Partnership Performance Manager

Summary

As a Partnership Performance Manager, you’ll ensure our contact centre teams located in the UK and South Africa deliver excellent service across various customer interaction types, prioritising first-contact resolution and customer satisfaction. Reporting to the Customer Services and Operations Lead, the Partnership Performance Manager is responsible for driving performance improvements, and ensuring the services provided by the partner align with M&S's standards and goals.

A significant aspect of the Partnership Performance Manager's role is working collaboratively with the teams in Chester and the outsourced partner to ensure operational performance, resolving issues and driving improvement. The Partnership Performance Manager understands and interprets available reporting and insight to drive action to improve how we operate. The role requires a thorough understanding of contact centres, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry, commercial acumen & contract management. This position demands the ability to foster effective working relationships at all levels working collaboratively across various business units and geographical locations to ensure the seamless delivery of services.

This role is based in our Chester offices with frequent travel to the outsourced location (Cape Town, South Africa).

What’s in it for you

Being a part of M&S is exactly that – playing your part to bring the magic of M&S to our customers every day. We’re an inclusive, dynamic, exciting, and ever evolving business built on doing the right thing and bringing exceptional quality, value, service to every customer, whenever, wherever and however they want to shop with us.

Here are some of the benefits we offer that make working for M&S just that little bit more special…

• After completing your probationary period, you’ll receive 20% colleague discount across all M&S products and many of our third-party brands for you and a member of your household.
• Competitive holiday entitlement with the potential to buy extra holiday days!
• Discretionary bonus schemes awarded based on how you achieve your personal objectives and our performance as a business.
• A generous Defined Contribution Pension Scheme and Life Assurance.
• A dedicated welcome to our teams with a tailored induction and a wide range of training programmes to develop your skills.
• Amazing perks and discounts via our M&S Choices portal to maximise your financial and personal wellbeing.
• Industry-leading parental, adoption and neonatal policies, providing support and flexibility for your family.
• Access to a fantastic range of wellbeing support for all colleagues including access to our 24/7 Virtual GP and PAM Assist to support you and your family.
• A charity volunteer day to support a charity or cause you're passionate about through a dedicated day away from work.

What you’ll do

Your key accountabilities will include

• Drive improvements for operational performance ensuring all our customer service teams achieve defined customer metrics including CSAT, FCR, Quality and SLA’s.
• Analyse the partner’s performance using data and MI to drive improvement and benchmark against standards set by M&S’s Centre of Excellence.
• Play a critical role in identifying risks to customer service and formulate improvement plans with the operational leads in all sites to drive action and improvement evidenced in customer service metrics.
• Be responsible for operational performance, closely monitoring results and sharing planned status updates at regular operational forums such as Weekly, Monthly and Quarterly business reviews with the partner and internal line of business stakeholders.
• Act as operations lead for all Customer Services during key business events and peaks, ensuring stakeholders are kept up to date on operational performance, risks to plan and issue management.
• Represent Customer Services Operations in incident management working groups) during business-critical issues to ensure the best outcome for the customer and Customer Service colleagues in all sites.
• Support our Customer Services teams to consistently deliver 5 star service by actively participating in quality calibration with the Quality and Operations teams to understand improvement areas.
• Put effective monitoring in place to identify adviser errors/ poor behaviour resulting in customer dissatisfaction or further escalation. Work as one team to reduce controllable performance issues.
• Be accountable for managing a wide range of stakeholder groups across internal and external organisations, developing strong relationships to foster joint business outcomes and ongoing strategic alignment.
• Work with our partner and across M&S to identify opportunities to maximise benefits for the business.
• Foster innovation within the relationships, working with stakeholders to build collaboration and drive ongoing improvements to our customer experience.
• Use actionable insight, to influence business strategy and decisions.
• Take personal responsibility and ownership of escalated customer issues when required across multiple contact channels including social media, voice, webchat and email.
• Keep abreast of external contact centre trends and developments in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry.
• Provide strong leadership through role modelling the M&S clearly defined service behaviours

Who you are

Your skills and experience will include

• Experience of managing a Contact Centre outsource partner and 3rd party providers and working in a partnership relationship. (essential)
• Customer service and contact centre management
• The ability to build a One Team mentality across Customer Services
• Stakeholder experience, with the ability to influence stakeholders for action and be the voice of Customer Services.
• Experience of managing matrix teams in an operational environment (essential)
• Commercial acumen with the knowledge of defining and adhering to contractual obligations
• Ability to interpret financial and operational MI and drive partner for improvements based on data.
• Ability to work in an agile and fast-paced environment.
• Ability to make sound decisions, and seek advice where required.
• Strong communication skills and ability to provide clear and concise operational updates (verbally and written)
• A solid understanding of forecasting, planning and budget management.
• Ability to manage and effectively prioritise multiple requests and manage a wide variety of stakeholders

Everyone’s welcome

We’re ambitious about the future of retail. We’re innovating, disrupting, and leading the way into a more inspiring, digital era. It’s an exciting time to be part of M&S.

To support us on our journey, we’re building inclusive, diverse teams where everyone can be themselves, do their best work, and make change happen. We support each other and succeed together.

Don’t worry if you don’t meet every single requirement of the job description. It’s more of a guide to what’s possible within the role. If you’re passionate, ready to work hard, and think the role feels right for you, we’d love to hear from you.