Manager - Customer Relations and Excellence at Kenya Airways

Job Purpose:

Reporting to the Head of Customer Experience, the ideal candidate will be responsible for end-to-end servicing of guests at all touch points under the newly created Customer Excellence Centre. He/she will also have the overall responsibility of providing direct leadership to over 100 staff in multiple locations to provide superior guest experiences, enhance customer loyalty quality and business retention while supporting the front office team.

Principle Accountabilities:

Customer Excellence Management

• Lead from the front to drive the customer centricity agenda, drive change and improvement in customer interactions throughout the customer journey.
• Collaborate with Chief Commercial and Customer Officer and Head of Customer Experience to develop customer excellence strategies, define targets for impactful customer improvement initiatives.
• Implement strategies to improve efficiency, talent, and results across all areas of the Customer Excellence Centre.
• Influence and partner with multiple stakeholders – baggage handling team, cargo team, sales team, refunds processing team etc to develop and implement excellence initiatives that ensure ease for customers to do business with us, to drive sales and increase loyalty.
• Focus on individual customer experience improvements where dissatisfaction is identified, working with key stakeholders to identify issues and ways to improve.
• Foster a success-oriented and accountable environment within the group while motivating and leading a high-performance team.
• Handle all feedback directed to the senior management team and through media channels for a conclusive resolution that retains business goodwill and customer loyalty.
• Provide customer feedback to the business to contribute to product design/pricing and internal processes.
• Establish team performance targets for customer interactions including call management, targets/measures, social media, chats, emails on issues management to aid in delivering excellent Customer experience and holding teams accountable in each area of the Customer Excellence Centre.
• Analyze reports on all customer interactions and Customer Excellence Centre statistics for forecasting, work planning and informing business decisions.
• Track and monitor quality of customer interventions and resolution of customer experience issues and be part of developing new ways of working for excellence and up skilling of workforce.
• Stay current on available Contact Centre technologies and work processes that have potential to improve Customer services.
• Ensure and implement up to date tooling and technology for the customer excellence Centre.

Business Processes and Procedures

• Seek to continuously improve effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of business processes within the customer relations and excellence function, by driving appropriate KPIs and specific actions to improve customer experience performance.
• Oversee the development and implementation of business processes and procedures to aid in effective and efficient operations of the Customer Excellence Centre.
• Develop a link with other departments through sharing of processes and agree on SLAs to exceed customer’s expectations.
• Implement the processes and procedures as working documents within the Customer Excellence Centre.
• Establish quality assurance methods that will monitor implementation of all procedures.

Team Leadership

• Establish proper workload planning and work schedules in line with customer interactions/call trends in achieve desired Service Levels and efficiencies.
• Ensure efficient customer experience issues’ management on the various media including call handling, social media and chat platform to realize financial goals through identifying gaps and implementing remedial/corrective measures.
• Establish team performance rhythms and cadence to hold teams and individuals accountable for meeting customer relations and excellence targets and measures to aid in delivering excellent customer experience.
• Maintain and continually improve the Centre’s real-time responsiveness on customer issues management including call management, email & chat management and social media customer interactions.
• Champion individual and team development across the department, build bench strength, foster upward mobility and formalize succession planning.
• Provide employee feedback through effective and measurable performance indicators. Ensure the development of employee skills and leadership. Conduct regular one-on-one meetings.

Knowledge, Skills and experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Social Sciences, Marketing or other business related fields from a recognized university.
• Minimum 8 years’ experience in a similar role with at least 5 years’ experience in creating and putting in structures for customer facing departments to deliver on service excellence.
• Experience in managing contact Centre operations is desired.
• Airline experience is an added advantage.
• Superior team leadership, team working and co-operation skills with the ability to influence positively and engage direct and indirect reports and peers.
• Must possess strong process excellence mind-set and ability to visualize and interpret trends from reports and data.
• Thorough understanding of Customer excellence related performance metrics and Contact Centre Technology operations.
• Ability to implement process improvements and evaluation metrics, while analyzing workflows and communicating changes in an effective manner.
• Demonstrable strong judgment in decision making and have exceptional time management and prioritization skills; able to see the "big picture" and the details.
• Demonstrable proactive approach to problem solving and a responsiveness which proves a commitment to getting to the root of the problem.
• Excellent communicator who relates well to all kinds of people (both internal and external) and can use their interpersonal skills to build appropriate rapport.
• Ability to influence key stakeholders without direct formal authority.
• Possess change management skills and can act as a trainer.