Wates Group
Customer Service Manager
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Customer Service Manager
Customer Service Manager – Southern Region (Wates Group – Wates Residential)
Do you thrive on delivering exceptional customer service and leading teams that put customers first? Wates Group are looking for a Customer Service Manager to join our Southern region.
About Wates Residential Wates Residential is a developer-contractor—investing, developing, building, and selling quality affordable housing through partnerships with Local Authorities, Registered Providers (RPs), and public bodies. Our approach blends innovation, responsibility, and a relentless focus on delivering customer-centric solutions.
About the Role As Customer Service Manager, you will deliver impeccable Customer Service across the warranty period and wider lifecycle of our homes. Working closely with customers, internal teams, and subcontractors, this role ensures seamless property handovers, resolves issues, and drives process improvements to maximise satisfaction and operational effectiveness.
You’ll be the voice of the customer, balancing empathy with sharp operational oversight to:
- Build and maintain powerful stakeholder relationships—from handover to long-term support.
- Identify and escalate snagging issues, driving resolutions with sites, subcontractors, and internal teams.
- Lead end-of-defect inspections, liaising with RPs/authorities to rectify all agreed faults within warranty timelines.
- Implement a complaint management system, analysing trends to funudge service excellence at a company level.
- Purpose-built team leadership, coaching your Customer Service team to achieve productivity, efficiency, and consistently high standards.
- Champion process refinement, adopting technological and procedural advancements to scale up operational efficiency.
- Ensure team compliance with company policies—including health & safety, data protection, and customer service standards.
Your Responsibilities
- Customer Liaison: Direct engagement with owners/developers from handover through warranty period, managing expectations and resolving issues.
- Bandagement Influence: Lead pre-occupation and post-handover meetings to identify snagging items and track resolutions to completion.
- Complaint & Trend Management: Triage complaints, create escalation processes, and apply insights to systemic service improvements.
- Team & Process Optimization: Drive culture, workflows, and KPI tracking to promote accountability and eliminate ineffectiveness.
- Reporting & Transparency: Prepare weekly/monthly dashboards showcasing outstanding issues, response times, and long-term metrics.
- Regulatory Alignment: Maintain adherence to housing development handback guidelines, warranty provisions, and industry safeguards.
- Standard Compliance: Support post-offer processes, including DBS checks (Standard disclosure).
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Requirements
- Networks and Systems: Holistic understanding of affordable housing development processes and knowledge of Building Control, SNAG reporting.
- Subject Carewareness: Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams (sites, estates, external suppliers) around property defects & warranty fulfilment.
- Team Leadership: Confidence driving Customer Service teams (and potentially other operational teams) through setting clear priorities and holding accountability.
- Skilability: Commercial mindset able to measure tangible impact—such as defect resolution rates, customer satisfaction scores and incident handling time.
- Regulatory awareness: Experience dealing with reputationally sensitive documentation for build quality and complaint processes.
- Assessment central: Fair handling of escalations that can prompt High-Value contract reviews.
Core Skills and Qualities
- Background in Customer Service or related Customer Facing/Experience/Operational roles.
- Stakeholder Management: Experience dealing with potentially sensitive complaints—balancing partiality for owner/developer improvements with lean dispute resolution.
- Process Improvement mindset— familiarity with lean waste identification and change management techniques a perk.
- Attention for Compliance: Precision in managing warranty and legal obligations within tight regulatory constraints.
- Technical Proficiency: Ability to analyse and act upon metrics— such as response times, resolution Shadow turnaround—and proactively influencing quickly.
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Values We Demonstrate We strive for a customer-first culture where every interaction is clear, objective, and driven by continuous improvement.
Your Experience Shapes Your Journey Wates is an employer of choice with a reputation built on commitment. Whether you’re an experienced Customer Service Manager, looking to scale-up, or a highly capable Operations Lead transitioning into a specialised role, we’re interested.
For more LIFE AT WATES(how we support your progression) and proactive inclusion values; visit Wates Group Careers page.
Our Commitments and Inclusivity
- Fairness above all: We assess every application individually. Be it a niche skill set or rehabilitation diversity, we’re not constrained by boards—forward transferable skills are most valued.
- Beyond Colours vs. Backgrounds: Wates celebrates neurodiversity, gender identity, religion, disability, LGBTQ+, age, and class—fostering a richer, more resilient workforce.
- Flexibility is core: Modifications to interview/assessment processes for a visual impairment nurse’s memo or indeed adjustments given hard‐of‐hearing requirements are built-in—just let us know recruitment@wates.co.uk.
- Psychological safety: Equal opportunities go beyond hiring; we offer care group networks, business mentorship, and health advocacy.
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