Position: Customer Excellence Manager

Location: Surrey, UK (Hybrid: Office 1/2 times monthly the rest remote)

Type: Contract (outside IR35) or Fixed Term (PAYE)

Duration: 6 Months

Start: ASAP

Language: English

Salary/Rate: Competitive/Flexible rates requested

Currency: GBP/-

About The Role / What you need to know:

Reporting to the Head of Customer Support, we are seeking a dynamic and experienced Customer Excellence Manager to join our team. This senior management role will be responsible for overseeing and managing the Managers who lead our Quality Auditing (QA) team, Complaints team, technical and Credit Risk team. The successful candidate will play a crucial role in ensuring the highest standards of customer service and risk management across all aspects of our operations.

Overview:

- This role is critical in bringing together the areas of excellence in ensuring customer outcomes and mitigation of our risk are at the forefront

- To have responsibility for and thought-leadership in the delivery of certain work-types/processes, taking a systems thinking approach

- To supervise, develop, lead and motivate a team or teams to deliver operational requirements, ensuring all targets are achieved whilst continually meeting all quality, regulatory and procedural standards

- Leadership and Management: Provide leadership, guidance, and support to the Managers of the 4 teams - QA, Complaints, Technical and Credit Risk (c. 30 FTE). Set clear objectives, monitor performance, and foster a culture of excellence and continuous improvement.

- Quality Assurance: Oversee the development and implementation of quality assurance processes and procedures to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and adherence to company policies and standards. Conduct regular audits and reviews to identify areas for improvement and implement corrective actions as needed.

- Complaints Management: Manage the complaints handling process to ensure timely and effective resolution of customer complaints. Implement strategies to prevent recurrence of issues and improve overall customer satisfaction. Analyse complaint trends and provide recommendations for process enhancements.

- Credit Risk Management: Work closely with the Credit Risk team to assess and manage credit risk associated with life insurance policies. Develop and implement risk mitigation strategies and controls to protect the company's financial interests and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

- Stakeholder Engagement: Collaborate with internal stakeholders, including senior management, department heads, and cross-functional teams, to drive alignment and support the achievement of business objectives. Serve as a key point of contact for customer excellence-related matters and provide regular updates and reports to senior leadership.

- Training and Development: Identify training needs and opportunities for professional development within the customer excellence teams. Provide coaching, mentoring, and training to enhance team capabilities and ensure a high level of expertise and competency.

- Trends, themes, root cause analysis as a department, not just as individual teams will be critical to the success of this centre for excellence

- Reporting to internal committees

What we expect from you:

- Coach, develop, manage and appraise the team to maximise individual and team performance

- Deliver consistently good customer service and achievement of KPI targets with Customer principles embedded in every process and service contract

- Identify process and procedure improvements, validate them with secondary control functions including Risk and Compliance, and champion approved changes

- Seek out and act on opportunities both large and small to congratulate staff for excellent work with intermediaries or policyholders, and drive high morale

What we're looking for:

- Significant experience in managing via managers large groups of technical employees

- Preferably have experience in managing QA and/or Complaints to be able to leverage expertise and have a vision of what excellent looks like

- Good understanding of People, Process and Technology drivers/measurement in Operations.

- Resilient, able to cope with fast change, organized and logical

- Interested in successful outcomes and effective interpersonal skills, aware of personal impact

- Is honest, transparent, has high standards of personal integrity and champions Customer at all times. Drives self and others to deliver successful results

- Works in a collaborative way to achieve positive outcomes and has a positive attitude, embraces and owns challenges, pro-actively influences successful outcomes.

- Drives business success by placing the customer at the core of all you do

- Candidates must be eligible to work as a Contractor via their limited company otherwise will be paid on PAYE basis after deduction of N.I. and Tax contributions.

- Candidates must be eligible to work without need for sponsorship support, which is not available.