Head of Service Maintenance and Repair

About The Role

This role is a key strategic commercial leadership role. The role has overall commercial responsibility for all service, maintenance and repair (SMR) contract negotiation, spend and relationship management across the dealer network for Motability Operations’ customers’ vehicles in life. You will be responsible for ensuring that the significant costs relating to the management of our customers’ vehicles through the period of their lease, are optimised to enhance the customer proposition value and experience. The role is responsible for defining and designing the contracts to achieve the balance between the best value for our customers with the best commercial terms for our business.

• You will be responsible to create an environment with our dealer / SMR networks to ensure our customers receive excellent customer experience and best value.
• The services delivered by our dealer / SMR networks are scheduled or delivered promptly to ensure continuous mobility services and associated costs are minimised.
• You will be responsible for implementing strategic and tactical opportunities to reduce cost across the dealer network contracts.
• Managing SLAs with dealers to ensure delivery against the customer proposition and where necessary proactively performance manage poor partner performance.
• You will be responsible for ensuring there is a positive customer outcome.
• You will apply a strong commercial focus, ensuring that the services provided are value for money to the scheme.
• You will need to drive and implement ongoing process improvement. You will be managing and working with 3rd party suppliers/business partners, leveraging relationships to deliver excellent outcomes.
• You will need to adopt a data driven approach to reviewing costs and ensuring that cost controls are initiated, and expectations set to minimise costs and improve customer experience.

This is a commercial role, and you will need to use a data driven approach to manage partner costs and ensure there is a value-added approach whilst not impacting the customer experience. You will need to be proactive and deliver a commercially robust and sustainable proposition. You will need to develop and deliver contract efficiency and partnership programmes to achieve the best return on our investment for customers.

About You

• Alongside a customer focus, you will also need strong commercial awareness and have an interest in the wider fleet and leasing industry, with a desire to learn about any outside influences which could impact us or our customers within the in-life experience.
• You will need excellent communication skills, with experience of communicating with internal and external stakeholders at all levels.
• You will be confident with finding trends and communicating those findings in a way that delivers effective change.
• You will need to effectively lead, develop and motivate your team to drive a commercial strategic agenda which actively engages the partners to deliver the best outcomes.
• Commercial acumen with a drive for high results and a delivery focus.
• Highly motivated individual with experience of creating and delivering visionary strategic plans.
• Ability to operate seamlessly between commercial requirements, customer experience deliverables and strategic priorities.
• You embrace change and you’re motivated by exploring ways of delivering value and impact across the business.

Minimum criteria:

• Extensive experience in OEM/senior aftersales/commercial roles, including at Director level, this could be in a large dealer group or a large leasing organisation.
• Demonstrable experience of operating seamlessly between commercial requirements, customer experience deliverables and strategic priorities i.e. has tangible results of driving out cost whilst driving up value.
• Extensive experience of leading a high performing team, demonstrated by outcomes.
• Demonstrates experience of using data and insight to drive better customer outcomes, from a proposition or commercial perspective.

About The Company

Motability Operations is a unique organisation, virtually one of a kind. We combine a strong sense of purpose with a real commercial edge to ensure we provide the best possible worry-free mobility solutions to over 700,000 customers and their families across the UK. Customers exchange their higher rate mobility allowance to lease a range of affordable vehicles (cars, wheelchair accessible vehicles, scooters, and powered wheelchairs) with insurance, maintenance and breakdown assistance included. We are the largest car fleet operator in the UK (purchasing around 10% of all the new cars sold in the UK) and work with a network of around 5,000 car dealers and all the major manufacturers. We pride ourselves on delivering outstanding customer service, achieving an independently verified customer satisfaction rating of 9.8 out of 10.

Our values are at the heart of everything we do. They represent ambition, and we look for our people to live and breathe them every day:

• We find solutions.
• We drive change.
• We care.

We operate hybrid working across the organisation where we split our time between working on-site at our offices, and at home, remotely within the UK. We believe hybrid working achieves a good work/life balance for our colleagues, allowing us to connect with each other, collaborate on important work, and perform together to deliver for our customers. It allows us to have the flexibility to work remotely up to 2-days per week whilst also using the great office spaces we have available.

As a Motability Operations team member, you can expect:

• An annual discretionary bonus.
• 15% non-contributory pension (9% non-contributory pension during probation period).
• Life assurance at 4 times your basic salary to give you peace of mind that your loved ones will receive some financial help.
• Employee Discount Scheme with a huge number of retailers and an app to save on the go.
• Discounted Electric/Hybrid Car Salary Sacrifice Scheme.
• Access to the Cycle to Work Scheme (we have showers, changing rooms and secure bike sheds on site).

As well as financial benefits, our staff’s health and well-being are very important to us, so we also offer:

• 28 days annual leave with option to purchase and sell days.
• Funded Private Medical Insurance cover.
• Critical illness insurance.
• Free access to healthcare apps, such as Peppy, Unmind, Aviva Digital GP.
• Funded health screening for over 50s.
• 1 day per year to volunteer – Staff can support a local charity or do a sponsored event whilst being paid for it.
• Access to our fully accessible company allotment – Where we grow our own produce for local charitable organisations.
• Access to Prayer room and quiet spaces whilst working in the office.

We also understand that not everyone is the same so offer several voluntary benefits that you can select outside the core package, these include:

• Dental Insurance.
• Health and cancer screenings for you and your partner.
• Discounted gym memberships.
• Charitable giving.

At Motability Operations, we believe in building a diverse workforce, where our people are empowered to attend work as their true selves, and we encourage people from all backgrounds to apply. We want to sustain a culture that nurtures, where employees are free to flourish and where they’re rewarded equally, regardless of race, nationality or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, age, disability, or gender.

We pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer and as such, all our offices provide first rate disability access. With our hybrid working environment, we do our best to accommodate part-time and flexible working requests where possible, building on our culture of trust, empowerment, and flexibility.

Please note, Motability Operations reserves the right to bring forward the closing date of any of its job vacancies if we receive a suitable number of quality applications from which to make a shortlist. Therefore, we recommend that you apply as soon as possible rather than wait until the published closing date.