Head of Customer Service Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne

The Head of Customer Service Centre plays a critical role in making sure we gather customer insight, improve service delivery and supports DVSA’s wider mission to keep Britain’s roads safe while putting customers at the centre of everything we do. There is a significant opportunity to lead the Customer Service Centre through continuing change, including the expansion of webchat, social media and digital services, while also focusing on improving staff morale, colleague development and engagement. Enhancing the colleague experience is central to delivering an outstanding customer experience and sustaining high-performing teams.

Operating across major sites in Swansea and Newcastle, we provide a fully multi-channel service, handling customer contact across phone, digital and emerging platforms. The Head of Customer Service Centre plays a significant leadership role at DVSA, working across all DVSA services to ensure consistency, quality and continuous improvement. The Head of Customer Contact leads DVSA’s customer contact operations, ensuring effective day-to-day delivery and driving strategic improvement. The role has three core priorities:

• Running high-quality, resilient operations across telephone, email and WhatsApp;
• Championing the voice of the customer through insight and data;
• Modernising customer contact services to support continuous improvement and better outcomes for customers.

Top Responsibilities

• Improving staff engagement by leading staff through change to adapt to new technology, buildings, and processes.
• Modernisation of the customer operation (IT, process, and ways of working), including new channels such as Web/Live Chat and Asynchronous Chat.
• Ensuring customer service accreditations (Customer Contact Association and Customer Service Excellence) are maintained.

Benefits

• Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary.
• 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave).
• 8 Bank Holidays plus an additional Privilege Day to mark the King’s birthday.
• Access to the staff discount portal.
• Excellent career development opportunities and the potential to undertake professional qualifications relevant to your role paid for by the department, such as CIPD, Prince2, apprenticeships, etc.
• Joining a diverse and inclusive workforce with a range of staff communities to support all our colleagues.
• 24-hour Employee Assistance Programme providing free confidential help and advice for staff.
• Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.

About You

To be successful in this role you will need to have the following experience:

• Experience of leading a dynamic multi-channel Customer Service Centre within Government, the third, or private sectors.
• Experience of leading multiple multi-disciplinary teams across regional sites whilst ensuring consistent delivery of service provision, business continuity and surge management.
• Strong track record of successfully developing and managing service levels to drive excellent customer service whilst benchmarking against industry standards and achieving/maintaining Customer Service Accreditation.
• Developing and using customer intelligence to inform processes and systems.

This role is based across Swansea and Newcastle, with regular travel required between the two locations. The successful candidate may also be expected to attend meetings or events at other national administration sites as required.