Senior Operations Manager - Customer Care & Second Line (FTC)

Location: Bristol / flexible (can work from home)

FTC 6 - 12 months

We launched in 2009 with a mission to change energy for the better. Since then, we’ve welcomed over a million members, planted a million trees, and set our sights on helping save the planet.

As a Group, we’re working to become a net zero carbon business by 2030, while helping our OVO Energy members halve their carbon footprints at the same time. 

Green energy and technology are great tools to fight the climate crisis with. But it’s people power that will rewrite history.  

So we’re building a zero carbon team inside and out. Of people who share our values, feel inspired by our mission, and want to make change happen. When you work for OVO, it’s not just a job. It’s the work of a lifetime. And we want the sharpest minds to help. 

Up for the challenge?

Where in the world of OVO will I be working? 

You’ll be part of the wider operations team delivering a brilliant customer experience and ensuring an efficient operating model. You’ll also be part of the Leadership team with an important role of bringing the voice of the customer to the table in all discussions.

What will I be doing?

Delivering exceptional customer service through mixed teams of remote and nationally based Advisors, led by our amazing Customer Care and Second Line Team Leaders.

Working in close partnership with another Senior Manager within Customer Care, this role will involve more ownership in supporting our Second Line function, as we grow our existing operation, in order to migrate 500K customers from SSE to Ovo by the end of 2021, and several hundred thousand customers monthly onwards from early 2022.

This role will be essential to ensuring our customer’s experience through the migration and into the Ovo customer lifecycle is a positive one. Our Second Line teams are on hand to support our front line teams and customers with more complex and technical problem solving required. As we grow, we will be upskilling, training and supporting our teams to best handle these problems. This will be an ambitious role, bringing together teams internally, acquiring externally and ensuring business readiness plans to grow whilst maintaining performance standards.

In parallel, there will be a requirement to continue to evolve the efficiency and continuous improvement of the function’s internal processes and ways of working to better serve our customers end to end, and improve key operational service metrics such as internal wait times and ticket backlogs. This will require ownership and successful delivery of key strategic projects, representing Second Line whilst linking in to wider strategic initiatives across multiple migration and integration plans for Customer Services. 

As we develop our strategic plans towards a new operating model, this role will be critical in ensuring close collaborative working with the Senior Operations Manager in front line, and whilst priorities will be focused on Second Line initially, there will be a requirement to align on general leadership of the Operations Management Team day to day, representing Customer Care with wider partners across internal teams, and delivering on operational performance.

Key responsibilities include:

• You will be leading our front and second line operational teams reporting into the Head of Customer Care.
• You’ll focus on delivering consistent performance through our customer-facing processes, including appreciating how they impact the overall customer journey beyond your team
• You’ll lead Operations Managers to meet stretching key performance indicators in a high pressure environment
• Work in close partnership with the Care Partner Manager,  to ensure our outsourced partners help to achieve shared SLA’s, targets and metrics 
• In this high volume environment, you’ll drive continuous improvement in performance across the team and ensure optimum resource allocation to deliver results across a range of KPIs
• You’ll develop future management capability and support individuals in the team to fulfill their potential
• You’ll work with key employee Care stakeholders to drive and embed key employee engagement initiatives for the Customer Services team
• Working to reduce process exceptions, escalations and rework, you’ll develop team members and identify and prioritise development needs to ensure continuous improvement
• You’ll be responsible for monitoring and managing team performance, implementing appropriate plans to ensure objectives are achieved
• Ensuring that the department works within all regulatory and/or legal obligations
• Working closely with other departments, from Product, Kaluza, Marketing and Shared Services to ensure our customer experience is seamless and the processes/systems used across the department are efficient and effective
• You’ll have input into the Customer Care strategic plan and will take ownership for delivery of actions associated to that

Is this the job for me? 

• Firstly, you’ll need to have experience of managing a customer contact department of over 200 employees in a high volume customer facing role
• You’ll need to have demonstrable people leadership experience in a high volume customer facing role.
• We are looking for a confident, clear communicator, able to influence across the organisation and demonstrate an effective, delivery-focussed approach within a fast-paced environment.
• Are a great teammate who embraces collaboration within your team and across different teams
• You will have experience within an organisation that serves customers throughout a ‘lifecycle’ requiring close management of their accounts.
• Can demonstrate experience of managing multiple projects and stakeholders in a fast paced competitive environment. 
• Demonstrate a track record of driving efficiency and lowering cost to serve
• In addition, you are passionate about what you do and are highly driven to achieve your professional & personal goals.
• Demonstrate a track record of driving efficiency and lowering cost to serve
• In addition, you are passionate about what you do and are highly driven to achieve your professional & personal goals.

Ideally you will have experience which includes:

• Proven experience of driving key contact centre metrics (FCR/ NPS / Service Levels) in more technically complex, blended front and back office organisations
• Proficient in programme/project management methodologies eg Prince II or Agile
• Energy industry experience
• Omnichannel / contact centre transformation projects
• An agile working environment
• Large scale change and integration

From us you’ll get*

• An annual discretionary bonus
• 4% of your salary to spend on flexible lifestyle benefits
• 5% matched employer contribution to your pension
• 25 days holiday + 1 for your birthday
• And many more... 

(*) Please note that certain benefits kick-in once you have passed probation which can be up to 6 months after your start date.

We want the best people 

At OVO, we empower our people to have choice around where and when they work - flexible working arrangements can be discussed for all of our roles. Please speak to the Talent Acquisition team for more info.

We’re keen to meet people with varied backgrounds - our view is the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We want to build teams which represent a variety of experiences, perspectives and skills, and we recognise talent on the basis of merit and potential.

We understand some people may not apply for jobs unless they tick every box. If you're excited about joining us and think you have much of what we're looking for, even if you're not 100% sure… we'd love to hear from you.

Learn more about working in the OVO family of companies on our careers page and Glassdoor. We’re also delighted to have received a Top Employers certificate in 2018, 2019 and 2020!