Customer Services Manager in Hitchin

Here at FFE, we value our employees, giving them the freedom to be creative and innovative. Having a great team spirit and people that are proud to work for a company that saves lives means our teams see the direct impact of their efforts in daily operations.

FFE Ltd is a specialist fire detector manufacturer and is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of optical beam smoke detectors and flame detectors. Our products include Fireray beam detectors, offering a cost-effective method of protecting wide areas against fire. Examples include museums, warehouses, atria, sports stadiums, gyms, theatres etc. Talentum flame detectors detect across a wide spectrum making it an obvious choice for most flame detection applications. FFE aviation extinguishers are present on over half the world’s commercial flights.

Location: Hitchin, UK

Contract type: Permanent

Hours: Full-time (39 hours per week)

Salary: Competitive Salary

Office Based role

Scope of the role:

• The Customer Services Manager is responsible for leading FFE's Customer Operations function, ensuring the delivery of an exceptional customer experience from order receipt through to fulfilment and aftersales support.
• The role provides leadership and direction to the Customer Account Executives, Logistics & Operations Executives and Planner, ensuring customer enquiries, order management, production planning, inventory availability, logistics activities and aftersales support are delivered efficiently, accurately and in line with agreed service levels.
• The successful candidate will create a high-performing customer-focused team, drive continuous improvement across customer-facing processes, and work closely with Sales, Production, Procurement, Quality and Finance to ensure customer expectations are consistently met or exceeded.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and develop a team of five customer operations professionals.
• Own customer service performance, order fulfilment effectiveness and on-time delivery coordination.
• Ensure customer enquiries, quotations, orders and aftersales requests are handled effectively and within KPI targets.
• Manage the interface between customers, sales teams, planning, production, procurement and logistics.
• Drive continuous improvement of customer-facing processes, systems and reporting.
• Act as the primary escalation point for complex customer, operational or logistical issues.
• Support business growth by maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
• Ensure compliance with company procedures, export controls, quality standards and customer requirements.

Skills and Experience:

• Proven experience in a Customer Service, Customer Operations or Supply Chain leadership role.
• Experience managing and developing customer-facing teams.
• Strong understanding of order management, planning and logistics processes.
• Experience working within manufacturing, engineering or technical product environments.
• Excellent stakeholder management and relationship-building skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability.
• Experience using ERP and CRM systems.
• Excellent communication and organisational skills.
• Strong commercial awareness and customer focus.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office applications, particularly Excel.

Desirable:

• Experience within a manufacturing or fire safety environment.
• Knowledge of export processes and international logistics.
• Experience implementing process improvements and operational KPIs.
• Lean, Continuous Improvement or Six Sigma exposure.

Key Performance Measures:

• Customer satisfaction and service performance.
• Order fulfilment accuracy.
• On-time delivery performance.
• Customer enquiry response times.
• Backlog management.
• Customer complaint resolution times.
• Team engagement and development.
• Inventory and planning effectiveness.
• Process improvement delivery.
• Achievement of departmental KPIs.

Attitudes & Behaviours:

• Customer-first mindset.
• Strong leadership presence.
• High level of accountability and ownership.
• Excellent communicator.
• Collaborative and team-oriented.
• Results driven.
• Continuous improvement mindset.
• Adaptable and resilient.
• Commercially aware.
• Positive and professional approach.
• Passion for delivering operational excellence.

Why this role exists:

The Customer Services Manager ensures that FFE delivers a seamless customer experience while balancing operational efficiency, planning effectiveness and delivery performance. The role is accountable for transforming customer requirements into successful operational execution whilst developing a highly engaged Customer Operations team that supports FFE's continued growth.

FFE Benefits include: 25 days Annual Leave, Company bonus Scheme, Halma Pension plan, BUPA health insurance, Simply Health cash plan, EAP.

If you meet the criteria above, and thrive in a collaborative and customer-focussed environment, we encourage you to apply.