Customer Operations Manager

National Grid; Cardiff; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED) in Cardiff is seeking a Customer Operations Manager to lead the Customer Excellence strategy and transformation for site and functional teams.

Based at Lamby Way, the role starts office-based with a hybrid arrangement (minimum 3 days in the office) and involves driving performance, budgets, compliance, and stakeholder engagement to deliver excellent customer outcomes.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in people management and leadership within a contact centre or multi-site operation.
• Strong track record in operational management, transformation and delivering performance improvements.
• Familiarity with contact centre tools, metrics, and pricing structures, plus financial forecasting.

Responsibilities

• Drive high performance against key targets and develop strategies to address variances.
• Own delivery of financial targets by budgeting, cost control and forecast planning.
• Ensure data protection, security and anti-fraud compliance across the team.
• Collaborate with Customer Excellence to monitor activity, identify gaps, and take action.
• Lead reviews with support services and coordinate Employee Forum engagement.
• Serve as the primary senior escalation point for customers and resolve complex issues.
• Lead and develop a high performing team, ensuring appropriate resourcing and motivation.

Skills

People management

Leadership

Change management

Customer service

Stakeholder management

Financial forecasting

Team coaching

Operational management

Tools

CRM software

Forecasting tools

Job description

NGED’s ambition is to be the number 1 DNO by engineering a smarter, more sustainable grid; enabling every customer and community to thrive in the new electric era.

TheCustomer Excellence function works across the organisation to ensure that NGED.

• Delivers strategic improvements in customer excellence and value for money.
• Delivers customer excellence targets and that all customers are treated fairly.
• Serves our PSR customers in line with our regulatory requirements.

Customer Excellence focus includes (but not limited to) fault response and dispatch, general enquiries, connection enquiries and Priority Services Register customers. Central to NGED’s Performance contract, the Customer Excellence team ensure the delivery of the customer strategy and drive step-change improvement across the organisation so that we ‘deliver for customers efficiency’, in line with our vision and Values.

Working with colleagues across the organisation, we do this by

• Listening to our customers, understanding their needs, and ensuring these are addressed.
• Embedding the Customer strategy and a customer-centric culture
• Effective end-to end customer journeys.
• Addressing root cause for complaints and insight led decision making (insight, action, and impact)

An exciting 6-12 month fixed term contract (subject to review) opportunity has become available for a Customer Operations Managers to cover both site and functional responsibility. Reporting to the Head of Contact Centres and working closely with NGED’s Stakeholders, you will oversee the delivery of NGED’s Customer Excellence strategies, whilst leading people and transformation in an engaging way.

This strategically critical role leads NGED in

• Action to achieve the incentives, which directly impacts NGED’s reputation and financial performance.
• Leadership in excess of 100 plus employees
• Owning and delivering transformation initiatives to Customer Excellence teams to support ED2/3 commitments and plans

The role will be based at Lamby Way, Cardiff, initially it will be office based then would be able to offer a mix of office and home working (a minimum of 3 days in the office).

Main Responsibilities

• Drive high performance against all key targets in your area of accountability, highlighting performance variances/trends, and immediately developing strategies and/or coaching plans to rectify.
• Own the delivery of all financial targets by setting appropriate budgets, controlling spend and creating plans to deliver against financial forecasts.
• Understand the security and compliance requirements, and lead a business culture where data protection, security and prevention of fraud is a priority for everyone in the team, by driving full operational compliance with all policies.
• Work closely with your Customer Excellence team to monitor business, employee, and customer activity, identify any gaps or issues which present risk, and take appropriate action to address them.
• Work in partnership with other support services to co-ordinate reviews and drive a proactive Employee Forum to ensure any engagement issues are identified and resolved.
• Act as the primary senior point of escalation for customers, working with peers across NGED to manage and mitigate operational concerns.
• Utilise experience and judgement to lead, on behalf of Head of Contact Centres, the resolution of complex customer issues, balancing solutions to meet customer needs with a firm understanding of NGED operational parameters and capabilities.
• Lead and develop a high performing team, utilising leadership and coaching experience to ensure the team is appropriately resourced and motivated to deliver high levels of customer service.
• Be responsible and accountable for employee engagement, building and executing strategic plans to develop and engage employees.
• Drive transformation and change in an engaging way, using influencing skills and stakeholder management to improve customer experience, whilst balancing business and people needs.

Ideal Candidate

You will have extensive experience in People management and Leadership, managing diverse teams with multi-site and cross functional responsibility in a contact centre environment. The ability to communicate effectively to your team with a clear positive and customer focused message along with strong influencing skills and the ability to work with a wide range of stakeholders across the business.

You will be commercially aware, with a background in operational management, transformation with experience of both landing and designing change, driving performance along with motivating others and leading an operation to success.

Familiar with contact centre operational tools, understanding call centre operations, metrics and pricing structures together with experience of financial forecasting and invoicing. You will be able to demonstrate your ability to manage multiple, conflicting interests and deadlines and be able to bring new ideas and innovation to benefit customers and colleagues.

There will be a requirement to travel across different sites therefore a full driving licence is preferred.

#LI-SH1

About Us

We’re National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED), the owner and operator behind the electricity distribution systems for the Midlands, the Southwest of England and South Wales. Serving communities of more than 8 million people, our expert teams deliver heat, light and power for homes and businesses.

National Grid employs over 29,000 people worldwide. We are building an inclusive workplace, a place to actively celebrate the cultures, personalities and preferences of our colleagues – who in turn help to build the success of our business and reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. Our vision is to be at the heart of a clean, fair and affordable energy future and we are doing this in a fast-moving industry with an increasing focus on tackling climate change, exploring new energy sources that are renewable, low carbon, and improve efficiency to meet demand.