Customer Service Manager Cover Letter Example

Two plain changes lifted customer satisfaction at Wattlebrook Energy from 78% to 90% in three years: we retrained advisers for first-contact resolution, and we rewrote three letters that confused customers. I am applying to lead customer service at Murray River Utilities because that kind of unglamorous work is what a utility's customers notice.

I lead 60 people across phone, chat and complaints teams through five team leaders, and I manage a yearly budget of A$4.2 million. I forecast headcount with our planning team; earlier, running a 24-person operation, I brought average wait time down from three minutes to 90 seconds by adding staff to peak hours. Cost per contact fell 14% after I reviewed 3,000 contacts and moved the five most common requests to a self-service page that 40% of customers now use. A monthly complaints review with operations and billing then cut repeat complaints by a quarter. The lesson from both was the same: much of the cost sits in contacts that should never have been needed.

Bringing the call center back in-house is the reason Murray River Utilities stands out to me. A move like that succeeds or fails on its team leaders, and growing and developing team leaders is the part of my job I am proudest of: I promoted three from within and have kept manager turnover under 10% a year. I have also done each job I would be asking people to do. I started as a customer adviser at Gawler Retail Group, was named adviser of the year in 2013, then led 12 advisers and built the team's first quality scorecard. Energy and water customers call about the same things, bills, faults and moves, so the work would be familiar from the first week.

A first draft of the headcount plan for the in-house team, built from your last year of contact volumes, is something I could bring to a second interview. Which teams move across first, and when?