Customer Service Lead

Rathbones Tailor is an online formalwear hire business. Customers book suits, morning wear and Highland wear through our store, wear them for their event, and send them back. We have been trading for five years, the last eighteen months on our current Shopify site, and have completed over ten thousand rentals.Customer service is where this business lives or dies. A hire order is a promise: the right outfit, on time, a good fit, an easy return. Get that right and customers come back and tell people. Get it wrong and they remember. That is why we treat CS as a function to lead properly, not a queue to clear.Why this role existsThis role steps in to lead our customer service function and own it outright. You are the person the rest of the team brings a CS question to, and the one accountable for how customers are looked after from first enquiry to final return.This is a lead role in the fullest sense. The systems work today, but "work" is a low bar. We want someone to come in, understand how customers actually move through a hire, and rebuild the CS operation so it is faster, calmer and less dependent on any one person. You will not be handed a finished playbook to follow. You will write it.We are actively looking to put new tools and AI to work here. A large share of our contact is repetitive and predictable, which is exactly the kind of load that automation and AI-assisted support can take off a person's plate. We want someone who is hungry to build that, not wary of it: someone who will automate the routine so the human time goes to the cases that actually need judgement.The shape of the jobYou own three things:1. Run the function. Own the customer inbox and the full lifecycle of a hire enquiry: pre-order sizing and fit questions, order status (WISMO), exchanges and size swaps, delivery issues, returns, and late-return chasing. Hit response and resolution targets across the trading calendar, including our summer and pre-Christmas peaks.2. Build the systems, lean on AI. Diagnose where the current process leaks time or goodwill and fix it. That means macros and templates that actually match our situations, clean escalation paths, and documentation that lets a new joiner pick things up in a day rather than a month. Above all it means using automation and AI to take the repetitive volume off people: an AI-assisted triage and response layer for high-volume queries (order status, size swaps, late returns) so the team spends its time on the cases that need a human. You will have real say over the tooling and be expected to make the case for it and put it live.3. Lead it, and keep the Director in the loop. You run this function so it is genuinely handled, not watched over. A short weekly update and a fuller monthly one keep the Director across the numbers, the wins, the pain points and anything that needs a decision at his level. You come with a read and a recommendation, and he clears the path where you need it.First 90 daysLearn the hire lifecycle end to end and shadow the current process before changing anything.Map every recurring query type and its current handling time, and identify the top three drains and which of them AI or automation can take off the team.Ship a first round of improvements to templates and triage on the highest-volume query types, with an AI-assisted layer where it earns its place.Stand up the weekly and monthly reporting rhythm.Produce a written CS operating manual good enough to onboard a new joiner without you in the room.What good looks likeResponse and resolution times hold or improve through a full trading peak.A recurring query that used to take a person now takes a system, and the share of contact handled without human touch climbs quarter on quarter.The Director hears about CS through your reports, not through customer complaints or a problem that has already escalated.Documentation is strong enough that the function does not wobble when someone is off.Customers finish a hire feeling looked after, and come back.Who you areEssentialSeveral years in ecommerce or DTC customer service, including a team-lead, senior or ownership-level role.You have built or meaningfully rebuilt a CS process, not just worked inside one. You can point to something you designed.Comfortable owning a function solo and remotely. You are organised, you close loops, and you do not need someone standing over you.Fluent with helpdesk tooling (macros, workflows, triage, reporting) and quick to learn new systems. Shopify experience is a strong plus.Excited by what AI and automation can do for support. You like the idea of handing repetitive work to good tooling, and you have a feel for where it helps and where a human is still the right answer.Clear, calm written communication. Most of our customer contact is written, and so is your reporting.Genuinely good with people under pressure, including the awkward cases: a late return, a fit that is not right the week of a wedding, a delivery that slipped.Nice to haveExperience in hire, rental, subscription or any model where the same item comes back and goes out again.Hands-on experience deploying AI support tools (AI chat, automated triage, agent-assist, help-centre automation) and measuring what they saved.Experience writing SOPs or operating manuals for others to follow.Not for you if you want to be handed a script and told what to do, or if "lead" to you means running an existing rota rather than improving the thing you inherit.PracticalsFully remote, UK-based. Occasional video calls, otherwise async.Hours: full-time. Expect heavier load in our summer (May–July) and pre-Christmas (October–December) peaks, and a quieter January–March.Reporting: weekly written update and monthly review to the Director.Salary: £35,000, reviewed after your first trading peak.