Director of Customer Experience
Who Is Pella Corporation?
In the small Dutch Community of Pella, Iowa in 1925, Pete and Lucille Kuyper invested in a new invention – a window screen that rolled up and down like a shade. The couple went on to found a company based on the principles of traditional American values, integrity and the desire to enrich the homes and lives of our customers.
Today, Pella Corporation is still privately owned and continues to be a leader in technology and product innovation. In fact, they've been awarded more than 150 product and design patents. And the team at Pella is as committed as ever to continuing the company's proud heritage of building innovative windows and doors.
At Pella, we want to help you find what makes you an extraordinary team member. That’s why we offer individualized talent development plans, cross-functional experiences, and opportunities for career advancement through personal and professional development.
Our national brand is supported by 7,000+ team members at 17 manufacturing sites and 70+ sales branches across the country who are dedicated to serving our customers with Pella Passion — a way of being that inspires us to go above and beyond for each other, our customers, and our communities. Pella Passion has guided our actions for 95 years and will carry us forward as we capture the rare blend of inspired design and exceptional detail in our work and our lives.
Role Overview:
We are looking for a progressive and
innovative senior level executive leader with extensive background in
developing and executing a best-in-class customer experience and service
organization. This role requires outstanding leadership skills and the ability
to strategize and drive execution on a top enterprise initiative.
As the Director of Customer Experience, this
individual will be responsible for developing the strategic plan and leading of
all aspects of delivering a best-in-class customer experience. This position reports directly to the Chief
Marketing Officer, and therefore, he/she will serve as a
key leader within the marketing organization and will drive and shape the
overall customer experience for the Pella brand. Strong digital acumen and
experience digitizing the customer service experience to further enhance a
strong call center team is required; additionally, he/she will need to be
well-versed in introducing more rigor in customer listening analytics and
porting these insights into the broader Pella business.
With a team of over 150 people, a successful
candidate will be a strong servant-leader who emphasizes and invests in the
development of the team and focuses on creating an environment where Pella team
members will thrive.
Direct responsibilities include
creation of strategic customer experience vision and plan, execution of the
customer experience transformation, all corporate call center management,
quoting/order entry team, escalated support team, field service training, leading
the reliability team and operations support teams.
Key
Responsibilities:
Customer Experience Strategy - Responsible for creating and executing a
holistic strategy to enable a best-in-class customer experience in both the
purchase process as well as the ownership experience; work to create a unique
to Pella, customer experience that enhances the broader Pella brand; must be a
strong influencer and able to not only create the strategy, but influence other
key leaders to adopt it to enable success.
- Lead journey transformations across all operations that touch the customer to address current gaps within the customer experience and drive improvements and new experiences for customers.
- Coordinate, influence, and oversee the execution of customer experience design plans in partnership with brand and technology.
- Lead the customer service digitization project by implementing new technology to enhance the customer experience
- Develop new benefits and services to improve the end-to-end customer journey, based on journey analytics. Oversee the practice of ideation and prototyping experiences and features to address customer pain points and developing the business case for execution/scale up. Pilot and execute solutions and improve processes through a cross-functional execution engine comprising the customer experience, brand, digital, sales, and product management teams.
- Ensure customer experience best practices across the stakeholder groups. Track journey performance and identify opportunities for improvement.
- Champion the continued focus of a company-wide culture of obsessive customer focus
- Leverage analytics and insights to develop a deep understanding of customer behaviors and desires, and ensure these are translated into communication solutions, process improvement, and experience strategy.
- Optimize information share between Success and Support activities to identify gaps in customer understanding and address those through people or technology methods.
Digital Strategy - Work
hand-in-hand with the Director of Digital Marketing to deploy cutting edge
digital tactics to improve the customer experience; evaluate opportunities to
increase efficiencies by leveraging digital platforms; continue to evolve a
self-service platform for the customers both on the B2B and B2C side.
