Head of Customer Service

Want to hear more about this role before you apply?

We are hosting a Recruitment Webinar for this role on Monday 4th August at 10:00 which will be hosted by Natasha Gray - Director of Strategy and Engagement for the NCIs Pensions Board and Jessica Murphy - HR Resourcing Lead. This gives you an opportunity to hear about the role and the new function from Natasha directly. There is also the ability to ask questions.

To register for this event please click the link below:

Recruitment Webinar: Head of Customer Service

About the Department

The Church of England Pensions Board provides retirement services to those who serve or work for the Church. Both a regulated pension fund and registered charity, more than 44,000 people rely on us for their pensions. A leader in ethical and responsible investment, we carefully steward the £3.4bn of pension savings entrusted to us to not only grow our members’ pensions, but also to drive systemic and lasting change across the industries and sectors in which we invest for a just and sustainable word. The Board also supports 2,500 retired clergy with housing, including managing a national portfolio of 1,200 rented homes and Community Living options.

About the Role

Supported by a multi-million pound grant from the wider Church, we are setting up a new function responsible for engaging with clergy at all stages of life and ministry on their current and future plans, offering access to grants to kick-start saving, bespoke advice at key life stages and tailored housing products that will give our customers more choice about their future. We are looking for an excellent customer service leader to come and join this new team as the Head of Customer Service, responsible for delivery of regionally based support to clergy and diocesan teams. This role will also champion the voice of the customer across our service, responsible for insight and day to day communications.

What you'll be doing

The purpose of this role is to lead day to day service delivery of a new package of support to clergy with their retirement plans (inclusive of housing) and matters of financial wellbeing. This role is responsible for ensuring a consistently high-quality customer experience, driving continuous improvement, and embedding a customer-first culture into a regionally located team, working with delivery partners as required. The postholder will oversee effective case management, complaints handling, feedback/data insight gathering and customer engagement initiatives.

The Head of Customer Services will:

• Oversee the delivery of new regionally deployed services offered by the Board, including a customer-facing engagement team. This will include:
• Establishing the right pattern of work for the team in the first year, including setting up and testing the day 1 protocols for the team ahead of time (working with delivery partners where needed).
• Line managing the team, ensuring they are supported and empowered to do their job well, including ensuring a regular pattern of training and development to keep knowledge up to date.
• Joining the dots between the team, and a focus on building consistent experience for customers in different parts of England Working personally with colleagues in outlying Dioceses (Europe, Sodor & Man, Channel Islands), to support proactive retirement planning – this includes understanding jurisdictional differences to dioceses in the UK e.g. tax, welfare benefit entitlements
• Lead day to day engagement with customers e.g. organisation of key national and regional events on different topics relevant to future planning/financial wellbeing and life milestones.
• Be responsible for working with other Pensions Board colleagues to deliver an integrated customer journey with Housing and Pensions – so all contact points lead to good retirement planning and better financial wellbeing.
• Oversee rhythm and quality of communications, including effective use of CRM technology
• Lead pilots of new services.
• Implement and monitor KPIs to measure service quality, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency.
• Be the first escalation point for individual cases, and owner of ‘complaints process’ in the team.
• Represent the customer voice in strategy and service development informed by feedback/data, highlighting gaps/barriers to colleagues to guide exploration of new choices and amendments to process.
• Ensure high standards of safeguarding are embedded in the function, recognising that safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility.
• Deputise for the Director of the new service as required.

About You

The Church of England is for everyone and we want to reflect the diversity of the community the Church serves across the whole country. Therefore, while of course we welcome all applications from interested and suitably experienced people, we would particularly welcome applicants from UK Minoritised Ethnicities (UKME)/Global Majority Heritage (GMH) and other under-represented groups. As a Disability Confident employer, we are committed to recruiting disabled people. We offer interviews to disabled people who meet the minimum criteria for the role.

Knowledge/Experience

• Experience of leading multi-disciplinary and remote teams in a complex environment, with proven ability to get the best from a diverse group.
• Excellent understanding of best practice in quality customer service delivery, and experience of delivering it.
• Excellent understanding of operating within a regulated environment – and specifically of staying the right side of the line on regulated matters.
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills, including values-led complaints resolution.
• Experience of customer-focused process and service improvement

Skills & Abilities:

• Technologically savvy – with good understanding of CRM systems, and tools to speed up customer engagement and team delivery
• Comfort in rapidly switching between different topics across a day/in meetings, as the team will need to work across housing, retirement and financial wellbeing matters.
• Prefers being out in the field and face to face with customers.
• Collaborative approach to build engaging and effective relationships with colleagues and partners
• Good analytical and financial skills, including proven ability to make the most of tight budgets.
• Excellent attention to detail, while able to hold the strategic picture.
• Excellent writing and verbal communication skills.
• Confident with strategic planning and business case development.

What we offer

Your Salary

• A salary of £82,157 per annum, plus age-related pension contributions between 8-15% of salary. We will also match any pension contributions you make up to an additional 3% of your salary.

Your Benefits

• 30 days annual leave plus eight bank holidays three additional days (pro-rated if working part-time).
• We welcome all flexible working arrangement requests. This is looked at in a case-by-case scenario and if this fits within the department’s needs. We try to be as flexible as we can in your work pattern to support you with other commitments, and to give a good work-life balance.
• We offer many services and initiatives under our Family Friendly Programme, some of these include enhanced Maternity Leave initiative, Adoption Leave, Paternity Leave, & Shared Parental Leave. Structured induction programme and access to a range of development opportunities including apprenticeships.
• Automatic enrolment and access to Medicash (one of the UK’s leading health cash plan providers), providing you with many services including reimbursements of routine dental treatment, optical, specialist consultations, and therapy treatments. Unlimited access to virtual GP & Private prescription service and health & Stress related helplines.
• Access to Occupational Health, and an Employee Assistance Programme
• Access to the Department of Education Restaurant and Westminster Abbey with a plus-one guest.
• Apply for eligibility for an Eyecare voucher.
• Opportunity to join the Civil Service Sports & Social Club, and get involved in a range of staff networks, groups and societies.

ABOUT NATIONAL CHURCH INSTITUTIONS

The National Church Institutions comprises a wide variety of teams, professions and functions that support the mission and ministries of the Church of England in its vision to be a church, centred on Jesus Christ, for the whole nation - a church that is simpler, humbler, bolder.

We Include. You Belong.

Our Belonging and Inclusion Strategy aims for everyone in the National Church Institutions (NCIs) to feel that they belong, and are valued for who they are and what they contribute. Together, our people contribute in different ways towards our common purpose, whichever NCI they work in and whatever their background.

Living out our values in all that we do, we:

• Strive for Excellence
• Show Compassion
• Respect others
• Collaborate
• Act with Integrity

We believe our commitment to belonging and inclusion fuels our progress and drives us forward. The NCIs are a safe, inclusive workplace for people of all backgrounds and walks of life. We welcome applications from people of all faiths and of no faith. We want to encourage applications from a diverse group of people who share our values. Even if you have never thought about working for us before, if you have the skills and experience we’re looking for then we would like to hear from you.

Please note: You must have the right to work in the UK to be considered for the role.