Title: Customer Account Lead

Contract: Permanent, Full-Time

Hours: 35 hours per week

Persona: Agile (20-40% in office and 3-4 days working from home)

Office Location: West Ham Lane, London or Old Trafford, Manchester

Salary: Starting from - £32,881 per annum (London)

£28,886 per annum (Outside London)

Role Profile - Customer Account Lead.pdf

Closing date for completed applications: 4th May 2025 at 11:59 pm

L&Q’s Future Shape Strategy has set Operational Excellence–providing reliable, repeatable, and consistent services–as our key ambition. As we continue to reshape our Income Management Team and ways of working, this is an exciting opportunity for you to join as a Customer Account Lead, where you’ll play a vital role in delivering excellent service to our residents while managing a portfolio of accounts, reducing arrears, and maximizing income.

You will have knowledge of working across the full arrears lifecycle and be able to demonstrate an ability to proactively work with residents in order to assess their needs and find solutions in sometimes complex circumstances.

You will be responsible for managing a portfolio of accounts in a fast-paced and challenging income collection environment. This will vary from early stages of new tenancies, to referring to legal action for possession for rent arrears. You will work with your tenants to help resolve outstanding debt through support referrals, payment arrangements and regular contact attempts via phone/writing. If successful, you will have strong decision-making skills to appropriately refer residents to court for possession proceedings, adhering to pre-court protocol and following Income Collection policies and procedures to help reduce rent arrears.

You will balance being compassionate and empathetic, with the ability to also have challenging conversations when needed. Resilience must be demonstrated within this role, alongside delivering excellent customer outcomes. You will meet KPI targets and numerous deadlines throughout your working day to contribute to the departments mission of reducing rent arrears and maximising income.

Our Customer Account Leads will need to be resourceful and organised in their approach demonstrating an ability to prioritise where required. They will also work well as part of a Team and have the ability to listen, question, influence and negotiate as part of the day to day support they provide to residents and colleagues.

You will have strong collaboration and communication skills, as this role will require you to build relationships with several stakeholders, internal and external. This is paramount to delivering effective solutions to our residents.

If successful, you will report into one of our Customer Account Managers and work as part of a geographical Team managing the full arrears lifecycle.

What You’ll Bring:

To excel in this role, you’ll need:

• Customer Service: Experience of providing excellent customer service in a fast-paced challenging environment. Demonstratable experience of dealing with customers sensitively in challenging circumstances
• Arrears Management: Experience of working across the full arrears lifecycle and a knowledge of welfare benefits
• Problem Solving: Skills and experience to make reasoned decisions, from a range of solutions, based on professional judgement
• Organisation and Time Management: Self-motivated with excellent organisational skills and able to effectively prioritise workload
• Team Working: Able to work with and communicate with colleagues across the organisation in order to find holistic solutions to challenges that might arise across the arrears lifecycle

L&Q is a large, fast-paced, and passionate organisation with a strong mission to combine its social purpose and commercial drive to create homes and neighbourhoods everyone can be proud of.

We are a multi-site organisation, so some roles may require occasional travel between offices, but expenses will be covered.

Why Work for L &Q?

L&Q is not just a workplace; it’s a community. Recognized as one of the UK’s Best Workplaces for Women and certified as a Great Place to Work, we offer an environment where everyone can thrive.

The successful candidate will have access to our full suite of benefits, which includes:

• Generous Annual Leave: Starting at 28 days and increasing to 31 days after 3 years of continuous service.
• Excellent Pension Scheme: Double contribution up to 6%.
• Health Cash Plan: Claim money towards different types of medical services, and access other health and wellbeing offers
• Life Assurance: Generous non-contributory coverage.
• Employee Assistance Programme: Support when you need it.
• Recognition Bonus Scheme: Spot awards for outstanding contributions.
• Family-Friendly Policies: Designed to help you balance work and family life
• Diverse Networking Groups: Join groups like Ability, Kaleidoscope, Inspire & Spectrum.
• Volunteer Time: Up to 21 hours per year to volunteer with the charity of your choice.
• Learning & Development: Commitment to your professional growth.

As a charitable organisation, our role goes beyond providing homes and housing services. We are a long-term partner in the neighbourhoods where we work. We hope to build aspiration, opportunity and confidence in our communities through our £250 million L&Q Foundation and our skills academy.

Our vision is that everyone has a quality home they can afford, and we combine our social purpose with commercial drive to create homes and neighbourhoods everyone can be proud of.

At the foundation of everything that we do are our corporate values and associated behaviours. Our organisational behavioural framework outlines the core expectations of all employees, which should be demonstrated at all times when representing L&Q. More information about L&Q’s values can be found on our website and a copy of our behavioural framework can be provided on request.

Our commitments:

At L&Q, people are at the heart of our business and our success depends on employing the best people and getting the best from them. This is why we are committed to developing our people. It’s only by investing in a well-trained and motivated workforce that we can continue to prosper and sustain business success.

We are committed to supporting your work-life balance and recognise the changing demands and circumstances in life. Please let us know during the recruitment process if you’re interested in part time working or job sharing. In addition, should your circumstances change once you have joined L&Q, you can also request flexible working arrangements, e.g. a change to working hours - if it’s feasible then we’ll make it happen.

We expect all of our employees to support our environmental policy and social responsibility work. We are an employer committed to environmental and social responsibility.

TJ

Customer Account Lead

Location: London - Stratford or Manchester - Trafford

Posted: 14/04/2025

Closing date: 04/05/2025

Closing time: 23:59