Customer Support Manager

Role

Summary:

The Customer Support Manager leads a team of Customer Support Agents and Coordinators handling day-to-day supplier and buyer queries across phone, email and live chat. You own the team's performance against service level KPIs, lead and develop your people, and make sure every query is handled to the standard our suppliers and buyers expect – resolving what you can, and escalating what you can't quickly and cleanly.

You are the first line of management for the front-line team: translating targets into daily performance, coaching agents to hit them, and stepping in when a query, a complaint, or a person needs more support than the front line alone can give.

• Own day-to-day team performance against core service KPIs: no more than 5% of calls/chats abandoned; 80% answered within 20 seconds; 95% answered within 30 seconds.

• Monitor real-time and historic performance across phone, email and live chat, and adjust staffing and shift patterns intraday to protect service levels.

• Own first-contact resolution for the team, coaching agents to resolve at first touch wherever possible.

• Lead, motivate and develop a team of Customer Support Agents and Coordinators, running regular 1:1s, feedback and coaching sessions.

• Run calibration sessions to keep quality standards consistent across the team.

• Identify skills gaps and put development plans and training in place, including onboarding and mentoring for new starters.

• Lead recruitment and selection activity for the Customer Support team, ensuring candidates are assessed consistently against the skills, behaviours and experience required to deliver a high-quality, relationship-led service.

• Act as the first point of escalation for queries agents can't resolve, taking ownership through to resolution or a clean hand-off.

• Identify when a query is, or is becoming, a formal complaint, and route it promptly and correctly in line with the complaint management process.

• Track and reduce recurring causes of escalation within the team.

• Own quality review targets for the team, ensuring communication and (where applicable) document assessment/verification meet agreed accuracy and SLA standards.

• Ensure the team works within agreed processes, policies and contractual KPI requirements, including for scheme-specific work where relevant.

• Maintain audit-ready records of quality checks, coaching and training.

• Own team-level reporting on volumes, KPIs, quality outcomes and trends, working with the Customer Operations Coordinator to keep dashboards and trackers accurate.

• Identify recurring themes, blockers or process gaps and raise them with the wider Customer Operations leadership team.

• Champion continuous improvement in tools, ways of working and customer experience across the team.

• Work closely with other Customer Support Managers, the Complaints Manager and Customer Operations leadership to ensure consistent standards across all teams.

• Share best practice and support other teams at busy times or during resourcing gaps.

• Partner closely with HR and Scheme Governance to ensure the team's performance, capability and quality standards are best in class, with clear and consistent approaches to recruitment, development, performance management and scheme compliance.

• Champion Once for All's values of Innovation, Collaboration and Sustainability within the team.

In this role, you will have made the following true:

• The team consistently meets core KPIs: ≤5% abandonment, 80% answered within 20 seconds, 95% within 30 seconds.

• First-contact resolution…