4th Utility | Rise
Head of Retention
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Role Summary
4th Utility Rise is looking for an experienced Head of Retention to lead our customer lifecycle function, taking ownership of customer retention performance, renewal growth, churn reduction and targeted save activity across the customer base.
This is a senior commercial leadership role, sitting between the Customer Value Director and the Retention Team Managers. The role is responsible for translating customer value, lifecycle and churn strategy into day-to-day operational execution, ensuring the Retention Telesales team is commercially focused, data-led, highly motivated and performance-driven.
The successful candidate will combine strong telesales/contact centre leadership with commercial thinking, analytical capability and a clear understanding of subscription lifecycle management. They will be hands-on, comfortable working at pace, and able to turn insight into targeted activity that improves save rates, renewal performance, customer value and base growth.
This is not simply a senior contact centre management role. It requires someone who can lead people, manage performance, understand customer behaviour, identify churn risk, and drive commercial outcomes.
Key Responsibilities
Retention Performance & Commercial Delivery
- Own day-to-day delivery of retention, renewal and save performance across the Retention team.
- Set clear targets for save rate, renewal volume, answer rate, conversion, outbound productivity, deal quality and customer value protection.
- Work closely with the Customer Value Director to translate retention and CVM strategy into clear operational plans.
- Ensure the team is focused on retaining customers, protecting base growth and maximising customer lifetime value.
- Monitor performance against targets and drive action where results are behind expectation.
- Drive a strong commercial culture where every customer conversation is treated as an opportunity to retain, renew or protect value.
Team Leadership & Performance Management
- Lead, support and develop Retention Team Managers and Senior Advisors.
- Direct a strong operating rhythm across the team, including daily performance management, coaching, call listening, huddles and campaign reviews.
- Identify capability gaps and implement team coaching plans to improve save rate, negotiation quality and renewal conversion.
- Build a motivated, resilient and sales-focused team culture.
- Set clear standards around professionalism, customer handling, negotiation, objection handling and follow-up ownership.
Renewals, Saves & Outbound Activity
- Ensure the team is proactively targeting customers with renewal, save and retention opportunities.
- Drive outbound performance across end-of-contract customers, OTS requests, and other churn, upsell or cross-sell indicators.
- Improve conversion through better targeting, scripting, coaching, objection handling and offer strategy.
- Ensure advisors understand how to negotiate effectively, use discounts and credits appropriately, and retain value wherever possible.
- Work with insight and analytics teams to prioritise customer lists and improve targeting.
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Churn Risk & Targeted Interventions
- Use data and behavioural insight to identify churn risks within the customer base.
- Work with analytics, CX, finance, marketing and operational teams to understand the drivers of churn, suspension, cancellation and non-renewal.
- Design and organise targeted interventions for high-risk customer groups.
- Track the effectiveness of save activity and intervention campaigns.
- Support the development of propensity scoring, churn risk segmentation and lifecycle-based targeting.
- Turn insight into practical action for the Retention team.
Data, Insight & Reporting
- Use performance data to understand what is working, what is not, and where action is needed.
- Review key metrics including save rate, renewal rate, answer rate, outbound activity, conversion, deal delta, discount usage, credits, churn drivers and advisor performance.
- Work with the Insight team to improve reporting, dashboards and customer targeting.
- Be comfortable interpreting data and translating it into clear operational priorities.
- Present performance updates, risks, opportunities and recommendations to senior stakeholders.
- Ensure team managers and advisors understand their performance and what they need to improve.
Lifecycle, Loyalty & Campaign Support
- Support lifecycle engagement and retention-led campaigns, particularly where they create opportunities for renewal, save activity or churn prevention.
- Work with Customer Value, Marketing, CRM and Insight teams to support customer contact strategies.
- Contribute to customer loyalty, in-life value and base management activity.
- Ensure campaign activity is practical, targeted and aligned to Retention team capacity.
- Provide operational feedback on customer sentiment, objections, competitor activity and offer performance.
Governance, Quality & Commercial Control
- Ensure discounts, credits and commercial offers are used appropriately and consistently.
- Maintain clear controls around save offers, renewal deals, credit usage and commercial incentive activity.
- Support commission design, performance incentives and target-setting where required.
- Ensure customer outcomes are fair, compliant and aligned with business policy.
- Identify poor practice, inconsistent handling or weak negotiation and take corrective action.
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Key Measures of Success
- Improved customer save rate.
- Increased renewal volumes and renewal conversion.
- Reduced churn and cancellation leakage.
- Improved outbound productivity and contact rates.
- Stronger advisor and team manager performance.
- Better use of data to target customers and prioritise activity.
- Improved quality of retention conversations and negotiation.
- Clearer control of discounts, credits and commercial offers.
- Strong team engagement, motivation and accountability.
- A more mature, commercially focused Retention function.
Skills & Experience Required
Essential
- Experience leading telesales, retention, save or outbound contact centre teams.
- Proven ability to manage sales or retention performance through targets, coaching and structured performance management.
- Strong commercial awareness and understanding of customer value, churn, renewals and base growth.
- Data-led and analytically confident, with the ability to interpret performance data and turn insight into action.
- Experience setting goals, managing KPIs and improving conversion performance.
- Strong people leadership skills, including coaching, motivation, accountability and manager development.
- Comfortable working hands-on in a growing or changing business.
- Strong understanding of customer conversations, objection handling, negotiation and save activity.
- Ability to work cross-functionally with insight, marketing, finance, customer service and operations.
- Confident communicating with senior stakeholders and presenting clear recommendations.
- Experience in telecoms, broadband, subscription, utilities or another recurring revenue business.
Advantageous
- Experience with customer lifecycle management, CVM, CRM or loyalty activity.
- Experience using churn risk, propensity models, segmentation or targeted customer interventions.
Candidate Profile
The ideal candidate will be a commercially minded retention leader who is equally comfortable managing people, reviewing performance data and driving targeted customer activity.
They will not be a purely operational contact centre manager, but they also cannot be too removed from the detail. They need to be hands-on, practical and willing to get close to the team, the numbers and the customer conversations.
They should be able to motivate teams, challenge performance, improve standards and bring a stronger commercial edge to retention activity. They will understand that retention is not just about handling cancellations, but about protecting customer value, improving renewal performance and reducing churn through targeted, insight-led action.
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