The Role
The Customer Support and Collections (CSC) Team Leader will be responsible for a team of dedicated professionals in delivering the effective application and coaching of the contact strategy for customers in financial difficulty in line with company goals and values.
The role will ensure approaches and interactions are delivered empathetically, compliantly and in line with defined standards to achieve timely and effective resolutions, escalating cases where appropriate and necessary
The CSC Team Leader will support and develop the CSC Associates, ensuring they reach and maintain the competency levels for their roles. The Team Leader will contribute to achieving service, quality, and performance targets by following standardised processes, demonstrating a continuous improvement mindset and proactively identifying ways to enhance customer outcomes
Duties
- Deliver the agreed customer contact strategy within the CSC team, ensuring consistent application of approach, standards and regulatory requirements, and escalating issues and cases where appropriate and necessary
- Ensure the team maintains accurate and detailed records of all customer communications and case strategies
- Coordinate the day-to-day and intraday workload of the team, overseeing workflow queues, prioritising and allocating cases to ensure timely, quality and compliant outcomes, taking appropriate action to address imbalances, delays and backlogs
- Provide hands on support to the team where required to maintain workflow and service continuity during periods of high demand or reduced resource
- Use performance data to monitor team output, identify risks and deviations from standard and take timely actions to address issues and maintain performance
- Review customer cases and monitor team activity on provision of forbearance and identification of vulnerable customers and demonstrate that appropriate support is being provided
- Carry out regular quality assurance checks to ensure high standards of customer interaction, compliance and outcomes are being maintained, providing timely feedback and coaching where required
- Support the CSC Hub Manager in analysing CSC customer complaints, undertaking root cause analysis and sharing any themes with the CSC Hub manager to highlight opportunities for improvement to the customer experience
- Lead, coach and support CSC team members to deliver against performance, quality and behavioural expectations, and driving accountability within the team
- Apply structured problem-solving techniques to address performance issues at source, supporting CSC team members to resolve issues within their control and escalating where appropriate and necessary
- Use process confirmation to ensure work is completed in line with defined processes and standards ensuring consistent ways of working across the team, encouraging and capturing improvements to the standard
- Lead daily team huddles to review performance, set priorities and maintain focus on workload, using them to identify deviations from standard, support the team in problem solving these at source and capture improvement ideas
- Contribute to continuous improvement through feedback, observations and improvements within the team and escalate improvement opportunities where support is required
- Engage proactively and positively with collections leaders/managers across the wider business sharing lessons learned and best practices
People
- Work with the CSC Hub Manager to ensure that an effective performance review is put in place, including setting objectives, personal development planning and performance standards with all team members
- Build resilience through delegation and succession planning
- Empower, nurture and engage team members in an inclusive culture through coaching, mentoring and team-development to increase the performance of the individual and the team
- Assess colleague competence and ensure that activity is being completed in line with the Training and Competence scheme
- Work with the Talent Acquisition Business Partner to promote a fair and inclusive recruitment process and employ high calibre and diverse employees, including overseeing new employee onboarding
- Ensure effective management of HR employee relation matters with the help of the HR Business Partners
- Provide regular constructive feedback to direct reports and encourage employees to take proactive responsibility for their own personal development
- Ensure that team members complete online training when required and are kept abreast of any internal communications
- Ensure that team members complete online training when required and are kept abreast of any internal communications and relevant regulatory developments
Risk & Compliance
- Ensure that all Governance and Compliance requirements are adhered to and all reporting and reviewing activities required by the Regulatory Bodies are carried out to the standards required.
Skills
Essential
- Experience of dealing with customers in financial difficulty
- In-depth knowledge of collections and recoveries regulatory requirements and industry standards
- Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively interact with internal and external stakeholders
- Experience of providing coaching and feedback
- circumstances and identify appropriate strategies, applying judgement and decision-making skills
- Demonstrates emotional intelligence, resilience and empathy
- Strong teamwork skills whilst maintaining individual workload
Desirable
- Experience of carrying out activity under a Training and Competence scheme
- Proficiency in Alfa Financial Software
- Exposure to continuous improvement and problem-solving techniques
