Customer Complaints Manager jobs

Job Title: Head of Customer Service

Salary: £38,000.00 per year

Hours: 37.5 hours per week

Location: Leeds

Do you want to work for an established growing company that recognises and appreciates your hard work on a day to day basis?

Here at The Vending People, our Employees are at the forefront of everything we do. We invest heavily in your development and offer a real positive working experience.

Who are We?

The Company is the largest independent national vending machine operator working in all vending product categories and distribution channels. Based in Leeds the business has national sales coverage through 6 regional depots, 100 fulfilment routes and over 1500 clients.

Our Company Values

• Proactive: We take the initiative; anticipate customer needs; look out for problems before they happen and search out new opportunities.
• Customer Focused: We are dedicated and hold ourselves accountable to always seek to exceed customer expectations for both internal and external customers.
• Collaborative: We work together to achieve common goals and through effective communication and teamwork, we learn from each other while making improvements.
• Adaptable: We use creativity and innovation to overcome challenges, solve problems and adapt to change.

What do we offer?

• Competitive salary
• Health Cash Plan and Employee Assistance Programme
• Paid birthday leave
• Employee Referral Programme
• Pension
• Death in Service scheme
• Comprehensive induction
• Extensive training & development
• Career progression

Job Purpose

The Head of Customer Service is responsible for delivering an outstanding and consistent customer experience across the vending business.

The role will lead the customer service function, ensuring customers receive fast, professional and effective support while working closely with Operations, Sales, Technical, Finance and Supply Chain to resolve issues and continually improve service.

A key focus of the role is moving the business from reactive complaint handling to proactive customer management, using customer feedback and operational data to identify problems, improve service levels and protect customer retention.

Main Responsibilities

Customer Experience

· Own the end-to-end customer service experience across the business.

· Establish clear standards for how customer enquiries, service issues and complaints are handled.

· Ensure customers receive timely, accurate and professional communication.

· Develop a customer-first culture throughout the customer service team and wider operation.

· Act as the senior escalation point for significant or sensitive customer issues.

· Build strong relationships with key customers and support strategic account reviews where required.

Customer Service Operations

• Lead the day-to-day performance of the customer service function.
• Ensure calls, emails, service requests and complaints are handled within agreed service levels.
• Develop clear escalation processes between Customer Service, Operations, Technical and other departments.
• Identify recurring operational issues and ensure root causes are addressed rather than repeatedly managing the symptoms.
• Ensure customers are kept informed when issues cannot be resolved immediately.

Service Performance & KPIs

Develop and manage a customer service performance dashboard covering measures such as:

• Response times
• Resolution times
• First-contact resolution
• Open customer issues
• Complaints
• Repeat complaints
• SLA achievement
• Customer satisfaction
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) or equivalent
• Customer retention/churn
• Service recovery performance

Provide regular reporting to the senior leadership team, highlighting trends, risks and improvement opportunities.

Complaints & Service Recovery

• Own the company complaints process.
• Ensure complaints are properly recorded, investigated and resolved.
• Introduce clear complaint categories and root-cause analysis.
• Identify trends across machines, locations, products, routes and operational teams.
• Work with operational leaders to implement corrective actions.
• Develop appropriate service recovery processes to rebuild customer confidence following significant failures.
• Ensure lessons from complaints are communicated across the organisation.

Proactive Customer Management

Develop systems that allow the business to identify potential customer problems before they become complaints.

This should include using available operational data to identify issues such as:

• Repeated machine faults
• Poor machine availability
• Persistent product availability problems
• Missed visits
• Repeated refunds
• Payment issues
• Declining sales or usage
• Multiple complaints from the same location

Customer Retention

• Work closely with Sales and Account Management to improve customer retention.
• Identify customers showing early indicators of dissatisfaction or potential churn.
• Maintain visibility of significant customer risks.
• Support customer retention and recovery plans.
• Ensure customer feedback is incorporated into contract reviews and business improvement activity.

Leadership & People Development

• Lead, motivate and develop the customer service team.
• Establish clear objectives, responsibilities and performance standards.
• Coach managers and team members to improve communication, problem solving and customer handling skills.
• Ensure appropriate training and development plans are in place.
• Build a culture of ownership where issues are followed through to resolution rather than simply passed between departments.
• Recognise and promote examples of excellent customer service.

Continuous Improvement

• Regularly review customer service processes and identify opportunities for simplification and automation.
• Improve CRM and customer service systems to provide better visibility of customer interactions.
• Reduce unnecessary customer contacts by addressing recurring causes.
• Work with Operations and Technical teams to improve reliability and service delivery.
• Use customer feedback to influence operational priorities and business decision

Skills and Experience

• Significant customer service leadership experience.
• Experience managing customer service teams and managers.
• Strong understanding of customer service KPIs and SLAs.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Strong complaint management and service recovery experience.
• Ability to analyse customer and operational data.
• Experience implementing customer service improvement programmes.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills.
• Ability to influence operational teams outside their direct reporting line.
• Commercial awareness and understanding of the importance of customer retention.

Competencies Required

· Customer Focused

· Proactive Approach

· Good Communicator

· Effective Time Management

· Adaptable to change

· Lead by example

· Motivate others

· Manage and measure work

· Give and receive feedback

· Direct and develop others

Pay: £38,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Company pension
• Health & wellbeing programme
• Life insurance
• On-site parking
• Referral programme

Work Location: In person