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 i