Customer Support Services Manager at WTS Energy

Key Responsibilities:

Key sections:

Platinum Support Team

• Documentation of KPIs and deliverables for the team
• Identification of support required for the unit to deliver against set KPIs
• Clear, fair and justified assignments of customers to each Technical Support Manager (TSM), in liaison with the Commercial Team
• Customer Service and Contractor SLA Management
• Identify the required resources needed for service delivery, support and management
• Communicate the needed resources and implications to other teams and management
• Ensure that customer support services are delivered and managed as per the specifications ï‚· Communicate necessary changes if any to the customer and other departments.
• Identify the service contractors needed for service delivery and management
• Agree on the technical scope of the contractors in service management
• Implement the contract as per the scope ensuring contractors reports are aligned with the contract scope.

Escalation and Crisis Management

• Receive technical faults, conditions of works problems, escalations from the Engineers.
• Evaluate the escalated problems to identify the root cause.
• Discuss with the CTO the escalated problem and possible solutions and have solutions implemented through the HR office.
• Handle escalations with cross functional departments like Planning, Build, Projects, Administration, Commercial, Finance and Legal Heads.
• Receive faults and any other form of escalations from Customers.
• Evaluate the escalated problems and offer customer expectation management to the customer while having the problem resolved.
• Receive and act on escalations from commercial and finance department
• Resolve the problem either through direct intervention or managing the person and/or engineer resolving the problem till the fault is resolved.
• Provide customer expectation management feedback to the customer.
• Follow up on escalated cases with unsatisfied customers to ensure that their issues are resolved and that the customer is satisfied
• Analyze and Identify cases which need to be escalated to the CTO, CCO, CFO and CEO and those which need them to be notified.
• Escalate and notify the CTO, CCO, CFO and CEO as is appropriate with recommended actions and/or resolutions to the case. 

Management of the Service Assurance Engineers

• Identify human resource need for the Customer Service and Support Department
• Place the Engineers to their areas of maximum productivity within the department
• Recommendations for Engineers recruitment and deployment within the department
• Discuss and have the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) approve needed resource adjustments including Engineers recruitment, mileage and phone bills allowances etc
• Ensure that the adjustments are implemented by the HR office.
• Ensure strategic skills management by proper skill allocation.
• Resolve service engineers issues and act as the teams advocate when dealing with other departments and HR

Strategic Departmental Management

• Ensure that departmental objectives and KPIs are aligned with the overall company strategic vision, mission and objectives
• Ensure the department processes and procedures are aligned to other departments and work seamlessly towards the overall objective of the company.
• Develop Service quality calibration and validation and ensure the same are implemented to all customers
• Allocate Service engineers to strategic roles like Technical Service Management and Service review management
• Work with other managers to ensure operational consistency

Constant Service and network Improvement plans

• Highlight operational deficiencies in terms of resources, skills and tools needed by the service engineers
• Recommend tools, trainings, structures, processes, reporting and engineer participation needed for improvement
• Implement with HR after CTO approval the improvement recommendations
• Build relationships with finance, commercial, heads of key customers, partners, contractors and other departments

OPEX Management

• Identify the operational expenses the Engineers in the department incur
• Recommend and have the CTO approve the proposed and justified expenses to be incurred by the department
• Ensure HR and Finance departments implement the agreed OPEX
• Constantly review the OPEX and ensure implementation in a way that leads to margin optimization through cost minimization and profit maximization.

Communication Management

• Set standard communication format to customers
• Ensure that customers get communication in standard and format that is sensible and expectation friendly
• Communicate to the department staff information originating from top management and to top management feedback from departmental staff.

Advise to Management

• Review with CCO the commercial aspects in regards to existing customer services
• Review with CFO the financial impact of services being delivered and being managed
• Review with CTO and HR the departments appraisal results and recommendations in regards to promotions, trainings, salary reviews and staff

Training

• Identify training needs for the service engineers
• Recommend and have the engineers trained accordingly
• Ensure the engineers are placed in roles relevant with their trainings

Service Engineers KPI Management and performance appraisals

• Set KPIs for the service engineers
• Discuss and agree on the KPIs with the service engineers, management and have the same published by the HR and appraise the engineers’ past performance
• Ensure KPI adherence by the service engineers
• Review KPIs based on roles and implement jointly with others the recommendations of the appraisals.

Relationship Management

• Ensure good relationship exist between the engineers and other departments and the engineers and the customers
• Develop relationships with the commercial teams providing for better understanding of how both teams i.e. technical and commercial can work together to better customer experience

Reporting

• Define, agree with the CTO and ensure Daily/Weekly/Monthly and ad hoc customers, handover and management reports are prepared and shared.
• Provide C-Level management with reports and customer sign-offs.
• Report departmental progress – challenges, achievements and recommendation

Physical demands

• Ability to work at least 40hours per including flexibility to extend to 24hours.
• Ability to perform focused work with close attention to detail
• Flexibility to work from office and attend customer meeting within short notice.

Required Knowledge & Education

• Degree holder in Electrical/Electronic, Telecommunications, Computer Technology, Computer Science, Information Technology
• Knowledge on Alcatel, CISCO, ECI and/or Alvarion
• Postgraduate training will be essential particularly in management related areas.
• ETOM or ITIL Knowledge will be an added advantage
• Strong technical skills in Enterprise Solutions, VPN, Internet, IP MPLS, technologies, IP Transit and basic idea of transmission knowledge.
• Ability to handle both the service delivery and assurance processes, structures and procedures in Large Telecommunication environment
• Good understanding of Metro Ethernet networks and Broadband networks.

Required Competence & Skills

• At least 6 years’ experience in Customer Handling environment OR a combination of 4years experience in ISP/Telecommunication environment and 3years experience in Customer Handling environment 
• Minimum 5 years’ experience in people/team management.
• Must have managed team of engineers on IP or transmission domain before for at least 2years
• Experience in managing international clients in telecommunication domain under different time zones
• Ability to set up processes, procedures and structures which are in synch with international clients, vendors partners
• Experience in process improvement initiatives.
• Strong co-ordination skills with support functions such as Recruitment, Training, HR, IT, Infrastructure, Planning, Project etc