Head of Contact Centre

Head of Contact Centre

We are changing things. We are Outfox the Market Energy (OTM), a fast-growing family run, renewable energy supplier in the UK since 2017. We’re the leading energy supplier for customer service. Our Customer Care Teams are the nerve centre of our entire operation. People here are the voice of our business – providing excellent service, direct to our customers whenever they need us with a personalised touch.

An ideal candidate is someone who thrives in a fast-paced environment, works well within a team and passionate about what they do. Excellent interpersonal and communication skills are key; both when interacting with our customers, as well as with fellow team members. We’re looking for an enthusiastic person who takes pride in their work and is looking to take on a new challenge.

At OTM Energy, our employees are just as important to us as our customers. We will provide training and support your development throughout your career. We want our Head of Contact Centre to lead the managers of the future as we both grow together.

You’ll learn OTM Energy technologies and get familiar with our approach to customer conversations.

This role will be working from our Leicester office close to the city centre.

The team will be supporting domestic energy customers during core office hours Monday to Friday 8.30 am to 5 pm and Saturdays 9 am to 2 pm in addition to extended hours during bank holidays for emergency services.

Breaks: 50 minutes break time throughout the day

Head of Contact Centre Requirements:

As Head of Contact Centre, it will be your role to ensure that our Customer Operations team reflects our brand, mission, and tone of voice. You will report into the Director of Customer Operations, and you will lead the delivery of all customer-facing services to both our existing and future customers.

You’ll need to be passionate about our business to ensure that we deliver on our customer promises in a rapidly growing and changing environment. If you’re already an accomplished leader and you know how to lead for customer and employee engagement, including performance management, KPIs and technical support, this role is for you. The role will be responsible for all aspects of Customer Care for OTM Energy, including and not limited to:

• New/Potential/Existing customer queries
• Billing Queries and Tariff Changes (Mid-Contract / End of Contract / During cooling-off period)
• Complaints

Our strategy is to deliver our services with highly automated processes and to use recently developed support technologies, enabling us to deliver end to end resolutions that reach beyond our customers’ expectations. We offer support via numerous channels – Telephone, Webchat, Email, Webforms, Letters, SMS, Email & Social Media Direct Messages.

The customer care team sits alongside the complaints, debt, metering and billing teams, allowing OTM Energy to deliver seamless customer experience with all teams working as one. The post holder will have a close working relationship with the other Stakeholders.

Head of Contact Centre Responsibilities:

1. Lead, mentor, and inspire a team of contact centre team leaders, agents, and support staff. Ensuring staff have ongoing training, coaching, and development opportunities to grow in their roles.
2. Performance management, set clear goals, performance, and behaviour expectations, provide regular feedback, and ensure the team is motivated and aligned with company goals.
3. Oversee the daily operations of the contact centre, ensuring attendance, punctuality and office etiquette is at its optimum.
4. Drive a positive culture within the team, aligned with company values.
5. Own and manage the end-to-end customer journey, processes involved, contact channel integration and be a role-model for the Team Leaders and Customer Care Team.
6. Manage the contact centre budget, including staffing, technology, and operational expenses.
7. Monitor and control costs while delivering exceptional service.

Contact Centre Operations:

• Ensure availability of our teams is maximised with efficient call handling, email responses, chat and social media support for prompt resolutions.
• Develop and implement contact centre policies, procedures, and performance metrics to optimise customer service quality and efficiency.
• Reviewing policies, procedures, metrics regularly to ensure this fits our operating model.
• Monitor and analyse key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify areas for improvement and implement strategies to achieve targets.
• Embrace OTM ways of working, understand what needs to be done, set priorities with a clear RAG status, share plan of action, effectively communicate these and deliver to tight deadlines.
• Take responsibility for decision making, driving the focus on opportunities, and ensuring governance, risk logs, change logs and controls are in place.
• Build and maintain positive relationships with internal and external stakeholders, such as customers and partners – Technical support teams, policy, complaints, legal, marketing, SMS, Scope.

Responsible for Customer Service Delivery:

Strive for a superior customer experience by continuously enhancing service levels and ensuring prompt issue resolution.

Maintain and suggest new processes, tools and knowledge to deliver industry leading multichannel customer care and technical support.

Recruit a high-quality team, invested in their learning and development as well as our company values and ways of working.

Work to schedule & to forecast and scale the team so that capacity is ready as the business needs it, ensuring the current operational model is supported whilst long term solutions are founded, approved, tested, and implemented.

Work with the Director of Customer Operations to deliver the quality and training to ensure consistent quality is delivered through a combination of quality standards, training, coaching, and monitoring.

Monitor and deliver SLAs ensuring they are met, maximising first time resolution and minimising escalations and multiple touch points.

