Head of Customer Service Planning, Performance & Operational Excellence

Job Req ID: 63776

Posting Date: 19/10/2026

Function: Customer Service

Location: Manchester or Glasgow

Office working: Hybrid, 3 office, 2 home

About the role

This is a key leadership role at the heart of Customer Service, bringing together planning, performance, insight and Operational Excellence to help us deliver better outcomes for our customers, colleagues and business.

You’ll create a clear and forward-looking view of performance, connecting our Customer Service strategy and KPIs with operational, workforce, demand, capacity, financial and transformation plans.

Providing an independent, evidence-led view to the Customer Service Director and Leadership Team, you’ll turn complex data into meaningful insight, spot emerging risks and opportunities, challenge where needed and make sure insight leads to clear decisions and action.

You’ll also lead our approach to Operational Excellence, helping embed the standards, disciplines and continuous improvement mindset that underpin a high-performance culture.

What you’ll be doing

• Lead the integrated planning and performance approach across Customer Service, connecting strategy, KPIs and operational plans.
• Create a single, trusted and forward-looking view of performance across customer, service, quality, people, productivity, cost and commercial outcomes.
• Translate complex data into clear executive insight, identifying performance drivers, emerging risks, opportunities and priorities.
• Shape stretching but credible targets and challenge plans or assumptions where they aren’t aligned to our strategic outcomes.
• Lead performance governance, ensuring issues are surfaced early and gaps have clear ownership, recovery actions and timescales.
• Set and assure our Operational Excellence standards, using insight to identify capability gaps and opportunities for sustainable improvement.
• Partner with Strategic Delivery and Change and Transformation to connect transformation activity to performance outcomes and assess whether expected benefits are being realised.
• Lead and develop a high-impact specialist team while influencing a broad matrix of operational and functional partners.
• Build a culture where insight informs decisions, constructive challenge is welcomed and continuous improvement is part of how we work.

Essential Skills / Experience

• Senior leadership experience in planning, performance, insight, operational excellence or business improvement within a large, complex customer service or operational environment.
• A strong track record of using data, insight and commercial judgement to improve performance, turn strategy into measurable outcomes and influence senior-level decisions.
• Strong people leadership, influencing and communication skills, with experience leading specialist teams and working through complex matrix relationships to create shared ownership and accountability.

Desirable Skills / Experience

• Experience designing performance frameworks, scorecards, KPIs, target-setting and governance.
• Strong operational, commercial and financial acumen, with an understanding of demand, capacity and workforce planning.
• Knowledge of Operational Excellence, continuous improvement, quality management, assurance or maturity frameworks.
• Experience assessing transformation outcomes and benefit realisation.
• Excellent executive communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex information into clear recommendations and decisions.
• Experience within telecommunications, regulated services, complex B2B operations or another large-scale customer environment.
• Practitioner expertise or qualifications in Operational Excellence, Lean, quality, analytics, finance or business planning.

Our Package

Tailored benefits make a real difference. That’s why we offer a comprehensive range to support your growth, wellbeing, and everyday life. You can design the package to suit you and your lifestyle.

Your core benefits include:

• 15% on target annual bonus
• £5,500 annual car allowance
• Market leading Pension scheme – 5% from you and 10% from us
• Private medical insurance
• Access to an online private GP 24/7 for you and your immediate family
• Market-leading paid carers leave with up to 2 weeks off
• Equalized maternity, paternity, and adoption leave – 18 weeks’ full pay and 8 weeks’ half pay
• Discounted EE and BT products, including mobile and broadband
• Holiday purchase scheme You can select additional benefits, including healthcare, dental, gym memberships and more when you’re ready.

Ready to connect for good and help shape the future? Apply now.

Join us at a pivotal moment for BT Business. We are executing a multi-year transformation to restore growth, modernise at scale and unlock new markets beyond connectivity. Our ambition is clear – return to sustainable revenue and EBITDA growth, strengthen our market position, and deliver meaningful shareholder value through disciplined execution and bold reinvention.

We are fundamentally reshaping the business – simplifying our portfolio, digitising our customer experience and building market-leading capability across cyber, AI and managed services, all powered by the UK’s leading fixed and mobile networks. This is a shift from a legacy connectivity provider to a modern, solutions-led, AI-first business that can truly differentiate in a competitive and fast-moving market.

With execution momentum building and a clear path to growth, the opportunity now is to scale what works, accelerate performance and fully realise our potential. This is about delivering against ambitious financial outcomes while transforming how we operate – creating a business that is simpler, faster, more innovative and easier to do business with.

If you want to be part of the team shaping the turnaround of a multi-billion-pound business – and building a stronger, more competitive BT for the future – this is your moment.