Regional Customer Services Manager

The Vacancy

We have an exciting opportunity for a Regional Customer Service Manager to join our WPS team, leading customer service excellence across our North & Central Region. This is a pivotal leadership role covering multiple contracts and offices, ensuring our customers, clients and internal teams receive a consistently outstanding service.

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📍 Location & Travel

This is a regional role with coverage across:
Barnsley, Milton Keynes, Derbyshire, Birmingham, Warwickshire, Worcestershire.

• Preference: Midlands-based
• Expected to work flexibly across up to six offices within the region
• Hybrid working: 1–2 days per week from home (business/client demands permitting)

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💼 About the Role

Reporting directly into Divisional Director as the regional lead, this role is responsible for shaping, influencing and delivering our customer strategy across the Responsive Maintenance service. The successful candidate will oversee multiple customer service functions and ensure continuous improvement of the end‑to‑end customer journey.

You will lead large teams (up to 50 people) including:

• Customer Contact / Customer Experience
• Scheduling & Planning
• Complaints & Case Management
• Performance & Insight / Continuous Improvement
• General Customer Service Operations linked to R&M delivery

This role requires someone who thrives in a client-facing, collaborative environment and can confidently manage multiple customers, stakeholders and service lines.

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🔑 Key Responsibilities

• Lead and manage regional customer service operations across multiple offices, teams and contract lines.
• Oversee customer contact, scheduling, complaints handling, performance monitoring and service standards.
• Engage directly with clients, residents and stakeholders, representing WPS with professionalism and enthusiasm.
• Use performance data, KPIs and customer insights to identify service gaps and implement improvements.
• Shape, refine and support the delivery of the regional customer strategy, aligned with wider WPS objectives.
• Ensure adherence to social housing regulatory requirements and maintain strong governance.
• Build strong relationships across the sector, staying connected to emerging trends and best practice in customer experience.
• Foster a positive team culture centred on empathy, ownership, accountability and service excellence.
• Support continuous improvement across repairs & maintenance operations, ensuring customer experience is at the heart of decision‑making.

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🌱 What We’re Looking For

We’re seeking an enthusiastic, customer-first leader who brings:

Essential Experience

• Strong background in social housing, responsive repairs, or planned maintenance customer service.
• Experience managing large in-house teams (ideally 30–50 people).
• Proven ability to lead multi-site customer service operations.
• Deep knowledge of social housing regulation, complaint handling and customer experience frameworks.
• Confidence working with multiple clients / local authorities / housing associations.
• Ability to analyse data, identify trends and drive improvement at scale.

Personal Attributes

• Empathetic, proactive and confident in a customer-facing environment.
• Able to balance operational detail with strategic thinking.
• Resilient, solutions-focused and comfortable working at pace.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
• A natural collaborator who motivates and inspires teams.

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✨ Why Join Wates Property Services?

• Be a key influencer in shaping the customer journey for thousands of residents.
• Play a regional leadership role with genuine autonomy and visibility.
• Join a values-led, family-run Tier 1 contractor committed to social value and customer excellence.
• Work within an organisation undergoing meaningful transformation in customer experience.

Given the nature of this position, you will need to undergo a Basic Disclosure and Barring Service Check (DBS) at offer stage. Applicants with criminal convictions will be assessed individually, and we assure you that we do not discriminate based on an applicant’s criminal record or the details of any disclosed offenses. Additionally, certain roles may be subject to additional pre-employment checks.

To learn more about the checks included in this process, please click on the following link: National Security Vetting

Work for Wates

Wates is one of the UK’s leading family-owned development, building and property maintenance companies.  Founded over 125 years ago, we have a proud legacy in the built environment.

We are driven by our purpose, ‘reimagining places for people to thrive’ and our three promises:

• Thriving places – working with customers, partners and communities to create places that are more sustainable, inclusive, and full of opportunity.
• Thriving planet – protecting nature and taking action on climate change by collaborating and innovating with our partners.
• Thriving people – creating opportunities and relationships so that everyone who works for and with us feels included, invested in and treated with care.

We are proud to be recognised as Gold Investors in People and as a Disability Confident employer.  We also ensure that our recruitment processes do not treat anyone less favourably due to an offending background.