Temporary Complaints / Customer Relations Officer

Reference no: NPH RQ841706

Pay rate: £12.03 per hour PAYE

Role Length:  This opening assignment is for 2 months

A Complaints/Customer Relations Officer is required to be responsible for dealing with escalated complaint requests where not being able to be dealt with at First Stage.   Experience of coordinating and responding to customer complaints and excellent customer service skills will be required for this role. Act as lead technical specialist responsible for ensuring the Complaints and Feedback Policy and processes meet the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code and the Regulator of Social Housing framework requirements.

Key responsibilities:

• Support the annual review of the Corporate Customer Service Strategy and ensure that all other strategies appropriately consider and reflect the needs of the customer and where appropriate, make recommendations for change in policy to address service delivery failures for customers, identified through the investigation of complaints and lessons learned.
• Lead operational officer responsible for working with EMT, Board members, Directors, managers and team leaders to influence, challenge, promote and support the embedding of a consistent customer service excellence approach and culture across the organisation using best practice research and relevant benchmarking information.
• Support the development and delivery of the organisation wide customer service priorities and liaise with service areas and workstream leads and ensure Customer Service Strategy outcomes are delivered.
• Responsible for the review and amendment of the Complaints and Feedback Policy and processes to ensure they meet all Landlord legislation, Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code and the Regulator of Social Housing framework requirements.
• Lead officer responsible for the preparation and delivery of training and guidance to officers, EMT, and external delivery partners regarding the Complaint Handling Policy and processes. Promoting understanding and knowledge to support the effective management of complaints with a right first-time approach, ensuring the emphasis on ‘doing the right thing’ for customers.
• Responsible for ensuring corporate oversight and monitoring of service area adherence with the corporate complaints policy and procedures, ensuring that responses are customer focused and provided within corporate timescales.
• Ensure implementation and maintenance of robust processes and systems to enable effective organisational oversight, tracking and monitoring of all customer feedback.
• Lead officer responsible for the review, challenge and decision making for all complaint escalation requests at all levels including liaising with service areas, investigation and review of complaint history, initiator of case review meetings on complex and multi service area complaints and tracking of agreed resolution actions to completion and closure.
• Responsible for customer complaint handling satisfaction surveys, analysis and reporting of results and implementation of improvement actions where necessary.

“Role Requirements” – to give yourself the maximum chance of success please try and ensure your CV addresses the following essential criteria:

Qualifications:

• Educated to degree or equivalent significant relevant experience.

Experience:

• Experience of delivering excellent customer service to meet the needs of internal and external customers.
• Extensive experience of working with customers who may have diverse needs and significant vulnerabilities.
• Minimum of 12 months recent experience in a similar role, or context and ideally within a public sector organisation.
• Experience of conducting research and writing reports for multiple audiences.

Knowledge & Skills:

• Ability to effectively challenge, persuade, influence and negotiate with others at all levels, internally and externally, to support achievement of corporate customer service priority objectives.
• Strong organisational and time management skills with the ability to prioritise, multi-task and co-ordinate conflicting workloads and work under pressure to meet deadlines.
• Approachable, methodical and adaptable – ability to grasp, assimilate and apply large volumes of complex information and concepts quickly.
• Knowledge and experience of carrying out data analysis and problem solving to provide accurate and reliable management information presented in formats suitable for multiple audiences to enable information sharing and robust decision-making.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to work with diverse stakeholders, particularly the ability to work with officers at all levels across the organisation and external partners and stakeholders.
• Maintain and promote the highest standards of data quality ensuring reliable, accurate and timely information is available at all times.
• Ability to demonstrate a ‘can do’ positive attitude, working pro-actively on own initiative with minimal supervision and also be an effective team member and able to work effectively with others.
• Strong IT skills using Microsoft packages or equivalent (e.g. G Suite).

NB: Please feel free to apply to us direct via [email protected] by quoting the job reference and job title exactly. SEE DETAILS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS AD.

If you have previously applied to one of our vacancies and have already sent the required supporting documentation to us, please make this clear when you re-apply as this will help speed up your application.

To help speed up the process of uploading your CV to the client we would suggest that you send us your CV in Word format (or equivalent) if possible, rather than as a PDF.

If you are successful in securing this role, please note that for the entire duration of this contract, regardless of extension you will be working this role at the PAYE rate that has been advertised. For absolute clarity, we only work on a PAYE basis, rather than entertaining umbrella pay terms, we do not offer Ltd/umbrella or outside IR35 rates. If you wish to understand PAYE vs Umbrella more, please let us know and we can send you some additional information for clarity.