Customer Care Manager

Role & responsibilities

Role Overview:

The Customer Care Manager in a dairy firm ensures that all customer-facing touchpoints whether from milk producers, distributors, retailers, or endconsumers are handled efficiently, with a strong focus on quality, safety, regulatory compliance, and satisfaction. This role often bridges production, quality, sales, distribution, and consumer service.

Here are responsibilities particularly relevant to dairy:

1. Customer Relationship Management

2. Act as primary point of contact for key customers (retailers, wholesalers, farmers, etc.).

3. Understand customer needs for products (milk, cheese, yogurt, etc.), packaging, delivery schedules, quality, etc.

4. Handle escalations — product complaints (taste, texture, spoilage), delivery issues, packaging defects, etc.

5. Quality & Regulatory Compliance

6. Ensure that customer complaints about product quality are investigated, root causes identified, and corrective actions taken.

7. Coordinate with Quality Assurance, Food Safety, and Regulatory departments to ensure that products meet all relevant food safety standards (HACCP, GMP, etc.).

8. Keep up to date with dairyindustry specific regulations (local, national, export).

9. Operations Coordination

10. Work closely with production, supply chain, packaging, and logistics to ensure customer orders are fulfilled correctly, on time, and in good condition.

11. Monitor cold chain/logistics for temperature control, shelflife concerns, transit damages.

12. Customer Feedback & Experience

13. Collect, analyze, and report customer feedback (e.g. via surveys, calls, return/complaints data).

14. Identify trends in complaints (e.g. offflavors, packaging leaks, spoilage) and feed this into process/product improvements.

15. Improve trust/loyalty — ensuring customer communication is clear around delays, quality issues, and resolution steps.

16. Team Management & Training

17. Lead a team of customer care agents or representatives who may be responsible for handling customer queries, complaints, and aftersales service.

18. Train them in product knowledge (e.g. different dairy products, shelf life, storage), food safety, regulatory basics, and customer communication skills.

19. Reporting & Analytics

20. Track key metrics: complaint resolution time, number of complaints by type, returns, product yield loss due to quality issues, customer satisfaction (CSAT/NPS) etc.

21. Share reports with senior management, production, QA, etc., to make datadriven decisions.

22. Continuous Improvement

23. Suggest process improvements within production, packaging, or logistics to reduce customer issues.

24. Work with R&D or product development if new formulations or packaging are needed.

25. Supply Chain & Logistics Collaboration

26. Ensure product transportation, cold storage, and delivery standards are maintained to avoid spoilage or quality degradation.

27. Coordinate with distributors or delivery partners on packaging integrity, timeliness.

28. Communication & Coordination

29. Maintain liaison with sales, production, quality assurance, marketing, and packaging teams to align on product launches, promotional offers, or changes in product specification.

30. Communicate with customers about changes (price, packaging, regulatory, schedule).

31. Crisis & Incident Management

32. Handle major incidents (e.g. product recall, contamination, widespread spoilage).

33. Coordinate recall or discard of products, customer notifications, and ensure compliance with health or regulatory agencies.

Skills & Competencies Required

• Solid understanding of dairy product varieties, shelf life, spoilage causes, quality parameters.
• Knowledge of food safety and regulatory compliance (GMP, HACCP, local food authority laws).
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills; ability to empathize with customers but also enforce quality requirements internally.
• Analytical & problemsolving ability.
• Leadership & team management.
• Good coordination skills across departments (production, R&D, logistics, marketing).
• Customer service orientation; patience, responsiveness.
• Ability to use customerservice software / complaint tracking tools / CRM.

Preferred candidate profile