Customer Service Centre Supervisor

Cool Ideas, leading ISP in Johannesburg requires an Customer Service Centre Supervisor  to join our team

Position Overview

The Customer Service Centre Supervisor is responsible for the day-to-day leadership, performance and operational effectiveness of the Customer Service Centre (CSC).

The role is accountable for ensuring customers receive professional, efficient and consistent support while maintaining appropriate service levels, operational controls, staff performance and accountability.

The successful candidate will lead and develop the CSC team, monitor operational performance, manage escalations, analyse customer contact trends, identify process and training gaps, and work closely with other operational departments to improve the overall customer experience.

This is a hands-on leadership position requiring a strong balance between people management, customer service, workforce management, operational oversight, reporting and continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities

1. Team Leadership & People Management

• Lead, manage, coach and develop Customer Service Centre employees.
• Set clear individual and team performance expectations.
• Conduct regular one-on-one meetings, coaching sessions and performance reviews.
• Provide constructive and corrective feedback where performance or behavior falls below expectation.
• Develop performance improvement plans where required and monitor progress.
• Recognise strong performance and encourage employee development and progression.
• Identify individual and team training requirements.
• Manage team conflicts and promote a professional, accountable and collaborative working environment.
• Monitor attendance, punctuality, productivity and schedule adherence.
• Manage leave requests, overtime requirements and operational staffing requirements.
• Participate in recruitment, interviewing, selection and onboarding of new employees.
• Ensure new employees receive appropriate operational, customer service, system and process training.
• Promote employee engagement, accountability, ownership and retention.

2. Workforce Management & Resource Planning

• Develop and manage staff schedules and shift rosters to ensure appropriate operational coverage.
• Analyse historical call, ticket and customer contact volumes to identify workload patterns and staffing requirements.
• Forecast expected customer contact volumes and plan resources accordingly.
• Monitor intraday staffing and workload against actual customer demand.
• Adjust resource allocation, breaks, shifts or responsibilities where required to maintain service levels.
• Monitor schedule adherence and investigate recurring adherence issues.
• Identify periods of overstaffing or understaffing and recommend appropriate resource changes.
• Plan appropriately for weekends, public holidays, leave periods, outages, campaigns and anticipated periods of increased customer demand.
• Ensure effective allocation of employees across voice, ticket and other customer support channels.

3. Customer Service & Escalation Management

• Ensure customers receive professional, accurate and timely assistance across all supported communication channels.
• Take ownership of complex or escalated customer matters requiring supervisory intervention.
• Ensure escalations are appropriately investigated, communicated, tracked and resolved.
• Monitor recurring customer complaints and identify underlying operational, training or process issues.
• Support employees in managing difficult customer interactions and escalations.
• Assist with walk-in customer queries where required.
• Ensure appropriate customer communication during significant service incidents and outages.
• Identify opportunities to reduce avoidable escalations through improved training, processes and employee accountability.

4. Operational Performance & KPI Management

• Monitor and manage departmental KPIs and agreed service levels.
• Monitor inbound call volumes, ticket volumes, queue performance, response times and backlogs.
• Monitor relevant contact-centre metrics including Service Level, Average Speed of Answer (ASA), call abandonment rate, Average Handle Time (AHT), First Contact Resolution (FCR), ticket response and resolution times, Quality Assurance scores, schedule adherence, and customer satisfaction and feedback.
• Analyse performance trends and identify the underlying reasons for changes in performance.
• Implement corrective actions where service levels or performance fall below agreed targets.
• Monitor individual and team productivity without compromising customer experience or quality.
• Ensure support tickets are correctly categorised, routed, escalated and followed through to resolution.
• Monitor workload distribution and adjust resources where operationally necessary.
• Maintain and review incident and operational tracking information for trend analysis.

5. Quality Assurance & Coaching

• Conduct and oversee Quality Assurance reviews across customer interactions.
• Ensure QA assessments are applied consistently and fairly.
• Monitor ticket and call quality, accuracy, communication standards and process compliance.
• Review FCR and repeat-contact trends to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Identify recurring QA failures and determine whether the root cause relates to knowledge, training, process, systems or individual performance.
• Translate QA findings into structured coaching and development actions.
• Track whether coaching interventions result in measurable performance improvement.
• Conduct regular QA calibration sessions where appropriate to maintain consistent evaluation standards.
• Ensure employees understand how their individual KPIs and QA performance contribute to departmental objectives.

6. Reporting & Data Analysis

• Compile regular management reports covering operational performance, service levels, trends, escalations, staffing and customer experience.
• Analyse operational data rather than simply reporting statistics.
• Highlight emerging risks, recurring customer issues and operational bottlenecks to management.
• Identify trends in call reasons, ticket categories, complaints and repeat contacts.
• Recommend corrective or preventative actions based on operational data.
• Maintain accurate records of coaching, performance discussions and agreed improvement actions.

7. Process Improvement & Operational Controls

• Identify inefficient, outdated or ineffective operational processes and recommend improvements.
• Perform root-cause analysis on recurring customer, employee or operational issues.
• Assist with the development and implementation of operational controls to reduce errors and improve customer experience.
• Ensure approved processes and procedures are consistently followed by the team.
• Identify recurring errors and determine whether they relate to training, process, systems, capacity or individual performance.
• Maintain and improve departmental Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), knowledge articles and internal documentation.
• Ensure process changes are communicated and understood before implementation.
• Participate in operational improvement initiatives and cross-departmental projects.
• Promote automation and more efficient ways of working where appropriate.

