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About the role

As a unitary council created just two years ago, serving 360,000 residents, North Northamptonshire is forging a fresh and distinct identity, based upon a clear set of values and driven by our vision to create a place where everyone has the best opportunities and quality of life.

We have been developing services to reflect our priorities and ambitions and started the journey to transform the lives of our residents and businesses through customer-focused services.

Following retirement of the current post-holder, we are looking for outstanding candidates to fill this exciting, key role and take forward the next phase of our customer service transformation journey.

Our first transformational phase has been to rationalise service management, start the rollout of a single integrated Customer Relationship System (CRM) in the service as well as deliver a single integrated call-centre telephony application that replaces five separate solutions based upon sovereign authority boundaries.

The role is not just about leading a service that provides first point of contact customer contact across a wide range of services, and having overall responsibility for responding to customer complaints. This role is about leading the transformation of how the Council puts customers at the centre of everything that we do.

As an exceptional leader and passionate champion for customer service, your role will be to rollout the next transformational phase, exploiting the benefits of the CRM and Telephony solutions to move towards a single team, resolving more queries at the first point of contact and moving customer service to the front across the Council.

You will live and breathe customer service excellence, be people-focused, able to break down barriers across services, and champion a single view and approach to customers for the Council as it continues to aggregate service delivery. You will be influencing, transformational and inspirational to take our customer service transformation journey to the next level.

For an informal discussion about the role please contact Geoff Kent on 07426 144333.
Interviews will be held on Monday 10 July 2023.

What will you be doing?

• Providing leadership, direction and recognition of Customer Services, inspiring and championing colleagues in the service.
• Championing customer service across the Council and mainstreaming it into all services areas, not just Customer Services.
• Ensuring a more robust approach to complaints handing to not just respond quicker, but learn from our mistakes in a no-blame culture, using complaints to improve services and life outcomes for residents.
• Move the Customer Services function from five geographically-focused teams into a single, outcome focused team.
• Use the CRM and Telephony solutions currently being implemented to harness data to improve services, improve efficiency and deliver better outcomes.
• Make Customer Services the first point of contact for all services wherever possible, to free experts for more complex cases.
• Work closely with other services to make customer transactions seamless and value-added.
• Work closely with our Head of Digital to exploit technical solutions to service improvement and self-service whilst ensuring customers who want to and need personal service can still get that from the Council.

About you

• You will be inspiring, dedicated to excellent customer service.
• Care about people, be focused on ensuring we have highly trained, professional and motivated staff who feel included and cared about.
• Obsessed with a one-team approach to service delivery.
• Excellent communicator and skilled negotiator.
• You will lead from the front, be visible and inspire colleagues to do their best.
• Develop and add value to relationships across teams, services and with partner organisations.
• Have strong people management and development skills.
• Promote equal opportunities within all aspects of service delivery and staff relations.

About us

We are a new unitary council, established in April 2021; we are one of the largest unitary councils in the country. Our vision for North Northants is to be 'A place where everyone has the best opportunities and quality of life'.

Our priorities are:

• helping people live active fulfilled lives
• caring for our young people, providing them with high quality education and opportunities
• enabling a thriving and successful economy
• leading on a green and sustainable environment
• ensuring our communities are connected so they can shape their lives and where they live
• providing modern public services

Our values, as chosen by our staff, are - Customer-focused, Respectful, Efficient, Supportive and Trustworthy.

Your differences make us different - Achieve Together.

We are undertaking consultation with the Trade Unions on terms and conditions and the future NNC pay structure and during this time are appointing new employees on interim spot salaries. You will be advised of the outcome and any impact on your role once this work is complete.

Our benefits

We offer:

• a competitive salary
• a pension scheme, where we pay a significant contribution on top of your contribution. It provides life cover and ill-health protection.
• opportunities to develop your skills, knowledge and potential in a large unitary council
• generous leave entitlement (28 days, rising to 33 days) and bank holidays, plus the option to buy up to an extra 10 days
• agile and flexible working arrangements to help you with a healthy work-life balance.