Halfords

As one of our Service Assurance Manager's you'll deliver an end-to-end view of service performance and customer experience across IT services. Delivered through the agreement of service levels with customers & ensuring compliance and communicating performance to key stakeholders.

You'll instigate, develop and implement Service Improvement activity in the event of underperformance or in line with changing business requirements. The role will govern all associated service contracts to ensure we’re getting the best from our suppliers and partners, and is technology based. As such, it will work across the Halfords business into all business areas.

Responsibilities of the Service Assurance Manager also includes:

• Build excellent relationships with designated customers in the business and stakeholders to align IT Services to strategic objectives
• Create close working relationships with Architects, Product Owners, Infosec, Programme Leads & Group Commercial to deliver reliable, modern and robust services
• Hold regular & robust service performance meetings with aligned associated service providers & perform regular ‘dip tests’ to ensure accuracy of data
• Conduct audits of suppliers & partners to validate reporting and provide measurement of services, benchmarking service where appropriate
• Hold regular Service reviews with stakeholders to demonstrate performance and review service risks and undertake customer satisfaction measurement and improvement
• Define, implement, and govern SLAs for assigned services and ensure delivery of service to agreed levels
• Work with the major incident and problem management teams to ensure next steps are always taken to prevent future MI’s
• Understand business priority, ensure services are aligned to priority and translate and communicate priority throughout IT
• Develop a view of customer experience and service performance and deliver this insight to the Head of Service and Operations
• Proactively identify and deliver service improvement plans (SIPs) required to maintain or improve service levels
• Act as an escalation point for incidents where exceptional business impact is experienced to ensure appropriate resolution
• Maintain a service risk register to manage, mitigate and accept operational risks to service and deliver improvements to mitigate risk
• Be the custodian of live service, approve changes to assigned services to ensure impacts are understood and service performance is not negatively impacted
• Working with the Service Introduction Manager, ensure delivery of new services, including service level requirements, measurement capabilities and agreement with stakeholders and product teams
• Continually improve monitoring and observability for faster rectification of issues.

What we're looking for:

• Solid technical background and commercial awareness so that the Service Manager can participate in both technical and commercial discussions
• Relationship building skills and the ability to empathise with customers and their needs
• Ability to understand the technology requirements and drivers.
• Experience to conduct meaningful discussions around how IT Services are meeting customer needs
• Proficiency in customer management techniques: The complete sequence of activities required to manage customers' expectations from understanding customer requirements to capturing and delivering a service
• The ability to demonstrate a high level of presentational skills adapting to all levels of audience
• Ability to lead virtual support groups, suppliers and internal & external customers
• Previous involvement with managing third party suppliers
• A Customer obsessed approach to working, making sure our systems and services are working to enable every sale across every area of business (web/garage/store)
• A passion for reporting – being able to take the key messages away from data and presenting to all levels of the organisation
• Drive & ambition, wanting to extract the very best out of suppliers & teams
• Experience implementing improvement plans across a range of business units and services and understands the commercial implications of the work undertaken / improvements required
• Good working knowledge of the key service management processes
• Strong service and continuous improvement ethos

Hybrid working but some travel to our support centre in Redditch Worcestershire will be required at times.

Not sure you meet all the criteria? We'd encourage you to take the wheel and apply anyway! At Halfords we are committed to creating an inclusive workplace for our colleagues. We're an equal opportunities employer and proud to welcome applications from all backgrounds and embrace diversity within our one Halfords Family.