Customer Service Officer

Role overview

An established international shipping and logistics company is looking for a Customer Service Officer focused on service delivery to strengthen its Customer Care function in Harare. The ideal candidate will be customer-oriented, have solid liner shipping experience, and be committed to handling customer relationships, resolving issues efficiently, and supporting a smooth end-to-end shipping experience.

This position serves as the main contact point for customers and requires end-to-end ownership of service cases from the first query through final closure, working closely with internal teams to ensure a high-quality customer experience.

Key responsibilities

• Act as the first point of contact for customer questions coming in through phone, email, and digital channels.
• Own and track customer cases from opening to resolution, making sure turnaround times stay within agreed SLAs.
• Assess customer requests and work with operations, logistics, finance, commercial, and other teams to resolve matters effectively.
• Handle general support needs, complaints, operational exceptions, and special service requests in a professional manner.
• Develop and sustain strong customer relationships through proactive updates and recurring service review discussions.
• Track customer experience using CSAT, Transactional Performance Surveys (TPS), and Net Promoter Score (NPS) input.
• Encourage use of digital customer tools and look for opportunities to offer extra-value services.
• Analyse repeated service problems to identify root causes and suggest improvement actions.
• Follow company policies, cargo release rules, legal obligations, and operational standards.
• Check documentation, process cargo and Bill of Lading releases, handle container deposits where relevant, and keep records accurate in company systems.
• Keep customer records and service history up to date in internal platforms.

Requirements

• A bachelor’s degree or an equivalent tertiary qualification is required.
• At least 5 years of experience in the liner shipping sector.
• A minimum of 2 years in a customer-facing service role.
• Strong practical knowledge of shipping operations, documentation, cargo release workflows, and customer service standards.
• Hands-on experience with LARA across the relevant modules.
• Good understanding of shipping processes, systems, and organisational workflows.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office tools.
• Strong spoken and written communication skills.
• Good analytical thinking and problem-solving ability.
• Ability to manage several customer cases at once while staying calm under pressure and meeting tight deadlines.
• A professional, customer-first attitude with excellent interpersonal and relationship-building skills.

Competencies and performance focus

• Customer service excellence and customer experience management.
• Relationship management and stakeholder engagement.
• Case ownership and resolution tracking.
• Problem solving and decision making.
• Attention to detail.
• Time management and prioritisation.
• Team collaboration.
• Adaptability and resilience.
• Continuous improvement mindset.
• Working with KPIs and service metrics.
• Maintaining SLA compliance.
• Monitoring CSAT, NPS, call response performance, and other customer experience indicators.

Application note

Applicants who meet the criteria are asked to email their resume in plain Word document format to [email protected].