Job Description

About Us  

The King’s community is dedicated to the service of society. King’s Strategic Vision 2029 sets out our vision for the future, shaped around five priority areas: educate to inspire and improve; research to inform and innovate; serve to shape and transform; a civic university at the heart of London; and an international community that services the world. Our ambitious Education Strategy sets out the actions that we must take to transform how we teach, how and where our students learn and how we support them during their time with us. 

The Student Knowledge & Information department brings together colleagues who are focussed on helping students to get the information they need quickly and easily and also to engage with their programme and university life more broadly, through management of inbound enquiries and service requests, static and dynamic digital content, and outbound communications. Our remit covers all King’s students, from enrolment to graduation. 

Student Knowledge & Information is part of the Students & Education Directorate, a collection of wide-ranging professional services in place to support King’s students and their education. As a directorate we manage the student lifecycle from application to graduation, to ensure a coherent and seamless student experience and effective administrative processes, working closely with King’s faculties to do so. 

About the Role

The Head of Student Enquiry Management will lead a team, and be a subject matter expert, in the key operational service area of student enquiries, ensuring the senior team, and wider Directorate, are fully supported with effective processes and systems across a wide range of business and operational workstreams. 

Heads of Service have operational responsibility for a defined portfolio of education and student professional services, as: 

•       A departmental lead within the Students and Education Directorate; or 

•       Project/programme/departmental lead within an academic faculty; or 

•       the lead of defined divisional-wide initiatives 

Heads of/Senior Managers work within and across teams and functions, engaging with a wide range of colleagues across King’s. They contribute and lead on activities which positively impact the student experience. This includes ensuring: 

•       Close working with their Associate Director, and across organisational boundaries, to identify and action opportunities to improve efficiency and consistency of service (or project) delivery  

•       Efficient resource utilisation and organisation of work resources within their department (or project) 

•       Proactive engagement with service users and stakeholders to facilitate mutually effective working relationships  

•       Their department (or project) embeds a culture of service, transparency and continuous improvement  

Heads of /Senior Managers will have an understanding of the priorities, cultures and pressures of a research-led university and of academic processes and the structure of the academic year. 

The Head of Student Enquiry Management leads the Student Services Frontline team’s day-to-day operations and is responsible for ensuring continued successful delivery of business-as-usual enquiry management and meeting our defined service level agreements (SLAs).  

Student Services Frontline is King’s central team for enquiry management. Supported by a comprehensive knowledge bank (Student Services Online), the team handle a wide array of enquiries from current students, alumni and third parties, received through online enquiry forms, over the phone, through webchat and in person at our help desks.  

This is an exciting opportunity for candidates looking to drive excellent customer service in a challenging and complex environment, and who wish to utilise their skills and expertise in leading and motivating a diverse team. This is an opportunity to grow your skills in digital enquiry management through customer relationship management (CRM) software within a major higher education organisation. 

We encourage applications from candidates who have experience from both within and outside of the Higher Education sector where they can demonstrate the skills needed to succeed in this role.

This post will be offered on an indefinite contract. 

This is a full-time post. Our necessary student-facing service operating hours are 9am – 5pm.

Key responsibilities

• Oversee all day-to-day operations in the Student Services Frontline team, providing support and guidance to managers around staff recruitment, induction, training and development; documentation of processes and knowledge sharing; and other business-as-usual activity. Develop expert knowledge on all relevant processes and policies.   
• Contribute to the development of the student enquiry management strategy and direct its implementation in defined annual plans. 
• Enhance productivity within the team to ensure we are consistently meeting our service level agreements (SLAs) to enquirers. Guide managers in planning resource across the team to maintain a high-quality service across enquiry channels, while supporting them to also develop their direct reports’ individual effectiveness.   
• Act as point of escalation for highly complex or urgent student cases and own decision making.  
• Lead on review of qualitative feedback as well as investigation and resolution of complaints, ensuring lessons learnt are used to continuously improve service. 
• Build a positive culture within the team, promoting openness, trust, constructive feedback, empowerment, ongoing professional development, celebration of success and collective responsibility. Motivate colleagues while protecting staff wellbeing. 

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.  

Skills, knowledge, and experience 

Essential criteria  

•       Relevant work experience and/or education: We think a wide range of different work and educational experiences could support you to be successful in this role. Relevant work experience might include work in enquiry management in higher education, or leading customer service excellence in large and complex organisations. Relevant educational experiences might include higher education in a related discipline, professional qualifications or other training. 

•       Ability to engage in collaborative working across King’s professional services, Faculties, and academic and student communities, with a meaningful and visible commitment to Diversity & Inclusion policies and practices 

•       Experience of working in a federated environment where facilitation and networking skills are core to resolving complex cross departmental problems 

•       Experience leading a successful team in a results-oriented customer service environment. 

•       Developed leadership and interpersonal skills, with a proven ability to motivate and inspire a team and enhance performance.  

•       Experience using CRM (customer relationship management) software. 

•       Ability to manage the workload of yourself and your team in a fast-changing environment and meet challenging deadlines. 

•       Ability to work with others to deliver organisational strategic objectives and overcome challenges. 

•       Excellent working knowledge of data protection laws and compliance best practice (such as GDPR).  

•       Effective knowledge of key programmes in the Microsoft Office suite like Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams. 

Desirable criteria

•       Experience in leading an organisation’s efforts to achieve the Customer Service Excellence standard or a similar accreditation. 

•       Experience using Microsoft Dynamics 365 customer relationship management (CRM) software for customer service. 

•       Adept at maintaining progress on multiple agendas and projects simultaneously 

•       An understanding and working knowledge of governance in the higher education sector, and the regulatory and legal arrangements for UK university governance 

Further information

Your application should clearly set out how you meet the essential criteria as this is how we shortlist applications. Learn more about how we recruit, including tips on writing your application and supporting statement on our website:   https://jobs.kcl.ac.uk/gb/en/applying     

Interviews will be held using Microsoft Teams and will consist of competency-based questions linked closely to the essential and desirable criteria mentioned here. 

Although we have made improvements over the last number of years, our team is still under-represented in terms of staff from global majority ethnicities, LGBTQ+ identities, and from people with disabilities. We encourage applications from all backgrounds, communities and industries, and are committed to employing a team that has diverse skills, experiences and abilities. 

Interviews are scheduled to take place on Wednesday 14 September 2022.