Director, Customer Experience Planning and Integration

Location: Sacramento, CA, US,

Category: Customer Service

Minimum Pay Rate: $184,350.40

Maximum Pay Rate: $256,776.00

Civil Service Status: Non-Civil Service

Apply by Date: 08/23/2024

Posting Type: Open

Note: This position is being reposted to gather additional candidates for consideration. If you have already applied, you do not need to reapply.

Customer and Community Services (CCS) is seeking a passionate and community minded director to provide leadership for the Customer Experience (CX) Planning & Integration department. The incumbent plays a pivotal role in ensuring exceptional customer experiences across all touchpoints and advancing CCS's CX framework. As a member of the senior leadership team, the incumbent has influence and responsibility for driving SMUD's 2030 Clean Energy Vision, which includes creating frictionless zero carbon adoption for customers. Candidates should be energized about working on SMUD campus Tuesdays-Thursdays.

This is a new role that oversees customer experience strategy and planning, channel management and agile deployment, and supports SMUD's Community Energy Services program delivery and project integration. The incumbent will guide the team's efforts to develop customer experience strategies aligned with the company's overall objectives, analyze customer feedback, market trends, and competitive insights to identify areas for improvement, and create comprehensive plans for implementing customer experience initiatives. This involves developing new processes, improving existing ones, or implementing new technologies to enhance the customer journey across channels and digital assets. This role will work closely with various departments such as marketing and customer programs to ensure alignment and integration of customer experience initiatives across the organization. The incumbent will also be responsible for oversight of the portfolio of CX enhancements, agile projects, and other initiatives to ensure alignment to overall strategic and business unit goals and will partner with IT and other departments to facilitate successful implementation.

The most qualified candidate will have significant leadership experience and a demonstrated ability to build foundational elements of a thriving team, including efficient processes, structures, and engagement. They will demonstrate passion for creating exceptional customer experiences and operating in a way that's easy, responsive, trust building, and community minded.

Please note: this is a non-civil service status position.

See "Supplemental Questions" section below. Failure to respond to the questions may preclude you from moving forward in this process.

Supplemental Questions

Please attach a document with your response to the following questions (1 page maximum). Failure to respond may preclude you from moving forward in this process. Please do not indicate "refer to resume" as a response to the questions as it will be viewed as incomplete.

1. Describe how your experience has prepared you to be successful in this role.
2. Tell us why you are passionate about doing work that supports a healthy, inclusive, sustainable, and thriving community in the Sacramento region and SMUD territory?

Purpose

To manage and provide direction and accountability for Customer Experience Planning and Integration to include managing operations, resources, and functions associated with and accountable for the planning, design, development, and implementation of SMUD's customer-facing programs and service enhancements through channel engagement and other related operational functions for our customers and clients; develops strategic and operational planning to prioritize deliverables and allocates resources necessary to ensure effective planning and execution of programs and services.

Nature and Scope

This is a department director level position. It is distinguished from other director positions by its emphasis on Customer Experience planning and integration. This position provides ongoing direction and management control to ensure the ongoing reliability and efficiency of customer services business operations.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Provides management, direction and accountability for championing customer experience and integration into planning, designing, developing, and implementing SMUD's customer-facing programs through channel engagement and other related operational functions for our customers and clients.
• Directs teams in the strategic and operational planning of all customer-facing programs and coordinates the implementation of these programs across the Customer & Community Services (CCS) business unit and within other departments across the organization.
• Manages the development of a program portfolio to meet the Board's Strategic Directives and provide a range of services to customers based on the customer segments' needs and wants.
• Communicates in a variety of public forums and events with the public, business stakeholders and community organizations to present and explain information and influence direction regarding SMUD's strategic and operational program development and delivery.
• Supervises staff in prioritizing concepts and ideas, performing financial analysis, development risk and sensitivity scenarios, assessing potential markets, assessing customer acceptance and participation, conducting competitive assessments, researching technical feasibility issues and obstacles, and summarizing information for management issues that SMUD's products and customer service programs are optimally designed and implemented, meet customer needs, and provide customer benefit.
• Broadens new products/services delivery channels by developing and maintaining constructive relationships with multi-party entities seeking to deliver new products/services via regional or national strategic alliances and wishing to utilize SMUD's endorsement and/or support in launching their own innovative products/services; acts as a consultant on internal/external department projects by assisting with identifying project objectives, the project team, and delivering recommendations.
• Provides financial acumen to enable overall financial management of business unit including cost management and budget development, implementation, and monitoring.
• Assists in the development and maintenance of performance metrics to measure progress against performance targets and provide recommendations and implementation strategies to evaluate and achieve best practices.
• Hires, trains, directs, manages, and motivates a high-performance team to meet departmental goals and objectives; coaches, guides and evaluates the work of staff and provides development opportunities that increase staff expertise.
• Keeps abreast of developer customer experience trends, patterns, and issues; evaluates current trends and identifies if existing policies or procedures should be modified to better serve our customer operations; monitors competitor services for impact to existing operations; and creates solutions to business issues based on customer input and business strategies.
• Performs other related duties as needed to include working outside of typical business hours when necessary.

Required Education

• Bachelor's degree in applicable discipline or equivalent years of relevant experience. If no degree, a minimum of 11 years of relevant experience is required.

Required Experience Qualifications

• At least seven (7+) years of extensive experience in the planning, design, development, and implementation of customer-facing programs through channel engagement and other related operational functions for our customers and clients.
• At least five (5+) years of supervisory and/or management experience which demonstrates the ability to provide direction and effective management of a diverse workforce, meeting customer needs and achieving operational objectives.

Read the full posting.