Head of Customer Operations

UGP is seeking a Head of Customer Operations to provide senior departmental leadership across Customer Services, Change of Tenancy, Collections and Complaints, and to own the end-to-end customer journey across these functions.

This is a Head of Department role, providing direction and oversight for the performance, quality, risk management and continuous improvement of each function through the Managers who lead day-to-day delivery. The successful candidate will set clear expectations, support Managers to deliver well, remove barriers to performance and help ensure the department delivers consistent customer outcomes while meeting commercial, operational and regulatory requirements.

Reporting to the Operations and Compliance Director and sitting on the Senior Management Team (SMT), the role provides senior oversight of departmental KPIs, service standards, customer experience, debt performance, complaint outcomes, COT accuracy and fraud controls. It sits alongside the Head of Technical Operations and the Head of Regulation and Compliance, ensuring Customer Operations is joined up with billing, industry operations, settlement, compliance, regulatory reporting and wider business priorities.

• Provide senior oversight of performance across Customer Services, Change of Tenancy, Collections and Complaints, ensuring each function has clear priorities, measurable KPIs and effective management routines.
• Lead through the Customer Services, COT and Collections Managers, setting clear standards, reviewing performance and helping each function stay aligned to business objectives.
• Provide senior leadership across customer outcomes, quality assurance, operational control, complaint performance, COT accuracy, fraud prevention and live debt management across the department.
• Act as a senior escalation point for material service, debt, complaint, vulnerability, fraud or regulatory-risk issues, ensuring timely resolution and appropriate visibility for the Operations and Compliance Director.
• Maintain senior relationships with third-party providers and agents across the department, ensuring relevant contracts, service levels and commercial arrangements are in place and regularly reviewed.

• Set the customer service strategy for the department, ensuring customer contact is handled consistently, professionally and in line with agreed service standards.
• Own the end-to-end customer journey across Customer Services, Change of Tenancy, Collections and Complaints, ensuring the experience is joined up, consistent and free of unnecessary friction as customers move between functions.
• Support the Customer Services Manager in delivering strong day-to-day service performance, including channel management, enquiry quality, response times and customer satisfaction.
• Ensure customer-facing processes and contact channels are effective, accessible and fair, including appropriate arrangements for vulnerable and microbusiness customers.
• Oversee the customer-service impact of new billing, CRM or communication tool changes, working with IT and the Head of Technical Operations where systems are shared.
• Support effective complaint handling within regulatory time frames, with senior oversight of complaint-handling KPIs and customer outcomes.

• Provide senior oversight of the end-to-end Change of Tenancy function, ensuring the process is accurate, controlled, timely and aligned to current industry requirements.
• Work closely with the COT Manager to maintain strong throughput, accuracy, evidence standards, dispute handling and timely completion of tenancy changes.
• Maintain strong fraud controls across the COT journey, ensuring monitoring, exception reporting and escalation routes are effective and regularly reviewed.
• Keep the COT process aligned with evolving Retail Energy Code (REC) rules as the industry process changes.
• Ensure COT-related customer detriment is identified and remediated quickly.

• Provide senior oversight of the complaints process, team performance and the outcomes customers experience, with the Complaints Manager reporting into the Customer Services Manager for day-to-day line management.
• Oversee the Complaints Manager’s delivery of the complaints process from receipt to resolution or Ombudsman referral, in line with the Consumer Complaint Handling Standards Regulations.
• Support effective complaint handling within regulatory time frames, with senior oversight of complaint-handling KPIs and customer outcomes.
• Review complaint statistics, root-cause analysis and trend reporting provided by the Complaints Manager, escalating regulatory-significant issues promptly to the Head of Regulation and Compliance.

• Provide senior oversight of live customer debt performance through the Collections Manager, ensuring arrears, payment plans, disconnection activity and warrant processes are managed…