Credit Controller in Lichfield

As a Credit Controller, you'll be responsible for the effective management and recovery of outstanding debt across your allocated portfolio. Working towards cash collection and aged debt reduction targets, you'll take a proactive approach to account management while maintaining positive, professional relationships with customers and a wide range of stakeholders. Your ability to build strong partnerships with funeral homes, operational teams and finance colleagues will be key to ensuring timely payments and delivering excellent customer outcomes.

In this role, you'll be responsible for delivering high-quality credit control and debt recovery activities in line with our policies, procedures and governance requirements. You'll manage customer accounts with care and professionalism, resolving queries, disputes and account issues within agreed service levels while ensuring a positive customer experience. Through your contribution to cash collection performance and debt reduction initiatives, you'll directly support the achievement of wider financial and operational objectives.

You'll also take ownership of more complex, challenging and sensitive debt cases, using sound judgement and a customer-focused approach to reach appropriate outcomes. With a strong understanding of credit control principles and our policies, you'll identify, manage and escalate significant risks or issues where necessary, ensuring they are resolved effectively and in a timely manner. Collaboration is central to this position. You'll work closely with colleagues and external stakeholders to resolve account queries, improve payment performance and support successful debt recovery.

Alongside this, you'll maintain accurate account records and produce reliable reporting to support performance monitoring, decision-making and governance requirements. As we continue to evolve and improve our processes, you'll have the opportunity to contribute to ongoing continuous improvement initiatives. By identifying opportunities to enhance processes, strengthen controls, improve efficiency and optimise collection outcomes, you'll help shape a more effective and customer-focused credit control function.

We’re looking for someone who is customer focused and comfortable managing difficult and sensitive situations. You’ll be confident in working towards daily targets and meeting SLA/KPIs as well as being able to communicate at all levels (both internally and externally). You’ll need GCSE grades A-C (or equivalent) in English and Maths. To be successful in this role, you’ll need good planning and organisation skills. You’ll be able to prioritise your workload to work with pace and urgency. Preferably you’ll have experience with Microsoft Excel or similar data tools. Experience working alongside third-party debt collection providers and legal recovery processes would be advantageous.

Everyone is welcome here. We’re happy to make reasonable adjustments so that all our candidates can show us how they’ll perform their role. There is a section in the application form where you can provide any additional information. Please use this section to include any reasonable adjustments you need, and we’ll do our best to support you through our recruitment process.

In addition to our competitive salaries, our colleagues also benefit from:

• Fantastic colleague discount - Reward ££’s and discounts across our Retail and Funeral businesses.
• Retail discounts - our hub offers colleagues access to hundreds of exclusive retail discounts, savings on days out and holiday discounts.
• Colleague Dividend - We pay a share of our profits to eligible colleagues as a thank you for their contribution to our success.
• Colleague recognition - we celebrate our colleague’s achievements both personally and professionally.
• Personalised learning and development - with easy access to a wide range of training programmes.
• Paid time for volunteering - we encourage our colleagues to spend three days per year taking part in volunteering, fully paid for by us.
• Enhanced family friendly policies - to help you feel fully supported during any significant life events.

Wellbeing

• Annual health check kit and virtual GP – Finger prick blood test kit, that is sent to Square Healthcare for your personal healthcare report, and access to a virtual GP 7 days a week 8am to 8pm for you and your family.
• Colleague assistance programme – to support you and your family when you need it the most.
• Healthcare Cashplan - your wellbeing is important, so you’ve got the opportunity to contribute into a voluntary plan that helps pay towards a range of healthcare expenses.
• Company sick pay – We offer company sick pay to colleagues so that you can focus on getting better and returning to work in full health.
• Life Assurance - after an initial qualifying period, you’ll get free life assurance cover, that pays your nominated beneficiary if you die while you’re working for us.
• We’ve got you – our colleague wellbeing campaign, making wellbeing benefits and resources accessible and relevant to the role that you do.
• Give as you earn - helping you support charities which mean something to you.

Financial Wellbeing

• iTrent Financial Wellbeing (Wagestream) - offers something for all our colleagues, whether you want to track your finances, save some money, or access up to 50% of your earned pay flexibly in a way that suits you.
• The Money Co-op - Free access to support all aspects of your financial wellbeing, such as savings and loans at competitive rates.
• Salary Sacrifice schemes:
• Electric Vehicle scheme – Option to purchase your EV through salary sacrifice.
• Share Incentive Plan (SIP) – option to buy shares within the Society, where they will attract interest and £10 worth of matching shares.
• Cycle to Work scheme – Option to purchase your bicycle and accessories through salary sacrifice.
• Holiday buy - colleagues can buy up to a week extra of annual leave each year.
• Company Pension - you can access a company pension scheme with us as well as access to Pension wellbeing information.
• Nous – smart assistant that can save you money and time on managing your household bills.

To find out more about all of these plus many more reasons to join us, please visit Rewards and benefits - Central Coop (careers.coop).

OurCoop is the UK’s largest independent co-operative Society, with more than one million Members and 13,000 colleagues operating in communities nationwide. It was formed by bringing together Central Co-op, The Midcounties Co-operative and Chelmsford Star Co-op to create a stronger, member-owned organisation rooted in shared co-operative values. The Society trades nationally through its family of businesses while remaining deeply rooted in local communities. Its footprint spans Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Bedfordshire in the South and West; the Midlands including Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Northamptonshire; the North including Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire; and the East of England, including Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk. OurCoop and its family of businesses are trading names of Central England Co-operative Limited.