfaction
• support our Priority Services customers, including during emergencies and incidents such as loss of water supply
• carry out root cause analysis of any low-scoring feedback received across multiple channels from customers, responding to those with the aim to ‘service recover' any negative sentiment
• use feedback data to identify trends, opportunities and improvements in day-to-day operations
• manage our operational scheduling functions in and out of hours, ensuring the right resource attends the right work at the right location by its due date, keeping customers informed of progress and arranging appointments where required
• lead our customer service response during large events/incidents or emergencies, ensuring timely and effective communication with customers
• maintain contingency plans to ensure the business continuity of customer services during unplanned events
• develop, monitor and report on key performance indicators for customer services and scheduling to ensure relevant targets are met and exceeded
• ensure compliance with company policies and all statutory and regulatory obligations, including the customer-focused licence condition, complaint handling, Guaranteed Standards Scheme and Priority Services
• drive innovation, identifying and implementing opportunities to improve customer service delivery through new approaches and technology
• lead and inspire people to deliver exceptional results by setting clear performance goals, monitoring progress, and providing constructive feedback, while ensuring training needs are addressed, and robust succession planning is in place.

In this pivotal role, we are looking for:

• experience at a leadership level in a customer-related role
• a good understanding and experience in the water industry and incident management is preferable
• strong customer ethos and experience of managing diverse and dispersed customer teams and projects to deliver outstanding customer service
• proven track record in managing processes at scale and driving continuous improvement to customer service, reducing cost and improving efficiency
• a good understanding of the regulatory principles, legislation and political implications for customers
• good commercial acumen, experienced at managing budgets of this scale
• a strong interest in the professional/personal development of others and inspiring them to thrive
• excellent communication (verbal, written, presentation) and negotiation skills, able to articulate their views well and convincingly to a preferred course of action
• able to think strategically and implement change
• able to build rapport and strong collaborative working relationships both…