Head of Customer Operations

Leicester City

£120,000 p.a. plus £6K car allowance & 20% bonus

• Do you have a host of expertise in Risk/Fraud & credit collections?
• Do you thrive on developing strategies to ensure Customer services are delivered with optimum outcomes?
• This will be working for a growing, passionate & thriving business where you will be valued.

If you have answered yes to the above then read on!

The Company:

ER Recruitment is currently working alongside a continually growing brand that has established an outstanding reputation throughout the UK. The opportunity has arisen for a Head of Customer Operations to join the thriving Leicester based team to have overall accountability for cash collection and debt recovery and ensure customers receive the best service possible.

Role & Responsibilities of the Head of Customer Operations:

• Recommend, gain agreement to and implement a customer strategy and operating plan to deliver cash collection and projected growth targets.
• Assist the MD in developing a new customer service centric organisation using the clearly defined company values to engender a service driven organisation.
• Support their direct reports in building and managing relationships with customers, debtors, and debt collection agencies. Where appropriate, to resolve the most complex complaints to deliver the desired outcome and manage reputational risks.
• Continuously monitor business performance against metrics with direct reports, review trends and resources to address under-performance.
• Deliver the cash collection targets, ensuring continuous liaison with related parties.
• Ensure operations are being delivered in a cost-effective manner while maintaining excellent customer service levels.
• Work in partnership with relevant departments to drive continuous improvements of Customer processes and systems.
• Ensure customer and collections activities are one smooth process within the customer lifecycle, working jointly with the Head of Commercial and Head of Finance to achieve this.
• Own the relationship with external partners (outsourcers) which support the Customer Operations team to ensure effective delivery, managing external KPIs and performance as appropriate and putting in place improvement plans if issues arise.
• Own the relationships with internal and external stakeholders to ensure collection and debt recovery schemes are operationally efficient.
• Identify and mitigate risks within the Customer Operations department and across the business.
• Provide clear and strong leadership, management, and communication for the Customer Operations teams, translating strategic goals into actionable plans, deploying resources to realise the departments' strategic ambitions, and leading by example.
• Ensure policies and procedures are adhered to across Customer Operations to maintain professional standards.
• Develop and implement initiatives to achieve high levels of employee satisfaction, morale, and retention and to control absence levels across Customer Operations to agreed levels.
• Lead debtor audit activities to ensure compliance with relevant schemes, working with external third parties as needed.
• Ensure that best practice is consistently delivered by third parties.
• Accountable for recommending to the Board and then managing the agreed annual cost and cash collection budget for the business.
• Provide monthly forecasting of costs and cash collection.
• Build an internal and external network, developing positive working relationships at a senior level with internal stakeholders, parent companies and third parties.
• Take overall responsibility for the Customer Operations data. This includes setting strategic direction, approving change, data elements of data policies and for setting and achieving data management targets and metrics.

About You:

• Management of significant cash collection, debt recovery (in excess of £10 million preferred) and costs budgets
• Significant track record in implementing cash collection and debt recovery strategies & processes.
• Leadership at a senior, executive, and stakeholder level, with extensive stakeholder management experience.
• Ability to build and motivate high performing service teams, including collections and debt recovery.
• Experience of managing outsourced debt collection agencies.
• A capable and experienced negotiator, with a proven track record of successful commercial negotiations
• Experience of system transformation programmes advantageous
• Understands direct and indirect collections models and business development experience, as well as the full customer lifecycle from sales to collections and enforcements.
• Commercially focused as well as customer service oriented
• Excellent decision making and judgement skills with outstanding strategic thinking and planning ability.

Please note by applying for this role you give consent for ER Recruitment to retain your CV for up to 24 months for the purposes of assisting you to find your next role unless you notify us otherwise.

While we aim to get back to all applicants, due to the current situation, if you do not receive a response within seven working days then unfortunately your application has been unsuccessful on this occasion.

We look forward to helping you in your career, so please send a copy of your CV to us. If you know of other people who are currently looking for a new career in these sectors please feel free to refer them to us.

We look forward to hearing from you.