About the Role
We are seeking an experienced Service Desk Shift Lead to manage day-to-day Service Desk operations supporting a large-scale retail environment. The role is responsible for real-time queue management, team leadership, escalation handling, SLA performance, workforce coordination, and continuous service improvement across onshore, offshore, and nearshore teams.
This position requires hands-on experience supporting retail Supermarkets, distribution centres, supply chain operations, store technology, and business-critical trading periods.
Key Responsibilities
Team Leadership and People Management
- Lead, mentor, coach, and manage Service Desk Analysts across multiple locations.
- Drive a high-performance culture through coaching, feedback, and accountability.
- Support performance reviews, career development planning, recruitment, onboarding, and capability uplift.
- Work with HR and leadership on employee engagement, performance management, and team effectiveness.
Operations and Service Delivery
- Own real-time operational performance across all support channels, queues, and supported business areas.
- Ensure consistent achievement of key service metrics including ASA, abandonment rate, First Contact Resolution, SLA compliance, and CSAT.
- Monitor service queues and proactively manage workload distribution to maintain service stability.
- Act as the primary escalation point for complex, critical, or high-impact incidents.
- Drive timely incident resolution, root cause follow-up, and corrective action tracking.
Retail and Store Support Operations
- Provide operational leadership for support across retail Supermarkets, support centres, distribution centres, warehouses, and corporate users.
- Support business-critical retail technology including POS systems, EFTPOS/payment platforms, store devices, handheld scanners, store infrastructure, inventory applications, and supply chain systems.
- Ensure operational readiness during peak trading periods, promotional events, stocktakes, seasonal sales, and public holidays.
- Coordinate rapid response and restoration activities for incidents impacting store trading, customer transactions, or critical retail operations.
- Understand the business impact of technology outages in a retail store environment and prioritize accordingly.
Workforce Planning and Scheduling
- Forecast call volumes, ticket demand, and staffing requirements to support effective coverage.
- Develop and maintain shift rosters and support coverage models.
- Adjust staffing levels for demand fluctuations, leave coverage, training, transitions, and peak periods.
- Collaborate with stakeholders to align capacity with business priorities and trading requirements.
Training, Quality Assurance and Knowledge Management
- Lead onboarding, cross-skilling, and ongoing capability development for Service Desk teams.
- Drive knowledge sharing and maintain documentation standards across SOPs, work instructions, runbooks, and knowledge articles.
- Oversee quality assurance activities including ticket reviews, call quality monitoring, process compliance, and performance scorecards.
- Identify training gaps and coordinate remediation sessions to improve service quality and consistency.
Change, Transition and Continuous Improvement
- Support onboarding of new services, support functions, teams, and transition activities.
- Coordinate knowledge transfer, operational readiness checks, and go-live support planning.
- Drive continual service improvement using operational metrics, trend analysis, and customer feedback.
- Support business continuity planning, operational resilience, and critical retail event readiness.
Governance, Reporting and Service Management
- Ensure strong ServiceNow governance including ticket quality, categorization accuracy, priority accuracy, backlog ageing, reassignment reduction, and data integrity.
- Produce operational reporting, dashboards, and service performance insights for leadership and customer stakeholders.
- Monitor repeat contacts, reopens, customer effort, resolution quality, and other customer experience indicators beyond headline SLAs.
- Support supplier performance management, contractual obligations, corrective action plans, and measurable continual improvement.
Stakeholder and Customer Engagement
- Build effective relationships with business stakeholders, customer representatives, and internal leadership teams.
- Align Service Desk operations with customer priorities, operational risk, and retail business needs.
- Deliver clear service updates, service review inputs, and performance insights.
- Manage escalations professionally and drive customer satisfaction and service quality outcomes.
Mandatory Skills and Experience
Service Desk Leadership
- Minimum 3-5 years of experience as a Service Desk Shift Lead, Team Lead, Service Desk Supervisor, or equivalent role.
- Proven experience managing Service Desk operations in a large enterprise environment.
- Strong understanding of ITIL and IT Service Management principles.
- Experience managing SLA, KPI, queue, incident, escalation, and operational performance metrics.
- Excellent communication, stakeholder management, analytical, and leadership skills.
- Experience using ServiceNow or a similar ITSM platform.
Retail and Store Support Experience - Mandatory
- Previous experience supporting a retail, grocery, FMCG, or multi-store business environment.
- Demonstrated understanding of retail store operations and trading-critical support requirements.
- Experience supporting POS systems, payment/EFTPOS platforms, store infrastructure, retail applications, distribution centre operations, and supply chain systems.
- Experience planning and managing support coverage for peak trading periods, promotional events, stocktakes, seasonal demand, and public holiday trading.
- Ability to prioritize and manage incidents impacting store operations, customer transactions, and trading continuity.
Technical and Operational Skills
- Strong workforce planning, shift scheduling, and real-time queue management capability.
- Experience managing distributed teams across onshore, offshore, and nearshore locations.
- Strong reporting and data-driven decision-making skills.
- Understanding of quality assurance, knowledge management, and continuous improvement practices.
- Ability to work effectively under pressure during critical incidents and high-volume support periods.
Preferred Qualifications
- ITIL Foundation certification or higher.
- Experience supporting large retail organizations with multiple store locations.
- Experience with workforce management and contact centre operations.
- Vendor, supplier, and outsourced service provider management experience.
