Head of Customer Experience | CX Strategy & Leadership

🎯 Role Definition

As the Head of Customer Experience, you will be the chief advocate for our customers, responsible for architecting and executing a holistic strategy that ensures a seamless, positive, and memorable journey across all touchpoints. This executive leadership role involves building and mentoring a high-performing team, leveraging data to drive decisions, and collaborating across the organization—from Product to Marketing to Sales—to embed a customer-first mindset into our company's DNA. You will own the entire post-purchase lifecycle, from onboarding and support to retention and advocacy, ultimately driving key business outcomes like customer satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and lifetime value.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Director of Customer Support or Service
Senior Customer Success Manager/Director
Head of Operations in a customer-facing business

Advancement To:

Chief Customer Officer (CCO)
Chief Operating Officer (COO)
VP, Global Customer Operations

Lateral Moves:

Head of Product
Head of Revenue Operations

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Architect, implement, and continuously refine the company's overarching customer experience strategy, ensuring alignment with our brand promise and business objectives.
Lead, mentor, and scale a multi-disciplinary CX department, including Customer Support, Customer Success, CX Operations, and Voice of the Customer (VoC) teams.
Define, monitor, and own all key performance indicators for customer experience, including Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES), churn rates, and resolution times.
Develop and maintain comprehensive customer journey maps to identify critical interaction points, uncover pain points, and design friction-free experiences.
Champion a customer-centric culture throughout the entire organization by influencing processes, policies, and product development with customer insights.
Establish and manage the budget for the Customer Experience organization, ensuring strategic allocation of resources to maximize impact and ROI.
Oversee the CX technology stack, leading the evaluation, selection, and implementation of tools such as CRM, helpdesk software (e.g., Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud), and analytics platforms (e.g., Qualtrics, Medallia).
Design and execute a robust Voice of the Customer (VoC) program, systematically gathering, analyzing, and distributing customer feedback from surveys, reviews, and support interactions to drive actionable improvements.
Collaborate closely with the Product and Engineering leadership to translate customer feedback and behavioral data into tangible product enhancements and a prioritized roadmap.
Partner with Marketing and Sales leadership to ensure a consistent brand voice and a seamless handoff from the pre-sale to the post-sale customer lifecycle.
Develop and enforce scalable processes for customer issue resolution, including tiered support structures and high-touch escalation paths for critical incidents.
Drive the strategy for customer self-service, including the development of comprehensive knowledge bases, community forums, and automated support solutions to improve efficiency.
Deliver regular, insightful reports on CX performance, trends, and strategic initiatives to the executive team and Board of Directors.
Create and implement world-class onboarding programs for new customers to accelerate their time-to-value and ensure long-term success.
Analyze customer data and segmentation to develop proactive engagement strategies that mitigate churn risk and identify opportunities for expansion.
Act as the ultimate point of escalation for sensitive customer issues, demonstrating impeccable problem-solving and communication skills.
Foster a culture of continuous improvement within the CX team, encouraging innovation, data-driven experimentation, and professional development.
Stay at the forefront of customer experience trends, technologies, and best practices to ensure our company remains a leader in customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Set clear, ambitious goals and performance standards for the CX organization, establishing a framework for accountability and recognition.
Design and lead training programs on customer empathy, communication, and service excellence for both the CX team and the broader organization.
Standardize and optimize support operations across all channels (email, phone, chat, social media) to create a truly omnichannel and consistent customer experience.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis to uncover new customer insights for various departments.
Contribute to the organization's broader data governance and strategy discussions, advocating for data quality and accessibility.
Collaborate with business units to translate high-level data needs into specific, actionable engineering and analytics requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies with related technical teams to ensure CX priorities are represented.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

CX & CRM Platforms: Deep expertise in managing and optimizing platforms like Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud, Intercom, or similar enterprise-grade systems.
Data Analysis & BI Tools: Proficiency in analyzing customer data and deriving insights using tools such as Tableau, Power BI, Looker, or advanced Excel/Google Sheets functions.
VoC & Survey Tools: Experience designing and managing programs with platforms like Qualtrics, Medallia, SurveyMonkey, or Delighted.
Budget & P&L Management: Demonstrated ability to develop and manage departmental budgets, forecast resource needs, and report on financial performance.
Process & Journey Mapping: Skilled in using tools like Lucidchart, Miro, or Visio to visualize complex customer journeys and internal workflows.
Project Management Methodologies: Familiarity with Agile, Scrum, or other frameworks for managing complex, cross-functional initiatives.

Soft Skills

Transformational Leadership: Proven ability to inspire, develop, and lead large, diverse teams towards a common vision, fostering a positive and high-performance culture.
Strategic & Systems Thinking: Capacity to see the big picture, connect disparate processes, and build long-term strategies that scale with the business.
Exceptional Empathy & Communication: Ability to deeply understand customer needs and articulate complex ideas, strategies, and performance results clearly to a wide range of audiences, from support agents to the C-suite.
Cross-Functional Influence: A natural collaborator who can build strong relationships and influence stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Sales without direct authority.
Data-Driven Decision Making: A strong bias for using quantitative and qualitative data to diagnose problems, guide strategy, and measure success.
Change Management: Adept at navigating organizational change, building consensus, and guiding teams through transitions in technology, process, or strategy.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's Degree in a relevant field.

Preferred Education:

Master of Business Administration (MBA) or a Master's degree in a related discipline.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Business Administration
Marketing or Communications
Psychology or Sociology

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 12-18+ years

Preferred:

A minimum of 12+ years of progressive experience in customer experience, customer success, or customer support roles.
At least 7+ years of experience in a senior leadership capacity, with a proven track record of building and managing teams of 50+.
Verifiable success in scaling customer-facing operations in a high-growth environment (e.g., SaaS, D2C, or technology).
Extensive experience designing and executing strategy based on key metrics like NPS, CSAT, and customer churn.
Experience managing a significant departmental budget and owning CX technology procurement and implementation.