Head of Customer Relations

Halliwell has recently restructured as an Employee Ownership Trust meaning greater engagement opportunities for all colleagues in the improvement of the business as well as greater benefits and rewards when the business performs well and achieves great outcomes for the children in its care.

Halliwell Homes is clinically informed practice encompassing educational, clinical and residential care services. Our objective is to enhance the psychological wellbeing of children within the care system through our Restorative Parenting recovery programme.

**About the role**

The Head of Customer Relations will lead on the development, planning and delivery of the end-to-end customer experience of both current and prospective local authorities. The role will focus on a proactive, customer relations-based strategy. Managing all key stages of our customer journey, the post holder will be responsible for all customer facing communication and engagement channels that enable Halliwell Homes to enhance the relationship with its retained customers and achieve its ambitious mission statement.

The post holder will be accountable for all KPIs across Halliwell’s customer journey and lead on the development and maintaining of a robust customer relations-based business development strategy to ensure effective and transparent referrals processes. The post holder will be responsible for ensuring a proactive, forward thinking and planned approach to referrals and customer retention, as well as increasing conversion and retention rates through increasing customer satisfaction at all stages of the enquirer and customer journey. Understanding of a competitive environment, customer needs and the ability to work creatively and lead with strategic goals in mind are essential to the successful delivery of Halliwell’s customer relations-based strategy.

**Main Duties**

To work alongside the Board of Directors and department heads to set a business development strategy in terms of: market positioning / segmentation, branding and fee structures.

To provide strategic leadership for the development, implementation and successful achievement of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on placement ratio, customer retention ratio, occupancy, transitions and waiting lists - providing regular reports to the Clinical Director and the Board when required.

To ensure the development and maintenance of excellent working relationships with Fostering Agencies nationwide, in order to ensure we are able to deliver on our Restorative Parenting® Programme from end to end.

To work across Halliwell departments to ensure safe and robust transitions for all children on our Programme.

To lead on the promotion of Halliwell Homes through various events, channels and other means, including external and internal marketing channels, Continuous Professional Development days, conferences, provider days and customer visits.

To lead on the promotion of Halliwell Homes’ published literature, ‘Healing Child Trauma through Restorative Parenting - Robinson, C. & Philpot, T. (2016).

To lead on the development and maintenance of contract framework agreements and other engagements designed to promote the Halliwell brand and ensure an appropriate referral pipeline.

To lead and develop a customer relations team to support the growth of the company based on consumer motivation and to become the market leader in the Looked after Children’s Sector. To champion best practice in customer relations and ensure the customer relations’ team members adopt this approach in the discharge of their roles.

To work collaboratively and gain expert credibility at all levels across Halliwell creating an environment thriving on innovation and change to maximise organisational performance.

**The responsibilities of the Head of Customer Relations are**:

- Customer Relations and Customer Experience

Shaping the Halliwell customer relations-based business development strategy to convert and retain more engaged and loyal prospective customers, thus enabling Halliwell to meet its occupancy target on a continual basis in the longer-term.

Developing and implementing an overarching customer communication plan covering enquiry to retention stages, establishing relevant KPIs and providing regular updates on the effectiveness and efficiency of these plans adapting plans to reflect the changing needs of target audiences.

Identifying levels of audience segmentation to deliver personalised customer touch points.

Developing, implementing and overall responsibility for the Occupancy target, conversion and retention ratios.

Setting and achieving ambitious targets for all occupancy related activities and events and monitoring and evaluating insight back to original plans adapting the deliverables.

Streamlining event management procedures across the Halliwell portfolio sharing industry best practice.

Internal stakeholder management managing internal relations with departments that play a piv