Service Consultant

RM plc; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 35,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking an Assessment Service Consultant to enhance the lives of learners globally. This dynamic role involves managing eAssessment services, ensuring high-quality delivery, and leading a dedicated team. You will collaborate closely with customers and internal teams to drive continuous improvement and operational excellence. If you thrive in a fast-paced environment and possess strong interpersonal and organizational skills, this is your chance to make a significant impact in the education technology sector. Join a forward-thinking company that values diversity and offers flexible working arrangements tailored to your needs.

Benefits

Private medical healthcare

Life assurance

Group Personal Pension Plan

Performance-related bonus

Voluntary benefits

Cycle to work scheme

Additional annual leave

Health assessment

Referral bonus

Qualifications

• Experience in a customer-facing delivery role is essential.
• Ability to deliver large-scale operations and meet KPIs/SLA.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills are required.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for the delivery of eAssessment services to customers.
• Manage service delivery and ensure compliance with SLAs.
• Oversee a small team and coordinate activities across functions.

Skills

Customer-facing delivery

Operations management

Interpersonal skills

KPI/SLA management

Process improvement

Communication skills

MS Excel

Job description

Overview

Do you want to help enrich the lives of learners worldwide?

At RM, we’ve been pioneers of education technology since 1973. We provide technology and resources to the education sector supporting over 10 million students around the world. We work with 28,000 schools, nurseries, and education trusts in 115 countries to deliver customer-centric solutions that improve education outcomes worldwide.

What we do helps learners at all stages of their lives, from preschool to higher education and professional qualification. We partner with schools, examination boards, central governments, and other professional institutions to enrich the lives of learners.

Responsibilities

The Assessment Service Consultant is responsible for the organisation and delivery of the operational services for one or more customers, as a member of the Assessment Service Management Team. It is a customer-facing role and will require liaising with both operational counterparts within customer and supplier organisations, and when appropriate, senior customer and supplier stakeholders. In addition to this, the role is responsible for the oversight of delivery across the ASM team, acting as a point of escalation. The role will include line management of a small team of UK-based service consultants, up to three permanent team members. The role will also include the recruitment and management of seasonal temporary resources.

The role will involve managing the service to our customers in a matrix-managed environment, coordinating activities across a number of functions and teams, managing the reporting required and delivering the service to contractual commitments. For example, the Senior Assessment Service Consultant will have an operational relationship with their customers and manage the reports and operational service for them, even though the commercial aspects are owned by the Customer Relationship Manager. Similarly, the Senior Assessment Service Consultant will need to ensure all supplier tasks are completed in accordance with agreed service levels and timescales and, when appropriate, escalate to the Supplier Management team.

You will work closely with our Customer Relationship Managers and wider teams to constantly evolve and improve the service we provide. To achieve this, you will need both a process and customer/supplier-oriented background.

Main Responsibilities:

1. Delivery
   • Responsible for the delivery of the eAssessment service from planning through to reconciliation to closure including input into service-based risk management. You will be responsible for managing the service, with key milestones clearly identified and progress tracked.
   • Manage targeted testing for your customer(s), internal RM service readiness planning, and ensuring customer readiness plans are complete.
   • Using matrix management, you will need to influence resources outside of your immediate team.
   • Support the system users by overseeing the escalation of queries, via investigation and interaction with internal teams or third-party suppliers.
   • Oversee the delivery of a consistently high-quality service ensuring all activities that are required are completed within the agreed timelines (e.g. quality checks, reconciliation activities, incident tickets, service requests).
   • Be the first point of operational contact with the customer. This will involve ad hoc requests, updates, and initial escalations, as well as contribution to the internal risk and issues register. Deliver a high level of customer care, providing regular updates and resolving any issues in a timely fashion.
   • Responsible for the performance of your customer’s service against operational level agreements and contractual service level agreements and act on under-performance. Provide regular feedback to the internal customer team and assist in the production of and review the operational SLA report for your customer.
   • Analyse performance to identify CSI opportunities.
   • Responsible for internal process improvement activities for your customer(s) and/or team (continual improvement) and contribute to strategic improvement activities.
   • Deliver the Continual Improvement processes for your customer(s). This should include input from all teams (i.e. Helpdesk, Assessment Service Delivery, Application Support, Solution Architects, Technical Operations & Customer Relationship Managers).
2. Process Governance
   • Responsible for the processes/documents for your customer (for example Exception management documentation).
   • Contribute to the RM accreditation activities to ISO standards, such as participating in internal and external audits and maintain your documentation to agreed standards.
   • Present operational or process changes relating to your customer at the RM Change Approval Board.
   • Work with Operational Managers and Customer Relationship Managers to deliver RM strategic objectives.
   • Attend, contribute to and lead both internal and external customer meetings including but not limited to; Operations Board meetings, Lessons Learnt Reviews, training and representing RM at third party familiarisation visits e.g. visits to scanning suppliers.
   • Duty Manager out-of-hours responsibilities on a rota basis.
3. Service Delivery
   • Responsible for the oversight of live delivery of ASM and ASD activities across the customer base. Ensuring the service delivery processes, performance and customer experience are delivered in line with agreed KPIs and SLAs regardless of geographical location.
   • Act as a point of escalation with regards to live delivery for the team.
   • Attend and contribute to internal meetings on the overall delivery of ASM and ASD.
   • Provide necessary reporting on KPI and SLA performance.
   • Contribute to new service introductions across Operations to ensure best practice across customers.
   • Contribute to the budget creation and management, ensuring temporary contractors are within budget (circa 60-100k per annum).
   • Represent the team on bids.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

Essential

• Experience in a customer-facing delivery role.
• Experience in the delivery of large-scale operations and time-critical services.
• Ability to be self-reliant, work under pressure and prioritise workloads.
• Excellent interpersonal skills.
• Demonstrable ability to deliver results meeting KPIs, SLAs and OLAs.
• Ability to maintain quality output whilst demonstrating flexibility to changing demands and priorities in a high-paced environment.
• Demonstrable ability to identify and deliver improvements to products and/or services.
• Ability to make informed decisions that directly affect business performance, displaying good judgement in balancing the needs of the customer and RM.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with strong active listening and influencing skills.

Desirable

• Industry experience of using MS Excel (vlookups and pivot tables).
• Knowledge of working in a business-to-business environment.
• An appreciation of how a complex operation is managed.

What’s in it for you?

At RM, we have "My Work Blend @RM" which provides office-based colleagues with multi-location and hybrid working options to suit them. As well as your office base, you can spend a proportion of your time working at other locations that suit your role and your life, including home, other offices, customer sites, distribution centres or on the move. We encourage you to discuss arrangements for this role with your potential line manager during the recruitment process. We expect how we make best use of hybrid working may continue to adapt as we adjust to our new ways of working.

As well as a competitive salary and our core benefits package which includes private medical healthcare, life assurance and a Group Personal Pension Plan with higher contribution levels available, some roles are also eligible for a performance-related bonus. There are lots of voluntary benefits too. You could buy additional annual leave, join our dental plan, sign for a health assessment, or take part in our cycle to work scheme. You could even earn yourself an extra bonus for successfully recommending a friend or family member for a position within RM.

To better reflect the society that we serve, we’re committed to building a diverse workforce and creating an inclusive and welcoming environment for all. To achieve this, we create teams of talented people from different backgrounds and experiences and strive to be a business where our people can bring their whole selves to work. We also want to make the recruitment process as inclusive as possible for everyone. Should you require additional support with your application or through the interview process, please contact us at [e-mail].

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.