Head Of Trade Services

Who we are and what we do

We, Hachette UK Distribution, are the leading book distribution company in the UK. We are one of the most advanced distribution centres in Europe, with leading-edge automation and modern systems which will ensure world-class service to customers and publisher clients. We ship in excess of 60 million books globally each year and supply one out of every four books to the UK trade.

Our mission is to make it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity.

Hachette UK Distribution is part of the Hachette UK publishing group.

What you'll be doing

This role is a one-off opportunity within Hachette UK Distribution to lead publisher services, trade customer services and our key accounts team through the next stage of our business transformation.

This is a highly visible role within the business, as well as with our publishers and customers, and will need a blend of both problem resolution as well as a being a true business partner to publishers and customers alike. A high degree of empathy and first-class communication skills, as well as being delivery focussed is essential, as is the character to inspire the team and our publisher clients.

This opportunity will seek to take experiences from non-books markets to develop new ways of working in our industry, enhancing publisher/customer self-service and increasing service effectiveness by implementing process automation and other AI tools where beneficial.

Acting as a lead for service improvement initiatives, this role is a significant business enabler in strengthening our position on long term, sustainable and commercially attractive relationships with publishers, ensuring we identify and take advantage of service innovations to excel in our service offer and support the future needs of our publishers.

You will help to maintain our number one position in the market by working closely with customers and publishers to ensure we are constantly meeting ever changing customer and publisher needs and by building partnerships with our suppliers so we can maximise the value of the services they provide in terms of service experience or productivity.

A key goal is to evolve the service we provide from being reactive to being proactive, alongside using process automation/AI to remove or automate low value activities, so teams can focus on activities that are highly valued by publishers and customers.

A strong leader with proven client and customer relationship, and project delivery skills, you will be responsible for identifying and implementing continuous improvement opportunities and will draw on your commercial and client relationship knowledge to challenge our existing ways of working.

You will be curious and able to bring ideas into the business through attendance of conferences, seminars, webinars etc. and/or reading articles etc. or through supplier relationships.

Following your initial training period which will be office based (in Didcot, Oxfordshire), you will be able to make the most of the current hybrid model. The hours will be 9am to 5pm (35 hours per week) with a one hour lunch break working Monday to Friday.

Who we are looking for

Do you have proven experience of successfully building and managing customer services or client services teams? Also, a track record of building, transforming, and sustaining client relationships and delivering improvements to service across a diverse range of clients? If so, this is the role for you.

In addition, you will have proven capability of delivering technical change, particularly self-service or process automation (AI), and have experience of project management, especially around continual improvement.

With excellent leadership, negotiation, and organisational skills you will thrive in empowering, developing and coaching others to help them achieve their potential. You will possess excellent communication skills, written and verbal for dealing with a wide range of clients, customers and your team. You will also have the ability to influence others and use strong analytical and problem-solving skills to provide insight and sound judgement.

You will also have strong commercial and business awareness and be able to translate strategy to action for clients, customers and your team.

What we offer

Our people are our greatest asset and our benefits reflect this. Therefore, we offer an extensive list of benefits that include:

• 33 days annual holiday including Bank Holidays
• Pension Plan and Life Assurance schemes
• Company enhanced family policy including maternity, paternity and shared parental
• Reward programme giving discounts, savings and cash back at numerous retailers
• 2 Community Days per year
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Eye care vouchers
• Generous discounts on books we publish
• Mental Health First Aiders / Champions and an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)
• Wide-ranging training library
• Development Programmes including Mentoring
• Staff Events e.g. Burrito van, Pie van, Ice Cream van, Staff Party
• Many employee networks to join
• Free onsite parking
• Free tea and coffee
• Creating an environment of inclusion so everyone can be their true self

Our commitment

Hachette employs people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to attract and develop talent from a base as broad as the world of readers we want to reach, with a wide and representative range of age, faith, disability, race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic, regional and cultural backgrounds.

If you are shortlisted and need us to make any adjustments to help you attend for interview, please let us know.

We will notify all candidates of the outcome of their application.