Executive Complaints Team Lead

Kingfisher

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Executive Complaints Team Lead is responsible for the day-to-day leadership, coaching and performance management of the Executive Complaints Advisor team, ensuring complaints are handled fairly, consistently and efficiently. The role sits between frontline complaint handling and complaints function leadership. It provides the operational leadership layer that enables Advisors to deliver excellent customer outcomes through effective case guidance, workload management, quality assurance and colleague development. The role will personally support or manage a limited number of high-profile, sensitive or complex complaints where, but its primary accountability is team performance, capability, quality and first-line escalation rather than overall complaints strategy, policy ownership or functional governance.

Requirements

• Experience leading, coaching or supporting colleagues in a customer-focused environment.
• Background in complaints, customer resolution, contact centre or retail customer service.
• Experience handling complex, sensitive or escalated customer complaints.
• Confident using case management systems to track, manage and document customer cases.
• Strong people leadership and coaching skills, with the ability to support colleague development.
• Excellent written communication skills, with the ability to produce clear, accurate and empathetic customer responses.
• Ability to influence stakeholders and work collaboratively across teams to resolve customer issues.
• Strong workload planning and prioritisation skills, with the ability to manage competing demands.
• Experience assessing quality, consistency and customer outcomes.
• Sound judgement and problem-solving skills, with the ability to make fair and balanced decisions.
• Customer-first mindset, with a calm, empathetic and accountable approach.
• Commercial awareness and the ability to balance customer needs with business considerations.
• Applicants must have the right to work in the UK at the time of application and throughout their employment.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach and develop Executive Complaints Advisors, creating a confident, consistent and customer-focused team.
• Run regular 1:1s, team huddles, performance conversations and development reviews.
• Support recruitment, onboarding, skills development and knowledge sharing across the team.
• Manage attendance, wellbeing, engagement and day-to-day colleague performance in line with B&Q expectations.
• Build a supportive but accountable team environment where complex complaints are handled with empathy, pace and sound judgement.
• Allocate, prioritise and balance complaint workloads across Advisors.
• Monitor queue health, ageing cases, customer commitments and service level risks.
• Ensure complaints are progressed within agreed timeframes and that customer follow-up commitments are met.
• Maintain effective operational coverage across the team, flagging resourcing or capacity risks to the Complaints Manager.
• Act as the first point of leadership support for Advisors when cases become blocked, urgent or sensitive.
• Carry out regular case reviews, quality checks and coaching interventions.
• Ensure complaint outcomes are fair, consistent, well documented and aligned to B&Q policy and delegated authority.
• Provide decision support on complex complaint scenarios, customer remedies and case handling approach.
• Approve complaint outcomes or remedy proposals within agreed authority levels.
• Identify gaps in process, knowledge, judgement or documentation and take action to improve team consistency.
• Support Advisors with executive, media, legal-risk, discrimination, vulnerability or highly sensitive complaint scenarios.
• Personally manage a small number of complex or high-profile complaints where leadership ownership is.
• Escalate cases that exceed authority, risk or complexity thresholds to the Complaints Manager or Complaints Specialists as appropriate.
• Ensure sensitive complaints are handled with care, accuracy and a clear audit trail.
• Identify recurring complaint themes, root causes and operational failure points from team activity.
• Share practical insight with the Complaints Manager to support complaint prevention and business improvement.
• Support local process improvement activities that improve resolution quality, reduce rework or improve customer experience.
• Contribute to team reporting, quality commentary and lessons learned activity.

Benefits

• Pension
• PMI
• ShareSave
• 6.6 weeks holiday
• Colleague Discounts
• Access wellbeing resources, health support and employee assistance programmes designed to help you thrive.
• Generous holiday entitlement and family-friendly policies that support life both inside and outside work.
• Career Growth & Development - Access learning, development and career opportunities across one of the UK's leading retail organisations.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed