Operational Efficiency Lead

UK, Hybrid

Our Perks

• Values-driven culture – we’re really proud of our culture.
• Personalised Learning and Development Budget
• Hybrid working hours – Each team has their own Smart Working Charter that empowers you to do your work in the best way you can
• 25 Holiday Days + your local bank holidays
• 1 Birthday day – it only happens once a year!
• 3 So Giving Days - spend these days giving back to your chosen cause
• Religious Celebrations Leave
• Mental Healthcare – Sessions with Unmind
• Enhanced Family Leave

Who we are

So Energy was created in 2015 because we knew energy suppliers could be better. Since then, we’ve grown rapidly but sustainably, with 350,000 customers and over 450 Energists (what we call our people). But we’re not done. We’re on the road to a net zero future, and thanks to our partnership with ESB, we’re well on the way. We’re customer-centric, tech-led, and passionate about sustainability. We want to do the best we can for our customers, each other, and our planet, so we’ve created a workplace that’s encouraging, supportive, and offers the opportunity for growth. As a company, we live by six core values that guide everything we do: Clear, Honest, Ambitious, Inquisitive, Caring, Sustainable.

The Role

The Operational Efficiency Lead will drive continuous improvement and efficiency within operations, proactively identifying and resolving customer pain points, reducing contact volumes and complaints, and improving first-contact resolution. This role focuses on leveraging data, technology, and process optimisation to empower customers with effective self-service tools, streamline operations, and deliver an exceptional customer experience while achieving measurable business benefits, including cost efficiency and operational excellence. The role will transform operational capabilities by embedding change across people, processes, and systems, ensuring readiness, adoption, and sustainability of improvements. Acting as a central liaison between teams, this role will balance CX outcomes with business performance goals.

What you’ll be getting up to:

• Proactive Customer Issue Resolution: Analyse customer feedback, data trends, and interaction patterns to identify root causes of recurring issues. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to design and implement pre-emptive solutions to reduce avoidable contacts.
• Intelligent Resolution Development: Identify opportunities for self-service and automation (e.g., IVR, chatbots, virtual agents, knowledge bases). Act as an SME in self-service journey design to ensure tools are intuitive, effective, and customer-centric. Monitor and optimise the performance of self-service tools, ensuring seamless problem resolution for customers.
• Contact Resolution: Use operational data to identify areas for improving contact resolution processes and advisor performance. Collaborate with teams such as L&D, Product, and Communications to ensure advisors have the tools and knowledge to resolve customer queries effectively.
• Process Improvement: Lead initiatives to streamline workflows and reduce friction points for both customers and advisors. Optimise internal processes to enhance the speed, quality, and efficiency of service delivery.
• Support Contact Centre Performance: Analyse advisor performance (e.g., quintile analysis, QA results) to identify trends, inform coaching, and drive continuous improvement. Propose automation to enhance quality and reduce variability in contact resolution.
• Technology Integration: Work closely with Technology and external partners to ideate, implement and integrate tools that enhance CX and operational efficiency. Oversee the deployment of automation tools, ensuring alignment with So Energy’s customer-centric ethos.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Collaborate with the Data team to define data needs, analyse customer and operational insights, and develop actionable improvement plans. Report regularly on the impact of initiatives and recommend strategies for continuous improvement.
• Stakeholder Collaboration, Communication & Engagement: Lead workshops and guide teams to align on goals and initiatives. Represent the Voice of Customer (VoC) and Voice of Employee (VoE) by actively engaging in feedback sessions and stakeholder interviews. Gather insights to enhance developer, customer, and advisor experiences. Facilitate the showcasing of work and successes across the business to build customer understanding, foster empathy, and drive improved customer experiences for all stakeholders.
• Operational Change Management: Plan and manage change initiatives: Oversee trials, assess risks, and tackle operational challenges to roll out changes smoothly. Keep things on track: Set up and run clear processes to track progress at every stage—planning, building, launching, embedding, and sustaining.

This role will be a great fit if:

• Proven experience in operational efficiency roles, ideally within a contact centre environment.
• Strong understanding of self-service technology, automation tools and process improvement methodologies.
• Analytical mindset with the ability to interpret data and translate insights into action.
• Excellent project management skills and ability to lead cross-functional initiatives.
• Familiarity with customer experience tools and contact centre management systems.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to influence and collaborate across all levels of the organization.
• Experience with Lean, Six Sigma or similar efficiency frameworks is advantageous.

Research shows that some people are less likely to apply for a role unless they are 100% qualified. Your experience, skills and passion will set you apart so tell us about your achievements, irrespective of whether they are personal or work-related, tell us about your journey, and about what you learnt. So, if this role excites you, don’t let our role description hold you back, get applying!

Support: If you have a medical condition or an individual need for an adjustment to our process, and you believe this may affect your ability to be at your best – please let us know so we can talk about how we can best support you and make any adjustments that may be needed.

Our Values

We look for people who share our values and can add to our culture. Values are shared beliefs that guide our decision-making, culture is how we function as a group and how we live our values as individuals. Clear - The energy industry can be pretty complex so we strive to provide clear communication to our customers and colleagues. Honest - Transparency is key, Whether that’s providing clear bills to our customers or trusting our staff to do the right thing. Ambitious - All of us are ambitious about the future of So Energy and what we can contribute to it. Inquisitive - We are also questioning the Status Quo to see if there is a better way to do things for our customers. Caring - We care about the work we are doing, our customers and our colleagues. Sustainable - As a renewable energy company we are providing sustainable products but we also care about sustainable careers. That’s why learning and continuous development is so important to us.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging

At So Energy, we’re committed to cultivating an environment that promotes diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. We are a global community and we believe our unique qualities should be celebrated as they are critical to our innovation. It’s essential to us that you bring your authentic self to work every single day, no matter your age, ethnicity, religion, citizenship, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, caring responsibilities, neurodiversity, or otherwise. Inclusion isn’t just an initiative at So Energy. We strive to embed it not just into our values but throughout our entire culture.