Location: Daily Mail, HSK, London
Contract Type: Full-time/Permanent
About the Role
The Senior Service and Operations Manager runs the operational backbone of the Customer Success function. The role fills the most critical gap in the current structure: to own how the subscriptions engine operates day to day.
This hire addresses the Subscriptions Operations stack, integrates Customer Service into the function for the first time, and acts as the primary interface between the Customer Success function and central Product and Technology on platform and automation
Main Responsibilities
90-day operational audit
- Within the first 90 days, conduct a structured audit of current operational systems, the Customer Service function, and the full subscriptions operational landscape.
- Quantify identified inefficiencies and revenue recovery opportunities, and present findings with recommendations to the Director of Customer Success.
- Use audit findings to define the near-term team build-out requirements.
Subscriptions operations
- Own the day-to-day operational running of the Customer Success function, ensuring the subscriptions engine operates consistently and efficiently.
- Own billing consistency, entitlement management, payments performance, and cost management across the subscriptions operation.
- Identify operational inefficiencies and implement improvements on a continuous basis.
Customer Service
- Own the relationship with the Customer Service function, integrating CS insight into the Customer Intelligence team's analytical picture.
- Establish a CS feedback loop that surfaces subscriber complaint trends, cancellation reasons, and friction points to the CI team as a leading churn indicator.
- Own supplier performance management for CS-related partnerships.
Design team management
- Manage the CRM design team's workload and prioritisation within the Operations team's brief process.
- Ensure design requests from across the Customer Success function are sequenced and governed consistently.
Platform and automation
- Act as the Customer Success function's primary interface with Product and Technology on platform requirements.
- Own the requirements brief for the CRM platform migration, in collaboration with the Senior CRM Manager.
- Govern the function's relationships with third-party operational platforms and tools.
- Ensure the CRM platform capability and operational tooling developed centrally is accessible to the US and Australia regional representatives, and that any regional platform requirements are captured and fed into the central Product and Technology brief.
OKRS: FIRST 90 DAYS
- Meet with Customer Service leadership within the first two weeks to understand current setup and identify integration opportunities.
- Document the operational landscape: current systems, platforms, and process gaps, within 30 days.
- Initiate the payments performance investigation with Data and Insights and Product and Technology within 30 days.
- Brief Product and Technology on initial platform requirements within 60 days.
- Present 90-day operational audit findings to Director within 90 days.
OKRS: LONGER TERM (ANNUAL AND BEYOND)
Annual (FY27)
- Payments performance programme is generating measurable monthly revenue recovery, with a defined target agreed with the Director.
- The CS feedback loop is producing subscriber insight that reaches the CI team on a standing cadence and has demonstrably influenced at least one lifecycle intervention.
- The operational audit's priority recommendations are acted on: for each recommendation, either implemented, in progress with a defined timeline, or formally deprioritised with a rationale.
- The design team's workload is fully governed through the brief process, with no ad hoc requests bypassing the queue.
Multi-year (toward FY28)
- Payments automation is in place, reducing manual recovery effort and improving the overall payments performance rate.
- The Ops team's scope is defined by the audit findings: either additional resource has been approved and hired, or the current team's capacity has been shown to be sufficient for the function's operational demands.
- The Customer Service relationship has evolved from a reactive feedback loop to a structured intelligence source that proactively surfaces subscriber friction points before they become churn drivers.
Person Specification
- Operational Leadership: Minimum of 6–8 years managing day-to-day business operations, specifically owning the technical backend or "engine" of a scaling function.
- Subscription Mechanics: Strong background managing subscription infrastructure, including billing consistency, entitlement management, payments performance, and cost management.
- Operational Audits: Proven experience conducting structural, 90-day operational audits to quantify system inefficiencies and surface revenue-recovery opportunities.
- Customer Service and Vendor Integration
- CS Function Integration: Experience integrating Customer Service (CS) workflows into broader business operations and data loops for the first time.
- Feedback Loop Creation: Demonstrated ability to establish feedback loops that transform CS complaint trends, cancellations, and friction points into leading indicators for analytical teams.
- Vendor Management: Hands-on experience in supplier performance management and governing external customer service partnerships.
- Product Liaison: Extensive experience acting as the primary interface between business functions (like Customer Success) and Product and Technology teams to scope platform and automation requirements.
- Platform Migration: Prior experience owning or heavily contributing to requirements briefs for large-scale CRM platform migrations.
- Global Standardisation: Experience managing regional stakeholders (e.g., US and Australia) to ensure central tools meet international compliance and regional requirements.
- Design Team Governance: Experience managing workloads, brief processes, prioritization, and sequencing for creative or CRM design teams.
Package Description
Our benefits package increases the longer you've been with us. Here's what to expect:
- 25 days' holiday (increasing by 1 per year up to a total of 30)
- Upon joining you will be automatically enrolled onto the Pension Plan at
the minimum level of 5% employee contribution, 3% Company
contribution.
- Life cover under the Pension Plan of up to 3x your basic salary.
- DMGT Discounts (for discounts on online shopping, vouchers and
reloadable cards)
- Subsidised canteen
- Onsite gym (Northcliffe House only)
- Onsite nurse and GP clinics (Northcliffe House only)
- Our Employee Assistance Programme
- Discounted dining cards
Plus many other benefits….
Our Commitment
We are committed to increasing diversity and maintaining an inclusive workplace culture. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of their ethnicity, race, gender, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability.
We are Disability Confident Committed. Please let us know if you require any recruitment documentation in other formats or if you require reasonable adjustments to be made during the recruitment process. Please be assured that any such information will be held separately to your recruitment application and will not be considered as part of the selection process