Customer Advocacy – Act as a
customer advocate by driving a customer mindset and cross-channel strategies.
Create a persistent focus on the customer in the actions Pella takes; act as a
change agent and thought leader by capturing and sharing customer experience
best practices across the organization, as well as with partners and customers.
Work with channel and business partners that service Pella customers in
developing meaningful and achievable customer advocacy and customer
satisfaction goals.
Develop a High-Performance Team - Build an
industry leading customer experience organization. Recruit, manage and mentor a
team of approximately 150 professionals capable of driving transformational
change for the organization and staying on top of the evolving customer needs.
Service Excellence - Responsible
for ensuring that team members provide quick and appropriate resolution for all
customer issues. Develop processes to
provide best-in-class customer service during times convenient for customers,
including evenings and weekends.
Effectiveness is measured by items such as time to return calls and
letters, abandoned call rates, ease of contact, and ultimately the Customer
Effort Score.
Advanced Analytics - Establish KPIs and metrics to report on
performance of processes and programs and transform data into actionable insights
and recommendations; develop and implement systems for providing closed-loop
feedback on customer insights to various teams within Pella Corporation. Create processes and tools to analyze the
customer listening data: review customer verbatims, compare results across
product offerings and segments, and work with the Manager of Design and
Insights to identify key trends or outliers.
Call Center
Centralization – complete centralization of all B2C calls for the Pella Direct
Sales Network; identify strategies to attract and retain key talent to enable
this project.
Supervisory
Responsibilities:
This person will initially have three direct reports with overall
responsibility for the direction, coordination, and development of a team of
150+ people across the customer engagement organization; Responsibilities will
also include interviewing, hiring, and training employees; planning, assigning,
and directing work; appraising performance; rewarding and disciplining
employees; addressing complaints and resolving problems.
PROFESSIONAL
EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS:
BA / BS degree; MA or MBA preferred.
(10+) years of involvement in customer experience transformation and exposure/involvement with/to the broader customer service discipline.
Willing to take risks and learn from mistakes to apply better results in the future.
Experience in leading a large team and adept at investing in the development of team members.
Ability to negotiate and build credibility with internal organizations and lead/influence across business lines toward a common goal.
Proven track record of delivering results above expectations.
High digital acumen; understanding of technology (e.g., CRM, EFM, Social Media) and best practices for how to deliver an outstanding customer experience.
Experience with tools and reporting to measure and evaluate customer experience is a plus.
Strategic and visionary thinker.
Excellent written and verbal communication, facilitation, and presentation skills – including the ability to influence at the executive level.
Ability to drive collaboration with cross-functional teams to achieve effective solutions.
Results-oriented, achiever mentality Ability to multi-task, prioritize and coordinate tasks to meet multiple deadlines.
Flexible and resilient, comfortable with ambiguity, adaptable to a high-change environment.
The ideal candidate will be passionate about customer success.
LANGUAGE SKILLS
Ability to read, analyze, and interpret general business periodicals, professional journals, technical procedures, or governmental regulations. Ability to write reports, business correspondence, and procedure manuals. Ability to effectively present information and respond to questions from groups of managers, clients, customers, and the general public.
MATHEMATICAL SKILLS
Ability to work with mathematical concepts such as probability and statistical inference, and fundamentals of plane and solid geometry and trigonometry. Ability to apply concepts such as fractions, percentages, ratios, and proportions to practical situations.
REASONING ABILITY
Ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions. Ability to interpret an extensive variety of technical instructions in mathematical or diagram form and deal with several abstract and concrete variables.
COMPUTER SKILLS
Word and Excel.
CERTIFICATES, LICENSES, REGISTRATIONS
None required.
PHYSICAL DEMANDS The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit and talk or hear. The employee is occasionally required to stand; walk; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms; climb or balance; and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, color vision, and ability to adjust focus.
WORK ENVIRONMENT The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.
