About the Role
Sun King is seeking an After-Sales Manager to oversee the After-Sales Operations team across multiple East and South African countries. This critical role involves overseeing all aspects of after-sales operations, focusing on ensuring high customer satisfaction through efficient service delivery, comprehensive warranty management, spare parts coordination, and technical assistance.
This position requires managing a dispersed after-sales team across the East and Southern Africa markets, optimizing operational processes, maintaining strong relationships with customers and service partners, and collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to secure customer retention and achieve best-in-class customer satisfaction.
As the After-Sales Manager, you will work cross-functionally to resolve customer needs, including managing product replacement requests, processing warranty claims, facilitating troubleshooting, coordinating logistics, and conducting service training. If you are a highly effective communicator obsessed with customer satisfaction, this role is an excellent fit.
Key Responsibilities and Duties
Team Management
- Guide, mentor, and develop the After-Sales Operations team across multiple countries in East Africa.
- Set clear performance goals, conduct regular performance reviews, and foster a culture of continuous improvement and customer-centricity.
- Conduct training sessions to enhance the team's customer handling and technical troubleshooting skills.
- Drive professional growth within the team, mentoring members to develop valuable skill sets.
After-Sales Service Management
- Oversee the entire after-sales service lifecycle, including warranty claims, product replacements, returns, and repairs.
- Develop and optimize after-sales processes and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to enhance operational efficiency, reduce resolution time, and effectively control costs.
- Ensure accurate and timely documentation and reporting of all after-sales activities.
Spare Parts & Technical Guidance
- Manage the spare parts supply chain, including forecasting, inventory management, and distribution to service centres and partners.
- Coordinate closely with technical and product teams to provide effective troubleshooting guides and solutions for field issues.
- Oversee the technical training program for service partners and internal teams to improve first-time fix rates.
Customer & Partner Relationship Management
- Build and maintain strong, lasting relationships with a network of service partners, distributors, and key customers.
- Act as an escalation point for complex customer issues, ensuring swift and satisfactory resolution to secure customer retention.
- Proactively gather customer feedback to drive improvements in products and services.
Cross-Functional Partnership
- Work closely with Sales, Marketing, Product, and Logistics teams to find integrated solutions for customers.
- Provide critical insights gathered from the field to help improve product design, quality, and customer communication strategies.
Reporting & MIS
- Use data-focused insights to identify trends, anticipate emerging concerns, and implement proactive strategies.
- Prepare and provide periodic reports on after-sales performance.
- Ensure compliance with company policies and relevant industry regulations.
- Perform any other business as assigned by your supervisor.
Qualifications and Attributes
Essential Requirements:
- Top marks at a top 5 Regional or globally recognised University with a degree in engineering or other relevant disciplines.
- 8+ years of experience in after-sales services operations in the electronic consumer goods, renewable energy, or mobile industry.
- Proven experience managing teams and operations across multiple countries in East Africa.
- Strong knowledge of warranty management, spare parts logistics, and technical service delivery.
- Excellent problem-solving skills with the ability to manage complex customer issues and replacement requests.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to distil information and discern how to communicate to different audiences to get results.
- Data skills, with experience using CRM systems, and interpreting performance metrics to drive operational choices.
- A strong passion for customer service and resolving customer issues.
- The powerful ability to structure problems and drive towards solutions even in ambiguous situations.
- An Entrepreneurial Spirit, characterized by self-direction, innovative thinking, problem-solving skills, and presence of mind.
- A mindset that demonstrates humility.
- A drive guided by the social mission to provide energy to consumers and employment to rural communities.
- A values-centred personality that aligns with the mission.
Desirable Qualifications:
