United Gas & Power
Head of Customer Operations
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UGP is seeking a Head of Customer Operations to provide senior departmental leadership across Customer Services, Change of Tenancy, Collections and Complaints, and to own the end-to-end customer journey across these functions. This is a Head of Department role, providing direction and oversight for the performance, quality, risk management and continuous improvement of each function through the Managers who lead day-to-day delivery.
The successful candidate will set clear expectations, support Managers to deliver well, remove barriers to performance and help ensure the department delivers consistent customer outcomes while meeting commercial, operational and regulatory requirements.
Reporting to the Operations and Compliance Director and sitting on the Senior Management Team (SMT), the role provides senior oversight of departmental KPIs, service standards, customer experience, debt performance, complaint outcomes, COT accuracy and fraud controls. It sits alongside the Head of Technical Operations and the Head of Regulation and Compliance, ensuring Customer Operations is joined up with billing, industry operations, settlement, compliance, regulatory reporting and wider business priorities.
Key Responsibilities
Departmental Leadership and Oversight
- Provide senior oversight of performance across Customer Services, Change of Tenancy, Collections and Complaints, ensuring each function has clear priorities, measurable KPIs and effective management routines.
- Lead through the Customer Services, COT and Collections Managers, setting clear standards, reviewing performance and helping each function stay aligned to business objectives.
- Provide senior leadership across customer outcomes, quality assurance, operational control, complaint performance, COT accuracy, fraud prevention and live debt management across the department.
- Act as a senior escalation point for material service, debt, complaint, vulnerability, fraud or regulatory-risk issues, ensuring timely resolution and appropriate visibility for the Operations and Compliance Director.
- Maintain senior relationships with third-party providers and agents across the department, ensuring relevant contracts, service levels and commercial arrangements are in place and regularly reviewed.
Customer Service Leadership
- Set the customer service strategy for the department, ensuring customer contact is handled consistently, professionally and in line with agreed service standards.
- Own the end-to-end customer journey across Customer Services, Change of Tenancy, Collections and Complaints, ensuring the experience is joined up, consistent and free of unnecessary friction as customers move between functions.
- Support the Customer Services Manager in delivering strong day-to-day service performance, including channel management, enquiry quality, response times and customer satisfaction.
- Ensure customer-facing processes and contact channels are effective, accessible and fair, including appropriate arrangements for vulnerable and microbusiness customers.
- Oversee the customer-service impact of new billing, CRM or communication tool changes, working with IT and the Head of Technical Operations where systems are shared.
- Support effective complaint handling within regulatory timeframes, with senior oversight of complaint-handling KPIs and customer outcomes.
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Change of Tenancy and Fraud-Control Oversight
- Provide senior oversight of the end-to-end Change of Tenancy function, ensuring the process is accurate, controlled, timely and aligned to current industry requirements.
- Work closely with the COT Manager to maintain strong throughput, accuracy, evidence standards, dispute handling and timely completion of tenancy changes.
- Maintain strong fraud controls across the COT journey, ensuring monitoring, exception reporting and escalation routes are effective and regularly reviewed.
- Keep the COT process aligned with evolving Retail Energy Code (REC) rules as the industry process changes.
- Ensure COT-related customer detriment is identified and remediated quickly.
Complaints Oversight
- Provide senior oversight of the complaints process, team performance and the outcomes customers experience, with the Complaints Manager reporting into the Customer Services Manager for day-to-day line management.
- Oversee the Complaints Manager's delivery of the complaints process from receipt to resolution or Ombudsman referral, in line with the Consumer Complaint Handling Standards Regulations.
- Support effective complaint handling within regulatory timeframes, with senior oversight of complaint-handling KPIs and customer outcomes.
- Review complaint statistics, root-cause analysis and trend reporting provided by the Complaints Manager, escalating regulatory-significant issues promptly to the Head of Regulation and Compliance.
Collections and Live Debt Management
- Provide senior oversight of live customer debt performance through the Collections Manager, ensuring arrears, payment plans, disconnection activity and warrant processes are managed effectively, fairly and compliantly.
- Work with the Collections Manager to maintain appropriate controls, reporting and escalation routes, balancing commercial recovery with customer circumstances and regulatory expectations.
- Support the development and review of proactive processes that help identify debt risk early, reduce the number of sites progressing to bad debt and improve the effectiveness of recovery activity.
Cross-Functional Coordination
- Work with the Head of Technical Operations where complaints or COT issues stem from billing, metering or settlement data, ensuring root causes are fixed rather than repeatedly managed downstream.
- Support the Head of Regulation and Compliance with evidence, data and process detail for regulatory reporting, audits or Ofgem enquiries relating to customer service, COT or complaints.
- Work with Finance, IT and Marketing/Communications colleagues to ensure billing, systems and customer communication changes are planned and delivered with customer impact considered from the outset.
- Represent the customer voice in wider business projects and change initiatives, ensuring customer experience and operational impact are properly considered in decisions taken elsewhere in the business.
Quality, People Leadership and Continuous Improvement
- Oversee quality assurance across the department, ensuring consistent standards, processes and customer outcomes across Customer Services, COT, Collections and Complaints, and supporting teams to close any gaps.
- Oversee performance across Customer Services, COT, Collections and Complaints, using clear reporting and regular management routines to support delivery against KPIs and quality standards.
- Sit on the Senior Management Team (SMT), sharing group responsibility with fellow SMT members for delivering the company's overall KPIs.
- Support team Managers with coaching, training and regular performance conversations, recognising strong delivery and helping address any gaps in a constructive way.
- Reduce key-person dependency within the department through documentation, cross-training and succession planning.
- Drive continuous improvement in customer journeys, complaint root causes and COT turnaround times, simplifying processes without compromising accuracy, compliance or quality.
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The Individual
The ideal candidate will be an experienced Head of Department or senior operations leader who is comfortable leading performance through other managers while remaining close enough to the detail to understand risk, quality and customer impact. They will bring confidence in setting direction, building capability, supporting Managers in their areas and creating a culture where teams take ownership. They must be commercially aware, customer-focused and comfortable operating in a regulated environment, with the judgement to balance customer outcomes, debt recovery, complaint resolution, fraud prevention and operational efficiency.
Essential Experience and Capability
- Leadership experience in customer operations, contact centre, complaints, collections or regulated service delivery, ideally managing managers across multiple functions.
- Proven ability to oversee departmental KPIs, service standards, SLAs, quality assurance and performance improvement through effective management routines.
- Strong people leadership experience, including managing managers, building capability, supporting performance improvement and leading teams through operational change.
- Experience of complaint handling, escalation management, root-cause analysis and customer detriment remediation in a regulated or reputation-sensitive environment.
- Commercial awareness and experience balancing customer outcomes with debt recovery, operational efficiency, risk controls and business performance.
- Clear, credible communication style with the confidence to work with senior stakeholders, escalate material issues and contribute effectively as part of the SMT.
Desirable Experience
- Experience in the energy market, including supplier obligations, Ofgem Standards of Conduct, microbusiness protections and customer vulnerability expectations.
- Direct exposure to Change of Tenancy, industry transfer, customer onboarding/offboarding or equivalent high-volume account-change processes.
- Experience improving quality assurance, coaching frameworks, management information and operational governance across multiple teams.
- Experience leading collections, recoveries, credit-control or customer debt activity in a regulated environment.
- Experience supporting structured change, process improvement or operational governance across customer-facing teams.
Join the Team
- Excellent salary based on your experience
- Regular company socials
- 25 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays
- Career progression and scope to grow with a vibrant business
- Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm, with some hybrid working
- Health and Wellbeing Programme
- Fun and energetic environment
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