Senior Customer Support Manager - 12 mth FTC

Salary up to: Competitive

Nando’s is on a journey of Changing Lives Together, creating lasting happiness for our people, our customers, and the communities we work in. Originally started in Johannesburg, South Africa, we pride ourselves on creating memorable experiences for everyone involved in Nando’s: from our employees, communities, founders, and suppliers, but most importantly, our customers.

As our Senior Customer Support Manager, you will be leading the Customer Support management and their teams which deal with all customer complaints that are raised with Nando’s UK & I. This is an exciting opportunity not just to support the customer experience and commercial success that underpins a key part of the Nando’s strategy, but also to support a truly purpose led business. How we run our business is as important as what we want to achieve. In your role, you will demonstrate this through your leadership behaviour on a day-to-day basis, as well as through the nature of your work, which reinforces ethical behaviour and responsibility.

We are looking for someone who is customer obsessed and commercially astute, and who understands the power of good complaints handling to protect our brand, secure customer loyalty, and improve customer service through effective root cause analysis. You’ll also be skilled in using data to tell a story, will likely have a track record in building automation and AI into complaints handling processes, and passionate about getting stuff done.

A day in the life:

• Lead the Customer Support management team to design, implement, and embed a complaint handling strategy, framework, and associated processes.
• Create and oversee the plan to execute the complaints handling strategy, bringing key stakeholders on the journey.
• Drive the Customer Support team to continuously develop our customer experience, by using effective root cause analysis to inform service improvements, and to drive Brand standards.
• Champion and consistently deliver our Nando’s brand Tone of Voice, ensuring every customer interaction reflects who we are, what we stand for, and the warm, authentic experience our customers expect.
• Transform customer complaints and contact data into actionable insight, identifying trends and opportunities that help us improve customer experience and restaurant performance across the business.
• Lead the implementation and embedding of complaints handling processes that successfully identify opportunities to improve our customer satisfaction across all channels (eat-in, collect and delivery).
• Design and implement a strategy to utilise data, automation, and AI to drive an efficient customer experience.
• Create and maintain a Customer Support team environment that fosters engaged, empowered, high-performing Nandocas (what we call employees) – who consistently deliver a best-in-class customer experience and complaints outcomes.
• Support management in managing internal and external stakeholders and delivery partners, to ensure the voice of the customer is represented, and all parties are working towards the same objectives set out by the Nando’s UKI Leadership team and Brand team.
• Be the point of escalation, providing pragmatic and commercial legal advice to the UKI business and effecting appropriate escalation or outsourcing of legal advice to group legal or external counsel where appropriate.
• Responsible for the service recovery budget and ensuring clear reporting in place to monitor goodwill across the key service recovery tools (discount codes, loyalty rewards, gift cards and refunds).
• Collaborate with the wider Nando’s team, including Senior Operational Leadership, and Customer Business Partners, to help restaurants understand their customer performance and areas for improvement.
• Work closely with our Reputation & Communication team, and Safety team, to ensure sensitive matters are escalated and handled in collaboration where appropriate.
• Respond to reported incidents of a customer nature and ensure investigations are directed to the right areas of the customer team for swift resolution.
• Design, co-ordinate and create period reports, including analysis to inform decision making, that covers the key MI as produced by the Customer Support team activities.
• Continuously reviewing systems, processes, and policies that support the complaints handling journey and customer experience.

Hot skills required:

• 3+ years of relevant experience in a leadership role in Customer Service and/or Complaints handling management/leadership role.
• 7+ years of proven experience in a Customer Support role, consistently delivering exceptional customer service and resolving enquiries with efficiency, empathy, and professionalism.
• Demonstrable experience of implementing efficiencies, automation and AI to enhance the customer journey and overall efficiency of complaints handling.
• Experience of creating a Complaints Handling Framework and Strategy, that adopts root cause analysis and translates this into actions for the business that will enhance our efficiency, customer experience, and support the maintenance of a strong Brand.
• Experienced in leading and developing high performing teams in an agile and fast-moving environment.
• Confident and passionate presenter capable of engaging different audiences.
• Able to influence at a variety of levels including Executive.
• Natural collaborator, comfortable working in a cross-functional environment.
• Strong verbal and written communication abilities.
• Sound judgement and ability to work under pressure.
• Intelligent with confidence to debate and challenge.
• Approachable and with good listening skills.
• Analytical and can solve problems and make sound judgements taking responsibility for decisions and communicating these in a timely and structured way.
• Excellent organisational skills and able to manage multiple tasks and own time without close supervision.
• Good understanding of restaurants and hospitality is highly desirable.

Extra Hot benefits:

• Family health care cover
• Pension
• 25 days holiday + bank holidays
• Free Nando's when you’re working (and a great discount when you’re not)
• Annual team trips (an all-expenses paid getaway)
• Reward Gateway membership - access to great discounts for hundreds of major retailers

Please note this is an initial 12-month Fixed Term Contract, and is a hybrid role based in our Central Support offices in Putney 3+ days a week.