8. Customer Experience & Voice of the Customer

• Monitor customer feedback, complaints, compliments and satisfaction trends.
• Identify recurring themes affecting customer experience.
• Use customer feedback to identify coaching, process and service improvement opportunities.
• Monitor repeat contacts and unnecessary customer effort.
• Escalate systemic customer experience issues to the appropriate management team.
• Support customer experience initiatives including surveys, feedback programmes and service improvement projects.

9. Cross-Departmental Collaboration

• Work closely with the Connect Team regarding customer activations and new line requirements.
• Liaise with Tier 2, NOC, Billing, FNO Liaison and other operational teams to facilitate customer query resolution.
• Coordinate with Billing regarding customer account queries, suspensions, reinstatements, statements and billing escalations.
• Ensure customer-impacting incidents and outages are communicated appropriately.
• Coordinate with relevant teams regarding customer setup following equipment delivery or service activation.
• Identify recurring handover failures between departments and work with the relevant managers to improve processes.
• Provide operational leadership cover across related departments where reasonably required.

10. Incident & Outage Management

• Monitor significant network incidents and outages affecting customers.
• Coordinate appropriate CSC response during major incidents.
• Ensure employees receive accurate and timely information regarding known incidents.
• Ensure consistent customer messaging during outages.
• Monitor increases in contact volumes resulting from outages and adjust resources accordingly.
• Conduct post-incident reviews where significant customer or operational impact occurred.
• Identify lessons learned and recommend improvements to future incident handling.

11. Customer Communications

• Assist with customer-facing service announcements and outage communications.
• Ensure customer communications are accurate, professional and aligned with company standards.
• Monitor relevant customer communication channels and ensure queries are directed appropriately.
• Assist with communication relating to significant service incidents or operational changes.

12. Compliance, Security & Governance

• Ensure employees comply with company policies, procedures and customer data handling requirements.
• Promote appropriate protection of confidential and customer information.
• Ensure employees only use authorised systems and access appropriate to their roles.
• Escalate suspected process, security, privacy or compliance breaches through the appropriate channels.
• Maintain appropriate records relating to operational and employee performance matters.
• Ensure the department operates in accordance with applicable company policies and regulatory requirements.

Key Performance Areas

• Customer service levels
• Call answer and abandonment performance
• Ticket response and resolution performance
• First Contact Resolution
• Quality Assurance performance
• Customer satisfaction and feedback
• Complaint and escalation management
• Backlog management
• Schedule adherence
• Staff attendance and punctuality
• Individual and team productivity
• Coaching and employee development
• Process compliance
• Reduction in repeat contacts and recurring errors
• Workforce planning and staffing efficiency
• Accuracy and timeliness of management reporting
• Continuous improvement initiatives

Minimum Requirements

• Previous experience within a Customer Service, Contact Centre, Call Centre, ISP, Telecommunications or similar operational environment.
• Previous supervisory or team leadership experience.
• Demonstrated experience managing customer escalations.
• Experience in managing staff performance, coaching, scheduling and attendance.
• Good understanding of contact-centre KPIs and performance management.
• Experience working with ticketing, CRM, call centre or customer management systems.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong reporting, administrative and organisational skills.
• Ability to interpret operational data and identify trends or performance gaps.
• Ability to coach and develop employees based on measurable performance outcomes.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, customer-focused environment.
• Willingness to provide reasonable after-hours or weekend escalation support when required.

Advantageous Experience

• Previous ISP or telecommunications experience.
• Understanding of fibre, LTE/5G, connectivity and basic networking concepts.
• Experience working with Fibre Network Operators or telecommunications partners.
• Experience with Quality Assurance frameworks and customer service reporting.
• Experience with workforce management, forecasting and resource planning.
• Experience managing both voice and ticket-based customer support environments.
• Familiarity with customer experience metrics such as CSAT and NPS.

Key Competencies

• Leadership and people management
• Customer-first thinking
• Accountability and ownership
• Coaching and employee development
• Performance management
• Workforce planning
• Data analysis and interpretation
• Root-cause analysis
• Conflict and escalation management
• Sound judgement and decision-making
• Problem-solving
• Process discipline
• Attention to detail
• Clear and professional communication
• Ability to remain composed under pressure
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Initiative and continuous improvement mindset

Role Expectations

This position is first and foremost a leadership and operational management role.

The Customer Service Centre Supervisor is expected to create an environment where employees understand what is expected of them, follow established processes, are held accountable for their performance and receive the coaching and support required to succeed.

The Supervisor should not become the permanent solution for work that should be performed by the team. A key measure of success is the development of a capable, accountable and increasingly self-sufficient team.

The role is expected to use operational data, customer feedback and employee performance information to proactively identify problems and drive improvement rather than operating primarily in a reactive escalation capacity.

While the position may occasionally provide operational assistance or cover across related departments, the primary responsibility remains the effective leadership, performance, development and continuous improvement of the Customer Service Centre.