Senior Operations Manager - NL

Why loveholidays?

We’re the world’s fastest-growing online travel agent, on a mission to open the world to everyone with unlimited choice, unmatched ease and unmissable value. At loveholidays, our team is the driving force behind our role as our customers’ personal holiday expert - the smart way to get away.

The impact you’ll have
This Senior Operations Manager role is critical to launching and expanding our Customer Service in the Netherlands. You'll partner with our Cape Town, South Africa team to build a high-performing customer service organisation. This includes spending at least two weeks per quarter onsite in Cape Town to provide guidance, build relationships and gather customer feedback for continuous improvement.

In addition, you'll also support our rapidly growing German market. Since we're leveraging the same Cape Town team for German customer service, your expertise will be invaluable in scaling operations for both markets. You’ll add strength and depth to our existing German management team as we continue to hit our ambitious growth targets.

You will be customer obsessed, always looking at ways to remove points of friction along the customer journey to deliver a superior experience. You will have strong stakeholder management skills enabling you to build excellent relationships with other key departments within loveholidays such as Customer Success, Supply, Commercial, Legal, PR & Brand but also with Tech and Holiday Product to help us close the feedback loop to ensure that when a problem is ours, we fix it to ensure it doesn’t happen again. You will also be responsible for driving continual improvements with our supply partners so as to drive a superior customer and agent customer experience.

You'll be a vital part of achieving our team's, department's, and company-wide goals by driving exceptional operational performance, exceeding customer satisfaction targets, and consistently meeting service level agreements. The role is a hybrid role either based in Hammersmith, London or in Kaiserswerth, Düsseldorf three days a week but will require extensive liaison with our offshore team in South Africa, including overseas travel to the destination.

Your day-to-day:
This role is all about driving operational excellence for our Dutch and German markets. You'll be our key partner in scaling customer service delivery by:

• Expanding our reach: Collaborate with our outsourcing partners to meet growing demand in both the Netherlands and Germany.
• Building a unified experience: Align Dutch and German operations with our core customer service model as these markets grow.
• Leading and inspiring: Provide strategic direction to our outsourced Dutch team, ensuring top performance and achievement of all KPIs.
• Analysing and improving: Monitor daily/weekly/monthly performance, identify improvement areas, and take action to drive positive change.
• Maintaining operational rigour: Ensure all processes are up-to-date, well-documented, and effectively monitored. Collaborate across departments to resolve issues and promote best practices.
• Being the expert: Serve as the primary point of contact for all Dutch and German customer service matters, providing updates and answering queries.
• Championing customer experience: Continuously evaluate and improve internal and external processes to enhance customer satisfaction.
• Collaborating across teams: Partner with the CX management team and other department managers to address cross-functional issues and ensure seamless customer support.
• Stepping up as a leader: Support and represent the Head of Customer Operations in meetings and contribute to the strategic development of the Dutch and German teams.

Your skillset:

• Proven experience: You've thrived in a contact centre environment, ideally with experience managing outsourced teams.
• A proactive approach: You're a self-starter who excels in fast-paced environments, effortlessly juggling multiple tasks and motivating others to achieve outstanding results.
• Data-driven decision making: You're comfortable analysing data, identifying trends, and using insights to improve team productivity and customer satisfaction. You're a problem-solver who digs deep to address root causes.
• Operational expertise: You possess a strong understanding of operational processes and best practices. You're adept at optimising workflows, streamlining operations, and finding efficiencies to reduce costs.
• Customer-centricity: You're a skilled communicator with exceptional customer service skills. You're empathetic, solutions-oriented, and dedicated to delivering high-quality resolutions.
• Strong leadership: You're a decisive leader, even under pressure, with the ability to inspire and guide teams effectively.
• Tech savviness: You leverage technology to automate processes, extract data insights, and drive operational improvement.
• Excellent communication: You communicate effectively with stakeholders at all levels, including preparing and delivering presentations to senior management.
• Collaborative spirit: You're a relationship builder who fosters teamwork and collaboration.
• Flexibility to travel: You're available for international travel, approximately once a quarter (with the potential for increased frequency).
• Language proficiency: You're a native Dutch speaker with business-level English. German language skills are a plus!

Desirable:

• Knowledge and understanding of the travel sector highly advantageous, but not essential.
• At least 5 years’ experience in a similar role in a fast-moving consumer-focused organisation.
• Previous experience in working in a start-up-scale-up environment desirable, but not essential.

The interview journey:

• Screening interview with Talent Acquisition team.
• Interview with Hiring Manager + 1 other Manager (TBC) - 60 mins.
• Final interview with Hiring Manager + CX Director - 60 mins.