The Company
The Nile is one of Australia and New Zealand's leading pure-play online bookstore, dedicated to bringing readers closer to the stories and ideas they love. We pride ourselves on offering an extensive selection of books, from bestsellers to niche genres, all delivered straight to our customers doors from around the world.
We maintain an operations team of 40-50 people in the Philippines, which handles all of our customer support and most other backend functions. All of our employees work from home.
The Role
Lead and take ultimate responsibility for the quality and efficacy of our customer service, across all channels.
The Mission
Ensure our customer service meets and exceeds the expectations of our customers.
Role Specifics
- Train our Philippine-based agents (initial onboarding and ongoing) in how to provide customer service, following our standard operating procedures. This included initial onboarding training and ongoing refresher/upskill training
- Effectively educate our Philippines team in what customer service means to Australians and what our customers expect from them.
- Train our Philippine-based agents (initial onboarding and ongoing) in how to provide customer service, following our standard operating procedures. This included initial onboarding training and ongoing refresher/upskill training
- Effectively educate our Philippines team in what customer service means to Australians and what our customers expect from them.
NB: due to their different socio-cultural background, most of our agents enter the company with a very different understanding of customer service, which is not compatible with Australian expectations. Correcting this misalignment is an indispensable part of the role.
- Identify and fix the root cause of every discovered case of poor customer service, so that it does not happen again.
Appropriate fixes will vary according to each case, but may include:
- Identifying and correcting process and/or procedural gaps, coordinating with stakeholders involved, updating documentation and implementing training.
- Adding or completely replacing existing procedures to cover customer service scenarios, when the status quo is defective or inadequate.
- Addressing agent errors or failures through gap training, support and/or appropriate people management.
- Instigating a major reset of mindset, when major failings of culture or understanding emerge.
- Maintain consistency of output and quality of across all agents, through coaching, training and other support.
- Develop the problem-solving skills of agents so they can handle and resolve more complex problems for customers.
Hard Skills/Experience Requirements
Must have:
- Experience managing customer service or customer experience in house for a medium-sized enterprise comparable to the Nile Group.
In house means working directly and exclusively for the company or brand, as opposed to servicing a BPO client or campaign.
You should expect to be directly managing and engaging with small teams (e.g. 2-10 members) and individual contributors.
If your experience and expertise is in handling headcounts in the hundreds and with a strong middle-management layer, this may not be the role for you.
- Relevant work experience outside of a traditional BPO setting (e.g. working for an online retailer or medium-sized startup).
- Must be an active consumer of books: i.e. someone who buys and reads books as a part of normal life. You must be familiar with the terminology and unique characteristics of books.
Good to have:
- Experience working for an Australian company.
- Experience working for an ecommerce company, especially online retail of physical products.
- Experience in the book industry (e.g. bookselling or publishing).
Soft Skills/Cultural Requirements
- Must be a people person who enjoys building and maintaining relationships
- Excellent spoken and written English
- Relaxed and confident dealing with foreigners/non-Filipinos
- Able to work independently and proactively, with limited supervision
- Collaborative and inquisitive mindset
