Reservations & Customer Care Team Manager

Role Purpose

Delivers and executes strategies and initiatives that promote brand preference, drive revenue performance, build customer loyalty, enhance the colleague experience, and drive operational effectiveness. Enables agility within a contact center environment where the team adapts and adopts required change quickly and effectively. Provide supervision to a team of Agents through meetings, feedback, and coaching; reinforce winning behaviors that drive revenue performance, resolution of customer issues, and employee engagement and ensure key business results are met. Utilize Performance Management and Performance Improvement Plans appropriately to improve outcomes and decrease risk for the business.

Key Accountabilities

• Provide timely and consistent feedback and coaching to team members to improve and enhance salesmanship, customer service, problem-solving, both verbal and written communications, and other skills that are necessary to ensure the success of each team member.
• Organize and facilitate productive and informative team meetings that drive learning, and engagement and ensure agents’ understanding of policies and procedures.
• Organize and facilitate culture-building team activities that enable strong collaboration and effective teamwork.
• Facilitate one-on-one catch-ups to ensure open communication and (performance) manage issues with attendance, schedule adherence, and overall efficiency.
• Develop team recognition, incentives, games, and other activities to drive competition and a high-performance culture.
• Serve as primary lead, resource, and decision maker in assisting agents in providing best-in-class contact handling of reservation, loyalty, and service recovery for all guests, hotels, and owners.
• Demonstrate knowledge, passion, and pride in IHG brands. Ensure employees are delivering consistent brand experience at every customer touchpoint.
• Achieve high employee engagement through timely capture and escalation of feedback, thoughtful execution of the colleague journey, and monitoring Colleague Heartbeat participation and score as well as employee retention.
• Perform daily and weekly audits of cases created by team members and fulfill any guest or member issues that are not resolved.
• Deliver consistently elevated and exceptional service when handling guest or hotel escalations in any of the lines of business in scope across all channels and platforms of Luxury and Diamond Elite.
• Responsible for the prevention, care, resolution, and escalation of employee issues for assigned teams.
• Effectively communicate IHG’s purpose, vision, ambition, priorities, and service strategy to team members.
• Create a tailor-fit development plan for team members to facilitate self-awareness and self-correction to improve in current role as well as prepare for lateral or upward movement in the organization.
• Hire and onboard new team members with a focus on ensuring the right people are in place to deliver on the Luxury and Lifestyle service strategy and with the capabilities to handle universal platforms and multiple lines of business.
• Champion, uphold, and demonstrate IHG values, behaviors, and ways of working.
• Take ownership of your own personal development. Understand and consider the impact of own actions on self and others (colleagues, guests, hotels, etc.)
• Enable, support, and facilitate change ensuring that the team adapts and adopts change quickly and effectively. Develop agility and flexibility in self and others.
• Able to work in a hybrid work arrangement or work in the office or an external location as required.
• Able to work across a seven-day period, including weekends, day/evening/overnight shifts, and public holidays as the business requires.
• Ensure knowledge and skill required to evaluate, coach, develop, and support team members and the business are optimized with internal and external training and resources.
• Supervise day-to-day operations and assignments of subordinate staff, plan and organize work, and assist management in implementing functional goals and objectives.
• Communicate goals and objectives to subordinate staff members, and assign/prioritize work in keeping with employee skill levels, workloads, and completion time frames.
• Monitor progress and productivity of staff, and resolve any problems encountered in daily work assignments.
• Recommend and/or initiate salary, disciplinary, or other staffing-related actions in accordance with company rules and policies.
• Monitor and approve staff leave, facilitate requirements for overtime or AWOP, changes in schedules or shifts to maintain sufficient work coverage and manage cost.
• Maximize universal and multiple skills in the team to manage payroll costs by collaborating with other lines of business in monitoring staffing and occupancy levels.
• Reinforce company health and safety policies and guidelines; escalating potentially serious issues to management, HR, Workforce, and Workplace Services.
• Create a sense of accountability among all teams through the proper application of the performance management cycle.
• Participate in tracking and continuous improvement of the colleague journey to drive high employee engagement
• Identify and support all learning/training requirements of each team member to address individual development needs to support business goals and minimize staff attrition.
• Successfully implement and monitor adherence of all team members to Forbes quality audit and other quality control processes that are critical to industry and stakeholder requirements.
• Deliver additional tasks as assigned.

Education
• Bachelor’s degree or higher education preferred but not required.
Experience
• 4 to 7 years progressive work-related experience in a Call Center, sales, or customer support environment as well as demonstrated proficiency in multiple disciplines/processes related to the position.
Technical Skills and Knowledge
• Strong coaching and motivational skills
• Ability to handle difficult conversations and situations
• Advanced internet and computer knowledge and with strong web-based navigation skill
• Basic software and hardware troubleshooting and support, ability to adapt to new technology; effective and efficient use of online communication tools and other systems application;
• Distinguished verbal and written communication skills, and presentation skills
• Excellent organizational and planning skills; ability to prioritize and organize effectively and delegate tasks where necessary
• Exhibits empathy, self-awareness, and sensitivity to diverse background and culture
• Demonstrate knowledge of hotel and contact center dynamics and metrics (service levels, productivity, occupancy, schedule adherence, efficiency, and other related metrics);
• Demonstrate project management experience in organizing, planning and executing small to mid-scale projects.
• Aptitude for interacting will all levels of staff and internal and external business partners using collaboration and influencing skills.
• Bi-lingual skills where required
• Capability to manage hybrid teams
• Capability to perform effective and efficient remote coaching
• Has high EQ which translates to self-awareness, ability to manage self, socially aware or attuned and able to manage relationships
• Can self-regulate along the lines of mental, physical, and emotional well-being while being remotely managed.

Required Skills –
• Ability to understand quality control and assurance guidelines.
• Proficient in recognizing and resolving problems or inconsistencies in transactions.
• Demonstrate knowledge of contact center dynamics & metrics to include:
o relationships Demonstrate understanding between service level and occupancy.
o adherence to schedule, non-phone activities basic queuing principles metrics related to performance and efficiency.
• Demonstrate project management experience in organizing, planning and executing small to mid-scale projects.
• Demonstrate ability in leading work teams and/or technical staff with strong coaching and motivational skills
• Demonstrate effective verbal and written communication – a high level of listening, written, verbal and presentation skills
• Strong web-based navigation skills, and basic technology/telephone troubleshooting and support, ability to adapt to new technology; effective and efficient use of online communication tools and other systems application

Work Environment
• Capable to perform work in a normal office environment (contact center) and remotely (work from home).