Interim Team Leader Customer Service in the Energy Sector

Project overview

For our client, a renowned energy supply company, we are currently looking for an experienced interim manager (m/f/d) to temporarily lead a customer service team for private and commercial customers.

Due to an unexpected leadership vacancy, our client requires an interim team leader for a customer service team of around 20 to 25 people. The team handles inquiries via post, email, customer portal, and app. In this special transitional situation, the focus is on stability, building trust, and ensuring daily operations. In addition to establishing uniform working methods and clear responsibilities, the structured reduction of existing backlogs is one of the main tasks to ensure a smooth handover to a permanent successor at the end.

The interim manager reports directly to the divisional management and takes on a purely leadership and steering function without direct case processing.

Responsibilities

Our Requirements

• Taking over the operational and technical leadership of the team, building trust, and establishing clear points of contact and binding decision-making processes
• Creating transparency regarding tasks, responsibilities, incoming volumes, and bottlenecks within the first four to six weeks
• Organizing and prioritizing the processing of customer inquiries while ensuring service quality, customer satisfaction, and legal requirements (data protection, contract law)
• Evaluating existing backlogs and agreeing upon and consistently implementing a prioritized reduction plan
• Analyzing interface problems and optimizing processes, responsibilities, and control routines as needed
• Defining and tracking key performance indicators (e.g., processing times, service levels, complaint development)
• Considering ongoing digitalization measures in operational management
• Documenting results and providing a structured handover of open topics and recommendations to the successor and divisional management
• Professional experience and proven leadership experience in operational customer service or processing teams
• Experience in handling transitional and vacancy situations, high workloads, and diverse teams
• Sound expertise in capacity planning, KPI-based steering, backlog reduction, and quality assurance
• Industry knowledge in the energy sector; experience in customer service at an energy provider is highly advantageous
• Confident use of CRM, billing, document management, and workflow systems, as well as a high affinity for digital systems
• Completed university degree (Business Administration/Economics) or a comparable completed vocational training
• Empathetic, stabilizing leadership personality with a good sense for preserving what works and gently introducing improvements
• Strong communication skills, reliability, customer orientation, and a hands-on mentality in steering
• Native-level German and good English skills, both written and spoken

Project details

Shortly after agreement

Approximately 8 months

Basically up to 2 days remote and 3 days on-site per week in the Oldenburg area

• Start: ab sofort
• Duration: 8 Monate
• Remote: hybrid
• Location: Oldenburg, Deutschland, DE
• Languages: German