Customer Service Manager

Customer Service Manager

Takealot.com, a leading South African online retailer, is looking for a highly talented Customer Service Manager to join our team in Cape Town. We are a young, dynamic, hyper growth company looking for smart, young, creative, hard working people to join us. We offer market related benefits, a great work environment and a promise that you won’t be bored as long as you are prepared for a challenge and want to build something great.

The position reports to the Customer Service Operations Manager

Your responsibilities will include:

Purpose of the Role

• Lead a high-performing, customer-obsessed team to deliver world-class support across channels, driving CSAT/NPS, First Contact Resolution (FCR), and resolution time while reducing recontact and backlog
• Coach and develop Team Leaders to raise quality, productivity, and engagement; coach the coaches.
• Own operational excellence, incident management, and continuous improvement to remove root causes across consumer, courier/driver, and merchant journeys.
• Use data to set strategy, prioritise improvements, and communicate performance and plans to stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

People Leadership & Culture

• Lead, coach, and develop Team Leaders through weekly one-on-ones, performance reviews, and development plans.
• Set clear goals and standards; recognise top performance; manage underperformance with structured performance improvement plans.
• Oversee hiring, onboarding, certification, cross-skilling, and succession; ensure HR compliance such as leave and attendance.
• Foster an inclusive, high-trust, and high-accountability culture centered on customer empathy and ownership.

Customer Experience & Quality

• Own the quality framework including QA rubric, calibration cadence, evaluation targets, coaching standards, and action plans.
• Set and manage channel standards for FCR, SLAs, backlog, recontact rate, complaint rate, and social response and resolution.
• Ensure Team Leaders conduct regular monitoring across calls, chats, and emails, and provide feedback, coaching, and reporting.

Process Improvement & Voice of Customer (VoC)

• Run a continuous improvement pipeline by identifying key drivers of contact, defect leakage, and customer effort, and prioritising solutions.
• Translate insights into product and process improvements and track measurable impact such as contact reduction and CSAT improvement.
• Standardise SOPs across teams to ensure clarity and consistency in execution.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Partner with Operations, Logistics, Merchant/Restaurant Operations, Courier/Driver Operations, Product, Risk/Fraud, Finance, Legal, and Communications to improve end-to-end journeys.
• Represent Customer Service in business reviews, align on priorities, and advocate for customer-focused decisions.

Tools, Data & Reporting

• Govern the operational use of CRM, ticketing systems, telephony platforms, QA tools, workforce management systems, knowledge bases, and reporting tools.
• Define metrics and dashboards; ensure accurate and timely reporting by Team Leaders with clear action plans.
• Promote data-driven decision-making and analytical capability within teams.

Compliance, Risk & Safety

• Ensure adherence to company policies, data privacy regulations, and audit requirements.
• Govern the safe handling of sensitive and payment data; escalate incidents according to protocol.
• Establish service recovery and compensation guidelines and partner with Risk teams to prevent fraud and abuse.

Governance & Communication

• Maintain a structured operating cadence including daily stand-ups, weekly operational reviews, monthly business reviews, QA calibrations, and training sessions.
• Communicate priorities, updates, and performance outcomes clearly, maintaining documentation and change logs.

Output

• High-performing and engaged Team Leaders with defined goals and development plans.
• Consistent achievement of SLA targets, reduced complaints, and improved resolution rates.
• Measurable improvements in CSAT and reduced contact rates through actionable process and product changes.
• Enhanced end-to-end customer journeys through aligned cross-functional initiatives.
• Accurate and timely reporting with clear insights and actions.
• Established safeguards for sensitive data handling and incident management.
• Well-maintained documentation, SOPs, and change logs.

Minimum Required Competencies

• Leadership and coaching with the ability to mentor Team Leaders and manage performance.
• Strong interpersonal communication with internal and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Strategic planning and prioritisation of operational improvements.
• Data-driven decision-making with strong analytical skills.
• Customer-centric mindset focused on quality and experience.
• Problem-solving with the ability to identify root causes and implement sustainable solutions.
• Adaptability in a fast-paced and changing environment.

Skills, Knowledge & Abilities

• Leadership and people management.
• Analytical expertise.Operational excellence.
• Proficiency with relevant technology and tools.
• Familiarity with customer service metrics such as FCR, SLAs, and CSAT.
• Ability to collaborate effectively across teams and stakeholders.Experience leading change management and cross-functional initiatives.
• Understanding of cross-functional operations including Logistics, Product, Risk, and Finance.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Diploma or Advanced Certificate.
• 3 to 5 years’ experience as a manager in a customer service environment.
• Experience in the redesign and implementation of new processes and best practices to improve customer satisfaction metrics.
• Experience in working in an e-commerce or technology company is a plus

The Environment:

• takealot.com employees are entrepreneurial and dynamic, smart, customer centric, fun and have the shared ambition of takealot.com being the leading e commerce company in Africa.
• We have fun, work hard, take ownership, work in teams to create solutions, and are always open to direct feedback/new ideas on where we can improve.
• We are short on ego and high on output.
• We are doers and not only thinkers, it's all in the execution after all.
• We love what we do and what we are creating.

We seek to Employ an Extra Ordinary Mind who:

• is forthright but respectful
• is an expert at doing, who can not only design but also execute
• is analytical, able to use data to make decisions
• is competitive, self-directed and strive to be the BEST (GREAT requires a lot of work and does not only happen during business hours)
• is passionate about the potential of e-commerce and delivering a world-class customer experience
• is entrepreneurial, thrives under change and accepts it is a constant and always looks for solutions to do something better and faster
• is able to think about problems from a business perspective using technical and product input
• is curious and challenge the status quo
• is innovative and enjoys iteration
• is collaborative
• will be at the cutting edge of developing new concepts for takealot.com.
• thinks like an owner of the business.