Assistant Manager Customer Support in Keswick

Monday – Friday 37.5 hours per week Hybrid working.

Here at Alpkit, we’re obsessive about Customer Experience. As our Customer Support Assistant Manager, you’ll need to be a customer focussed communicator, with experience of leading an e-commerce CS team. Do you have a passion for the outdoors, systems, and service?

What You’ll be doing:

• You’ll set the daily tone and priorities for our awesome customer service team, making sure that we’re covering all bases and maintaining our SLAs every day.
• There’s a lot to keep on top of, from Sales and Fulfilment, Returns and Aftersales, to Sonder bikes.
• We operate through email, live chat, phone, social, reviews and even the odd walk-in!
• Your job is to share your knowledge and expertise to align job responsibilities, culture, and product knowledge so the team deliver amazing customer service every day.

About Alpkit:

Customer experience is placed at the heart of Alpkit operations. We strive to be with our customer throughout their journey with us. Our entire operation works to continually improve the Alpkit and Sonder experience for our customers, from increasing product range and performance, to addressing customer concerns such as minimising plastic use and improving our internal systems to advance our service. We are a multi-award-winning adventure sports brand and retailer. Our pursuit of great customer experience is at the core of what we do.

Perks of the job:

At Alpkit, we value all cultures, backgrounds, and experiences, as we truly believe that diversity drives innovation. Express yourself, join our community, and help us “Go nice places, do good things.” Our work benefits include an ability to buy extra holiday, Green Commute Initiative, Alpkit discount for you and your family and friends, life insurance, critical illness cover, Cycle to Work scheme, enhanced pension contributions, and paid volunteer days. We are environmentally conscious, and sustainability driven, and we promote a learning culture.

What you’ll bring to the team:

• Providing stable leadership of the Customer Support team supporting and mentoring the staff within the department.
• Work with CS Manager to achieve department outcomes.
• Stand in for CS Manager when required (attend senior team meetings, feedback to board, MD and CEO).
• Support a dedicated training and learning environment – deliver continuous training to team, develop a training schedule to support growth and service improvement.
• Work cross-departmentally with peers to ensure Alpkit’s culture of learning is always at the forefront of what we’re doing as a team.
• Keeping oversight of team performance and highlight issues to CS Manager (and reporting on any stellar performances and team wins!).
• First point of escalation for customer complaints and issues.
• Involvement in recruitment decisions and interview process.
• Work with team leaders and CS Manager to ensure each area is functioning optimally.
• Look forward – work on plans and initiatives and projects to ensure that we maintain our service levels as Alpkit continues to grow.
• Ensuring ongoing issues are communicated to manager.
• Pay close attention to staff performance and satisfaction and communicate findings regularly with CS Manager.
• Create and maintain process documentation to ensure consistency of work.
• Ensure team objectives, outcomes and brief are clear - up and down and discussed regularly.
• Experience of leading an omni-channel digital support team.
• People management experience.
• Previous experience of running an effective and continuous training schedule for your team.
• Experience of acting as first line escalation point for high-care customers.
• Highly organised with strong attention to details.
• Microsoft Office experience, with advanced excel skills being a particular advantage.
• A passion for being outdoors and an affinity with our sustainability goals would be a definite plus.

Daily tasks:

• Coordinate the team day-to-day, ensuring staff resource is balanced to workload.
• Ensure process adherence and maintain process documentation – is everyone working to the same standard?
• First line escalation point for CS issues.
• Be available to other departments (product, accounts, supply chain, marketing, WH) to solve problems and maintain awesome customer experience.
• Spot check work of the team and identify training requirements where appropriate.

Our Culture:

Our Aktivism Values; We enjoy serving customers and enjoy closing a sale. We are helpful, cheery, engaging, and knowledgeable. We feel pride when we get a review, see customers with our products in use, win awards. We are champions of being a sustainable brand and by choosing to do the right thing and aiming to do better continuously, we are world class at what we do; these guiding principles are embraced throughout our customer service team.