Head of Institutional Support, SPRINGER NATURE

Guardian Jobs; London; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a Head of Institutional Support to lead their customer service initiatives. This pivotal role involves overseeing a global team dedicated to providing exceptional support to institutional clients. The ideal candidate will possess extensive experience in customer service leadership and a proven track record in managing complex systems and stakeholder relationships. You will be at the forefront of driving service excellence, ensuring continuous improvement, and fostering a collaborative environment. If you are passionate about enhancing customer experiences and leading innovative service strategies, this opportunity is for you.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in leading international customer service teams.
• Strong project management skills, especially in service provision.

Responsibilities

• Deliver front-line support for institutional products and services.
• Manage relationships with stakeholders to enhance customer experience.

Skills

International Customer Service Leadership

Staff Management

Project Management

Stakeholder Management

Data-Driven Improvement

Education

Degree Level Education

Customer Service Qualifications

Job description

Head of Institutional Support, SPRINGER NATURE

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Head of Institutional Support, SPRINGER NATURE

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Job Title: Head of Institutional Support (m/w/d)

Location: London or Heidelberg - hybrid working model

Organisation: Springer Nature

Application Deadline: Monday, 12th May 2025

About Springer Nature Group

Springer Nature opens the doors to discovery for researchers, educators, clinicians and other professionals. Every day, around the globe, our imprints, books, journals, platforms and technology solutions reach millions of people. For over 180 years our brands and imprints have been a trusted source of knowledge to these communities and today, more than ever, we see it as our responsibility to ensure that fundamental knowledge can be found, verified, understood and used by our communities - enabling them to improve outcomes, make progress, and benefit the generations that follow. Visit group.springernature.com and follow @SpringerNature / @SpringerNatureGroup.

About The Division

The Springer Nature Customer Service Center (SNCS) is part of the Operations division and covers customer service, fulfilment, logistics, and customer experience management for the majority of Springer Nature's businesses, including the Research and Professional publishing divisions.

The Institutional Support team in SNCS provides 24/7 front-line support for Springer Nature's institutional customers and products (eg academic and corporate libraries with licensed platform access and transformative agreements) across a combination of support tooling, in-house resources in various international locations and offshored third party Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).

Purpose of the Role

Responsible for the global provision of 24/7 front-line support to Springer Nature's institutional customers, delivering a progressive high-quality customer experience and a high-value and efficient contribution to the business: sharing insights with the business to continuously improve user journeys, maximising the opportunity for improved journey design, self-service and process automation, and delivering service excellence for customers contacting Springer Nature. Doing this in close collaboration with the wider business, while working effectively with the other SNCS teams to offer a thriving place to work.

You will be expected to demonstrate a forward-thinking approach to customer service delivery, understand complex systems and data interdependencies, and confidently manage relationships with both internal and external stakeholders, inspiring confidence in your interactions.

Responsibilities

• Ownership and delivery of front-line support for Springer Nature's institutional products and services, across a combination of support tooling, knowledge-management, internal teams and BPO resources, and in alignment with Springer Nature and SNCS strategy.
• Acting as a proactive advocate of Springer Nature's customers to the wider business, gathering and sharing impact-driven and quantifiable insights with the business, and working with them to demonstrably improve the customer experience.
• Setting strategies for continuous improvement of the service provision.
• Negotiating and meeting appropriate and agreed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), standards, and targets in order to provide accountability.
• Developing, setting, documenting, communicating and reviewing customer service policies and processes in the context of business, departmental and team requirements.
• Proactive stakeholder management, including Sales, Sales Operations, Platform/Technology, to ensure the support and alignment of the wider business and Institutional Support activities, such as with the evolution of the commercial offering, transformative agreements, librarian tools and portals, etc.
• Taking ownership of institutional support service issues (eg downtime of critical tools or platforms), ensuring that they are managed, escalated, communicated, and learnt-from effectively. Maintaining operational processes to manage these situations when they arise.
• Efficient budget and resource forecasting and management, including where operations are delivered through third party vendors such as our BPO (Business Process Outsourcing).
• Investigation and deployment of new technologies and initiatives to support continuously improving service delivery, including collaboration with the relevant technology enablement teams.
• Act as a business stakeholder for the tools and systems used by the customer service teams to ensure fitness for purpose, including Springer Nature's choice of customer service self-help and workflow solutions.
• Close collaboration with other SNCS leadership, particularly the DASH (third line technical support and systems enablement), Data Analytics and Customer Experience teams, utilising applicable data and customer feedback to ensure a joined-up and continuously improving customer experience.
• Ensure awareness and compliance with legal, compliance and safeguarding responsibilities of the team, including GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), PCI and accessibility.
• Champion employee development to ensure the highest level of morale and productivity through proper coaching, performance management, incentive programmes, team-building initiatives, communications, and challenging assignments.
  
  
  

Experience, Skills & Qualifications

Experience:

• Extensive international customer service leadership experience
• Line management of staff, including staff based internationally and manager and supervisor level
• Working with third party service delivery vendors
• Project management and participation, particularly relating to system development or customer service provision
  
  
  

Skills/Knowledge:

Essential

• Willing and able to travel, e.g. to meet with international teams, internal and external stakeholders, the BPO vendor team, management meetings.
• Comprehensive staff management skills
• Management of international teams
• Overseeing third party vendors
• Progressive customer service management skills
• Understanding complex systems and data architectures
• Resource and budget management
• Data-driven approach to continuous improvement
• Confident and confidence-inspiring stakeholder management
  
  
  

Desirable

• Data Protection, accessibility and PCI compliance regulations
• Publishing industry awareness
  
  
  

Qualifications

• Educated to degree level or equivalent
• Customer Service qualifications are desirable
  
  
  

Job Posting End Date:

12-05-2025

Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Director

Employment type

• Employment type

  Full-time

Job function

• Job function

  Other

• Industries

  Advertising Services

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