Role Purpose

The Senior Manager: Customer Operations is responsible for leading, optimising, and continuously improving end-to-end customer service and operational processes to ensure the consistent delivery of high-quality, efficient, and customer-centric services.

This role drives operational excellence, enhances customer satisfaction and retention, and ensures customer operations are aligned with organisational strategy, regulatory requirements, service level agreements, and commercial objectives.

Key Outcomes

The successful incumbent will be accountable for achieving the following outcomes:
Consistently high customer satisfaction, loyalty, and Net Promoter Scores (NPS).
Improved customer retention and reduced churn rates.
Efficient, cost-effective, and scalable customer operations.
Reduced service turnaround times and complaint resolution cycles.
Full compliance with internal policies, regulatory standards, and SLAs.
High-performing, engaged, and accountable customer operations teams.
Measurable improvements in productivity, quality, and service delivery.
Accurate, timely, and actionable operational reporting and performance insights.

Key Responsibilities

Customer Operations Strategy

Develop and implement a comprehensive customer operations strategy aligned with corporate, commercial, and regulatory objectives.
Translate organisational strategy into actionable operational plans, frameworks, and performance targets.
Identify and lead opportunities for process optimisation, automation, and digital transformation.
Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance service quality, efficiency, and customer experience.
Contribute to organisational planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes.
Monitor industry trends, regulatory developments, and best practices to inform strategic decision-making.
Establish governance structures, policies, and controls for customer operations.
Enable strong cross-functional collaboration to ensure integrated service delivery.

Operations Delivery Leadership

Provide strategic and operational leadership across customer service, contact centres, service fulfilment, billing support, technical support, retention, and collections.
Ensure consistent achievement of service level agreements, quality standards, and customer commitments.
Manage operational risks and implement corrective actions where required.
Ensure optimal utilisation of systems, tools, and infrastructure.
Standardise operating procedures and ensure consistent execution across all service channels.

Contact Centre Management

Provide oversight and leadership of all contact centre operations, including inbound, outbound, digital, and self-service channels.
Ensure effective workforce management, capacity planning, and scheduling.
Drive improvements in call handling times, first-contact resolution, and queue performance.
Oversee quality assurance frameworks, call monitoring, and agent performance management.
Ensure effective implementation and utilisation of contact centre technologies and CRM platforms.
Manage outsourced and third-party contact centre partners where applicable.

Customer Experience Management

Design, implement, and continuously improve the end-to-end customer journey across all touchpoints.
Establish customer experience standards, service principles, and behavioural expectations.
Analyse customer feedback, complaints, surveys, and NPS data to drive service enhancements.
Lead service recovery initiatives and complaint resolution processes.
Embed a customer-centric culture across teams and functions.
Collaborate with marketing, sales, technical, and product teams to improve customer outcomes.

Performance, Quality & Compliance Management

Establish, monitor, and report on key performance indicators and service metrics.
Analyse operational data to identify trends, risks, and improvement opportunities.
Drive quality assurance, audit, and compliance programmes.
Implement customer feedback mechanisms and service recovery frameworks.

Billing & Collections Management

Provide strategic and operational oversight of billing, invoicing, and collections processes.
Ensure accurate, timely, and compliant customer billing in line with regulatory and contractual requirements.
Manage credit control, debt recovery, and collections strategies to optimise cash flow and minimise bad debt.
Monitor billing disputes, adjustments, and reconciliations to ensure timely resolution.
Establish controls to prevent revenue leakage and billing errors.
Drive automation and system improvements within billing and financial operations.
Collaborate with finance, legal, and compliance teams on risk and recovery matters.

Financial & Resource Management

Manage departmental budgets and control operational costs.
Ensure efficient allocation of human and technological resources.
Support and develop business cases for investment in systems, infrastructure, and capability development.

Stakeholder & Customer Engagement

Build strong relationships with internal stakeholders, vendors, and service partners.
Represent customer operations at executive and governance forums.
Manage escalations and high-impact customer issues.
Ensure consistent, professional communication with customers and partners.

People Leadership & Talent Development

Develop and lead high-performing teams that consistently meet or exceed performance targets.
Set KPIs, monitor performance, and drive continuous improvement plans.
Foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, and customer-centricity.
Provide technical, procedural, and policy guidance to teams and partners.
Attract, develop, and retain talent, including identifying and developing future leaders.
Implement structured performance management and feedback programmes.
Develop and execute training and learning plans aligned with operational needs.
Promote healthy employee relations, teamwork, and diversity.
Implement and embed Employment Equity initiatives within the business area.
Act as a role model and ambassador by living organisational values and behaviours.