Contact Center Operations Manager

As we continue our mission to make people and nature happy through chocolate, we’re looking for a Contact Centre Operations Manager to join our Brand Centre customer service team on a permanent basis. Salary paying £40,000 - £45,000 per annum.

In this pivotal role, you’ll lead a team of Team Leaders, ensuring each customer contact channel runs efficiently, meets KPIs, and exceeds service expectations—all while keeping a close eye on budget, planning, and outsource partners. With a strong focus on developing talent, embedding a high-performance culture, and championing first-contact resolution, you’ll play a key role in shaping our customer experience strategy and driving down the cost to serve.

The on-site location for this role is our Head Office ‘Mint House’ in Royston, Hertfordshire, our home since 1994; just off the A505, ten minutes’ walk from Royston Train station and commutable from London Kings Cross. As well as a competitive salary and company benefits, you’ll receive 50% discount on all products, and a delicious 70% discount for you and your guests when you stay at our Rabot Estate hideaway on the paradise island of Saint Lucia.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Lead Contact Centre operations, ensuring delivery of key metrics and KPIs.
• Allocate resources effectively across channels, working closely with the Resource Planner to meet SLAs.
• Oversee performance of in-house teams and Outsource Partners, ensuring service levels, customer experience, quality, and compliance targets are met.
• Build strong relationships with Outsource and telephony partners, managing operational performance and addressing service issues.
• Lead regular review meetings with partners to ensure alignment and accountability.
• Develop and manage the operational talent pipeline, focusing on skill development, succession planning, and talent recognition.
• Ensure Team Leaders understand and deliver on channel performance targets, providing coaching and performance management.
• Drive peak performance during seasonal periods, ensuring operational readiness.
• Identify and implement best practice improvements through industry insights and collaboration with the wider team.
• Translate business strategy into actionable day-to-day operations within the Contact Centre.
• Collaborate with the Senior Customer Manager to identify service and process improvement opportunities.
• Own the Contact Centre Business Continuity Plan, ensuring risk is mitigated and service remains uninterrupted.

Who You are:

• Demonstrable experience working in an Outsourcing or Contact Centre operation.
• Ability to demonstrate achievement of results e.g. business improvements, cost savings, revenue generation.
• Excellent leadership, people management, communication and influencing skills at a management level.
• Ability to build and maintain strong client relationships and manage outsource partner engagement.
• Strong commercial understanding with previous accountability for KPIs and targets.
• Competent and knowledgeable with CRM platforms and telephony systems.
• Competent with all areas of Contact Centre compliance including adherence to GDPR guidelines and ensure that the team operate to required standards and requirements when talking to our customers.

Who We Are:

We’re one of the UK’s favourite premium chocolate brands, with a range of products spanning luxury gifts, alcohol and our pioneering drinking chocolate system, the Velvetiser. A cacao pod takes years to grow – it can’t be rushed if it’s going to be just right for our products. The same can be said for Hotel Chocolat, which originally started as a mint production company before we realised it was luxury chocolate that we were really passionate about. Now, we’re market leaders in the industry. What began as an online-only business grew to over 140 stores across the UK, and we’re still growing… Today, we’re multi-category, multi-channel, and multi-territory, and our customers, colleagues, cacao farmers and suppliers all benefit from the success we make together.