Customer Resolutions Manager in Sowerby Bridge

Function: Customer Service Management

Location: Ripponden Office/Hybrid

Reports to: Customer Service Director

Responsible for staff: Currently 14 FTE across the Customer Care Department

About our business: JLA is a mission critical infrastructure solutions business offering services in Laundry, Catering, Heating, Fire Safety, Infection Control and Air Conditioning. The company offers an end to end, on premise, machine supply and breakdown service proposition under the name Total Care, and additional products and services.

When you join the JLA family, you'll also gain access to an extensive benefits package. We care about our people and take your well-being seriously, which is why we offer a range of supportive tools for health and wellbeing, financial guidance, and legal advice. Our Employee Assistance Programme, 24/7 Wellness and Lifestyle App plus a dedicated team of Mental Health First Aiders are there to support you through life's challenges. We also offer up to 8 counselling sessions, which can be in-person or remote, providing you with the support and flexibility to suit your own personal needs. You can reach any fitness goals with our free onsite gym at head office along with a range of other gym membership discounts available.

To offer financial support, we not only provide life assurance coverage, company sick pay, and a company pension scheme, we offer a range of added benefits such as free office parking, eye care vouchers, a cycle-to-work scheme, and exclusive discounts through our staff benefits hub. We really pride ourselves in offering a healthy work-life balance and believe it is important to have time away to recharge which is why we provide 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays, flexible working options, and enhanced family leave policies. We are a company that appreciates you and invests in your success and even have a Colleague Recognition Scheme to celebrate your achievements. We're dedicated to your growth, offering support in career development and training. We value your referrals, and through our Refer a Friend scheme, you can earn up to £1,000 in bonus rewards!

Role overview: To lead and develop the Customer Care and Resolution team, ensuring the effective resolution of customer cases and complaints while driving improvements in customer outcomes, protecting growth opportunities and enhancing customer experience. This role is central to building a high performing, empowered team that delivers fair, consistent and timely resolutions while influencing the wider business to prevent recurrence and strengthen customer trust.

Key Responsibilities

• Leadership and Team Development: Lead, coach and develop teams within their area of responsibility. Create a high performing culture focused on accountability, ownership and customer outcomes. Set clear objectives, expectations and development plans. Build capability, succession and resilience within the team.
• Complaint and Escalation Management: Ensure customer complaints, escalations and complex customer issues are managed effectively and consistently. Drive improvements in resolution quality, timeliness and customer outcomes. Support effective service recovery strategies that rebuild customer confidence following service failures. Promote a culture of ownership, accountability and problem solving.
• Finance Queries, Credits and Compensation: Oversee the effective management of finance related customer queries, including invoice disputes, billing concerns, purchase order issues and credit requests. Govern customer credits, compensation and goodwill gestures, ensuring consistency, fairness and appropriate decision making. Support improvements in customer query processes and resolution performance. Identify opportunities to reduce preventable costs associated with recurring service failures.
• Customer Advocacy and Root Cause Analysis: Act as a champion for customer advocacy, ensuring complaints, escalations and customer feedback are represented in business decision making. Lead a structured root cause analysis approach across complaints, escalations and customer queries. Ensure themes, risks and corrective actions are identified, tracked and communicated across the business. Act as the organisational owner of customer complaint insight, supporting service improvement and operational learning.
• Stakeholder Management and Collaboration: Build effective relationships across operational, commercial, finance and support functions. Collaborate with stakeholders to resolve complex customer issues and drive service improvements. Influence and challenge constructively where customer outcomes are being negatively impacted. Support governance forums, improvement initiatives and cross functional projects.
• Continuous Improvement, Governance and Reporting: Drive improvements in complaint handling, escalation management and customer query processes. Support implementation and adherence to service standards, governance frameworks and internal SLAs. Analyse complaint, escalation and finance query data to identify trends, risks and improvement opportunities. Produce meaningful reporting, insight and recommendations for stakeholders.

Criteria

• Essential (attributes required for candidate to be considered): Strong knowledge of customer service and complaints handling. Understanding of FCA and Ombudsman requirements. Ability to analyse data, identify root causes and translate insight into action. Strong communication skills - able to influence and build relationships cross functionally. Skilled in leading teams to deliver against KPIs. Competence in reporting, governance and performance tracking.
• Desirable (attributes can be trained or developed): Knowledge of service delivery and operations in a field based environment. Familiarity with case management or CRM systems (e.g. Dynamics, Salesforce, Zendesk). Ability to design and embed process improvements across functions. Understanding of financial/commercial levels (credits/compensation/retention impact).

Experience (what you have done):

• Experience managing a team in customer service, complaints or resolutions.
• Demonstrated track record of improving customer outcomes.
• Evidence in coaching and developing individuals to achieve high performance.
• Experience handling complex and escalated customer issues with fairness and accountability.
• Experience working cross functionally to resolve issues and drive improvement.
• Experience in regulated environments (financial services, utilities, telecoms).
• Experience in leading or contributing to governance forums or audit reviews.
• Proven delivery of service improvement initiatives with measurable business impact.
• Exposure to managing teams in hybrid environments.

Personal qualities (the way you think and act):

• Customer focused with strong advocacy for fair and timely outcomes.
• Commercially aware - able to balance customer needs with business impact.
• Collaborative, with the ability to build trust and influence at all levels.
• Resilient and calm under pressure, able to manage high volumes and complexity.
• Analytical and problem solving mindset, with a continuous improvement approach.
• Demonstrate integrity, accountability and respect in line with customer values.
• Inspirational leadership style that creates a highly engaged team culture.
• Change agent - confident in challenging established ways of working constructively.
• Innovative thinker who can bring best practice and fresh ideas.

Qualifications:

• Evidence of relevant professional development or training in leadership, complaints handling or customer service.
• Formal management or leadership qualification (ILM, CMI, NVQ in management).
• Industry relevant compliance or regulatory training.