Associate Director, Customer Experience - Operations

The Associate Director of Customer Experience Operations is a leader among leaders who drives the success and evaluation of this commitment to our customers. In this role, you will be a thought leader who crafts the path forward and then leads the execution of that plan. You and your team will work with our sales leaders to execute our client’s marketing campaigns, our marketing and product leaders to launch new products, and our partners to execute orders.

At Mspark, the relationships we build with our clients is about so much more than the bottom line. It’s about integrity, partnership, and vision. Our team members are our most valuable asset. Our culture is vital to our success and as such, we seek a leader who will fit well within our organization.

The AD contributes to establishing the department’s vision, goals, and work plan aligning with Mspark’s corporate strategic priorities. This customer-focused leader leverages a systematic approach to improve customer experience, drive operational excellence, facilitate strategic change, and develop the leaders and team. The AD builds relationships with appropriate stakeholders and understands the holistic impact of decisions.

This AD – Customer Experience Operations role is responsible to lead several operational teams and ensure our processes, systems, policies, training, and roles enable the Customer Experience department to meet evolving customer needs and position Mspark to win in the market.

The ideal candidate will possess several key areas of leadership expertise:

• Strategic Thinking: Understanding the corporate strategy and developing plans to achieve the corporate strategy.
• Communication: Able to clearly communicate and persuade others, especially executives.
• Relationship Building: Nurture relationships with customers, sales and other internal partners, peers, and vendors.
• Operational Excellence: Able to solve problems, design processes, implement metrics, use data and reports to understand performance, hold others accountable; Able to deftly navigate details and translate into the big picture.
• Knowledge: Understanding marketing concepts and advertising products.
• Coaching & Development: Observe performance, recognize strengths and accomplishments, coach for growth.

Responsibilities

• Lead the team to meet Mspark commitments.
• Directly support Team Managers and Customer Experience Managers by providing direction and developing them.
• Recognize, reward, coach, and manage performance of team members.
• Address performance and difficult conversations directly with consideration and grace.
• Take ownership of the customer and employee experience.
• Create a culture for employee loyalty and growth.
• Build an inclusive, engaging, and positive team environment that encourages diversity of thought and open communication.
• Delegate to develop leadership.
• Build a culture of experimentation and learning from failure. Empower Team Managers and CXMs to make decisions and fail where risk is low and remediation possible.
• Promote community learning.
• Drive results for customer loyalty and Mspark profitability.
• Create loyalty-building customer experiences.
• Measure performance and hold team accountable for results.
• Establish expectations that lead to stretch performance and continually raise capability through talent development.
• Anticipate challenges and needs that will support future customer expectations, then proactively work to address them.
• Think holistically about business impact when making decisions. Use data analysis to inform decisions. Promote team understanding of trade-offs, downstream impacts, and prioritization within decision-making. Constantly improve processes ensuring alignment with organizational strategic priorities.
• Develop strategy, lead innovation & drive change to improve performance and meet future customer needs.
• Lead the department vision with conviction and remain open to new ideas. Champion innovation in customer experience.
• Develop plans to operationalize new products at launch and then scale for profitability.
• Design and lead change programs to improve customer experience and transform our operation for evolving customer needs.
• Improve customer experience using changes in process, systems, policy, training, organization, and behavior.
• Partner and collaborate with other teams.
• Deepen relationships with customers, internal partners, and vendors.
• Influence beyond the department and navigate conflict with a focus on what is best for customers and Mspark, not individual departments.
• Other duties as assigned.

Performance Expectations

• Create and support a positive, inclusive, and customer-focused team culture.
• Effectively lead, mentor, and develop leaders.
• Establish a clear vision and achieve results through leading others.
• Design and lead large-scale change management programs.
• Build and maintain relationships with varying temperaments and personalities at all levels.
• Prioritize, clear distractions, and focus team efforts.
• Proactively leverage data analysis to guide decisions and develop strategic direction.
• Use independent judgment and resourcefulness to make effective decisions.
• Focus on solutions rather than blame.
• Think creatively, challenge the status quo, exercise courage, challenge appropriately, and inspire the team to operate with a customer-focused mindset.
• Invest deeply in people development.
• Influence and persuade others through articulate and compelling written and verbal communication, Strong presentation skills
• Demonstrate a high level of partnering and collaboration across departments.
• Balance the discipline to be effective and efficient with the flexibility to meet customer needs.

Experience And Skills

• Bachelor's degree and 5+ years customer experience management experience, Required.
• Demonstrated track record of managing production work, leading change programs, and supervising teams.
• Experience in the advertising industry desired.