At busy periods, be flexible to juggle several activities to keep the lights on for our customers.

Develop and maintain a deep understanding of customer needs, preferences, and pain points to drive customer-centric strategies.

Coordinate the resolution of customer issues/complaints across the business.

Manage the introduction of new products and services into the customer care team. Taking added measure to understand any demand following new activities and its impact to the customer and team performance.

Ensure compliance with OFGEM regulations, and additional commitments OTM has voluntarily signed up to.

Lead all customer on-boarding and ensure that we provide an excellent customer experience, ensuring the smooth on-boarding of a customer and their supply points. Management and ownership of the day-to-day tasks and processes within the team.

Technology, Innovation & Process Improvement:

Stay updated with contact centre technologies and industry trends, identifying, and implementing solutions that enhance customer service and operational efficiency.

Collaborate with IT and other departments to ensure the contact centre is equipped with the latest tools and systems.

Establish a culture of continuous improvement and work collaboratively to highlight opportunities for our customers and the business.

Analyse the root causes of customer issues and drive permanent resolutions.

Report performance against SLAs, KPIS and customer measures with volume and cause weekly.

Training and Development:

Develop and oversee training programs to enhance the skills and knowledge of contact centre staff, with regular refresher courses and clinics for upskilling as new processes are established, systems are upgraded, and customer demand arises.

Utilise existing third-party relations for their professional training services.

Ensure agents are well-prepared to handle customer queries and resolve issues effectively.

Drive desire and hunger for contact centre staff to learn and grow with the company, embracing company values and its ways of working.

Clearly outline standard minimum and optimum requirements for quality and productivity, setting our clearly what good looks like at OTM.

Quality Assurance:

Support quality assurance and the delivery of feedback through conducting regular audits and evaluations of customer interactions to identify areas within the business for improvement.

Conduct root cause analysis, identify and share performance trends, collaborating with wider teams to maintain service standards and consistency, with a view to continuously raise the bar for service levels.

Report on the findings and improvements made following training, QAs, coaching, 1:1s.

Track development and share any successes, challenges, and lessons learnt for process, people, and systems.

Performance Analysis and Improvement:

Monitor and evaluate key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify areas for improvement across all contact channels.

Ensure a clear feedback process is defined and implemented to allow for wider areas to contribute and for progress to be tracked.

Implement strategies to achieve performance targets and continuously enhance operational efficiency.

Ensure company policies are adhered to when managing behaviour and performance.

Compliance and Regulatory Adherence: 

Stay updated on best practice, legal requirements, obligations, commitments, and principles within the industry and make necessary adjustments to policies and practices as required.

Ensure that the contact centre operations adhere to all relevant industry regulations and compliance standards highlighting any risk and any action taken to mitigate this risk.

Reporting and Communication:

Provide weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual reports/updates to senior management on contact centre performance and strategic initiatives.

Collaborate with other departments to align customer service strategies with overall company goals.

Collaborate with HR to align recruitment drives and onboarding/offboarding processes and experiences.

Crisis and Issue Management:

Review any existing plans to manage crisis.

Develop and implement crisis management plans to address unexpected challenges or issues affecting customer service.

The Head of Contact Centre plays a critical role in ensuring a high-quality customer experience, operational efficiency, and the achievement of company goals related to customer service and support.

Candidate Profile:

Energy retail experience is essential.

Proven experience in a leadership role within a contact centre, managing a Customer Care team / technical support, ideally gained in a B2C technical service environment and effective at external and internal stakeholder management.

Lead from the front and act as a role model and mentor for the Team Leaders.

Ability to motivate teams to achieve targets and deliver and drive outstanding customer service.

Proven experience of managing multi-channel contact centre, including technical support, knowledge management and customer self-service portals.

Understanding of Regulatory and Industry compliance for operations.

Experience of best practice CRM and Case/ Ticket management.

Strong knowledge of contact centre operations, customer service best practices, and industry trends.

Excellent interpersonal, communication, and problem-solving skills.

Escalated complaint handling experience.

Keen eye for detail, strong organisational skills, and ability to deliver to tight deadlines.

Highly analytical, proficient in reporting and numeracy skills in analysing both employee and customer performance and behaviours.

Proficiency in using contact centre technologies and analytics tools and using data available to drive insights, decisions, and improvements.

Ability to adapt to a fast-paced and dynamic work environment.

Remains, calm, measured and articulates well.

A commitment to upholding the company’s values, ways of working and commitment to exceptional customer service.

A dedicated, strategic leader with a passion for enhancing the customer and agent experience with a desire and hunger to shape the future of customer service excellence and contact centre performance.

Advanced Excel & PowerPoint.