Data Scientist Lead - Contact Centre & Customer Experience Analytics at Shoprite Group of Companies

Job Objectives

• Lead the design and development of advanced, real-time Contact Centre dashboards that provide actionable insights for operational and strategic decision-making.
• Support strategic decision-making by providing data-driven recommendations to leadership.
• Translate business questions into analytical views and communicate findings.
• Act as a business advisor to the Contact Centre team with a focus on data analytics.
• Collaborate with real-time analysts and workforce management teams to optimise queue management, staffing, and service levels using predictive analytics. Act as the golden thread with the analysts, agents and leadership.
• Drive the automation of manual reporting processes, identifying opportunities to implement scalable, system-based solutions.
• Develop and maintain machine learning models to analyse unstructured data and provide insights
• Champion data visualisation best practices, ensuring insights are communicated clearly and effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Partner with IT and business stakeholders to define and implement a long-term data strategy for the Contact Centre.
• Lead the integration of disparate data sources (e.g., CRM, IVR, ACD, QA, CSAT, Social Media technologies) into a unified analytics environment.
• Design and maintain data pipelines for real-time and batch processing.
• Build predictive models to forecast interaction volumes and staffing needs.
• Train Natural Language Processing (NLP) models to classify interactions and automate tagging of contact reasons.
• Optimise call routing algorithms using data-driven insights to improve first-call resolution.
• Ensure data privacy and compliance with regulations in all data processes.
• Implement anomaly detection systems to flag unusual call patterns or potential fraud.
• Collaborate with IT and engineering teams to deploy models into production environments.
• Support budgeting and cost optimisation through data-driven analysis of call centre operations.
• Ensure data accuracy and integrity in all reporting and analysis.
• Support compliance reporting by providing accurate and timely data extracts.
• Mentor and coach junior analysts and data professionals, fostering a high-performance, data-driven culture and a cross functional team.
• Conduct deep-dive analyses into customer journeys, pain points, and behavioral trends to inform CX improvements.
• Design and implement data pipelines and ETL processes to ensure timely and accurate data availability.
• Collaborate with product and digital teams to align Contact Centre insights with broader omnichannel strategies.
• Evaluate and be proactive in recommending new tools, platforms, and technologies to enhance the analytics ecosystem.
• Ensure data governance, quality, and compliance across all Contact Centre analytics initiatives.
• Translate complex data into compelling business cases that drive investment in customer experience and operational improvements.
• Co-develop and maintain performance scorecards for agents, teams, and campaigns, aligned with business KPIs.
• Support A/B testing and experimentation to evaluate the impact of new processes, scripts, or technologies.
• Lead cross-functional analytics projects, managing timelines, deliverables, and stakeholder expectations.
• Stay abreast of industry trends and innovations in AI, NLP, and Contact Centre technologies.
• Continuously assess and improve the maturity of the Contact Centre analytics function, setting benchmarks and driving innovation.

Qualifications
Essential

• Bachelor’s or Honour’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field.

Experience
Essential

• +6 years of experience in data science, analytics, or business intelligence.
• Proven experience in developing and managing dashboards using tools like Power BI, Tableau, or Qlik.
• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and version control tools (e.g., Git).

Desirable

• +2 years of experience in a Contact Centre or customer operations environment.