Partnering with teams across the Retail Bank arm of LBG to provide thought leadership, design expertise & to create a holistic view of activity across the division to drive sustainable change & improvement. Accountable for blending internal & external perspectives to bring & develop insights to inform the Retail strategy, operating model, continuous improvement & investment choices.

To lead and provide direction, taking accountability and responsibility of setting the team strategy to deliver the groups vision and objectives by building the best team through coaching and development, ensuring we deliver outstanding service to our customers.Accountabilities:• Responsibility for the delivery of the performance of the operational area and quality of customer experience delivered• Take ownership of the identification, investigation and resolution of any service issues• Proactively monitor cost lines, taking responsibility to deliver against budget• Understand development needs for direct reports and identify talent taking time coaching individuals to maximise capability• Spend time with the teams getting closer to the work to drive & deliver customer improvements• Chair partnering meetings building strong relationships to drive and deliver end to end customer improvements and reduce customer complaints • Accountable for maintaining a strong control environment identifying “what can go wrong” in the operation

Lead and define initiatives to drive efficiency and value from Group Professional Service spend in partnership with Group Finance, Group Sourcing and the business areas. Develop & maintain relationships with key programme leads across the group to ensure accurate horizon view of professional service spend is available, promoting early engagement with suppliers enabling more competitive solutions to be utilised.

Propose, drive and deliver customer and business improvements. Execute change management projects, supervise staff, monitor overall progress, process analysis, impact assessment, resource allocation, interdependencies and contingency planning, initiating corrective action as necessary. Use robust project management tools and methodologies to develop work streams, project plans and progress reports.Select Accomplishments:• Rapidly promoted three times within five years to increasingly responsible positions. • Reduced operational costs by £200K per annum by identifying and producing a key customer journey improvement. Saved £30K per annum through implementing digital customer journey improvements. • Enabled customer option to open children’s savings accounts from home rather than in-branch, resulting in 50K+ new accounts since December of 2015. • Reduced hand-offs by 23%, resulting in additional customer lead-time reduction of 12 days, improving customer experience.• Improved complaint handling by analysing and redefining processes resulting in faster and more accurate response.

Led a team of 40+ colleagues performing a variety of core processes ranging from payment processing to complaint handling. Developed, mentored and evaluated team members on individual and collective performance, ensuring customer service standards as well as current and future business needs were met. Select Accomplishments:• Established and monitored KPIs, performed risk analysis and mitigation and safeguarded regulatory compliance to achieve strategic goals. • Identified and prioritised escalation issues and proactively answered stakeholder queries effecting results within specified timeframes.

Managed and mentored a team of 12 Customer Service Assistants, allocating daily workloads, fostering morale and confirming performance alignment with company targets and performance standards. Select Accomplishments:• Reduced staff attrition through effective leadership, performance monitoring and engagement.• Quickly identified and addressed any performance gaps or problems, producing timely and accurate evaluation reports for senior management review. • Collaborated with sales and marketing team to drive sales and assist in talent recruitment.

Cemented an appreciation as to the importance of first class customer service, alongside energy, drive and enthusiasm; Forged, maintained and nurtured key internal / external relationships, conducive to both business development and service excellence and tactfully and diplomatically resolved complaints.