Position Overview

CareerWise Colorado is a nationally-recognized startup nonprofit organization that is shaping Colorado's workforce through innovative, business-led youth apprenticeships. Through our work, we help businesses fill high-demand positions through apprenticeships that create real value and positive return for businesses. This innovative approach has captured the attention of business, government and education leaders across the state and country. Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, the Director of Customer Success will help us further develop and lead our Customer Success organization to continuously improve upon the quality of our support and overall experience and success of our employer partners. The position requires a customer first mindset, business strategy expertise, deep knowledge of our youth apprenticeship program, a hunger to continuously improve and codify our work, and previous customer success or account management leadership experience.

Given our business model, where our employer partners pay us over time, Customer Success is absolutely vital to our long-term sustainability. We will not be successful unless our employer partners are receiving significant value from our program and team. As such, we need a senior executive to own driving success for our customers. This role includes responsibilities Customer Success activities (e.g., onboarding, training, support, services, retention, etc.) and outcomes (e.g., identifying opportunities for up-sell, etc.).

Responsibilities:

Define and Optimize Customer Lifecycle

• Map customer journey of our employer partners
• Develop listening points in journey (e.g., usage, satisfaction, etc.)
• Standardize interventions for each point in journey
• Define segmentation of employer partner base and varying strategies
• Identify opportunities for continuous improvement
• Learn from best practices in industry

Manage Customer Success Activities

• Manage and structure team to effectively implement Customer Success Activities:
  • Onboarding of new employer partners
  • Training of supervisors, HR leaders and business unit leaders
  • Incentivizing ongoing compliance with ongoing program implementation needs in a timely fashion (e.g., interviewing apprentices, use of training plans, participation in trainings, tracking student outcomes, etc.)
  • Customer Support as challenges with apprenticeship arise, including working closely across departments to problem-solve individual student challenges
  • Proactive communication and feedback-gathering from employer partners
  • Identification of cross-sell / up-sell opportunities to increase youth apprenticeship programs within existing employer partners and communication of those opportunities to our Business Partnerships team
  • Advocacy and cultivation of employer evangelists who will promote the program among prospective partners

Codify and document Customer Success Activities

• Drive toward increased codification of all Customer Success Activities
• Drive toward increased documentation of all Customer Success Activities
• Create tools for employer partners to increase ease and quality of partnership
• Enhance effectiveness and efficiency of work through technology where possible

Drive Customer Success Outcomes

• Support high-quality customer experiences that lead to increased renewal rates among employer partners and reduced churn
• Expand our revenue within accounts through identification of opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell
• Influence future lifetime value through higher adoption of youth apprenticeships, customer satisfaction and overall health scores
• Drive new employer partner growth through greater advocacy and reference-ability

Measure Effectiveness of Customer Success

• Define operational metrics for team
• Establish system for tracking metrics
• Create cadence for review within team
• Expose subset of metrics to executive team, company and board

Lead World-class Customer Success Team

• Attract high potential individual contributors into team
• Create rapid onboarding process for new team members
• Foster collaboration within team and across customer lifecycle
• Encourage continuous learning within team, including through regular two-way feedback and performance management
• Act as strategic resource planner who can evolve and grow the Customer Success team as organizational needs change with program expansion

Inspire Customer Success Across Company

• Create company-wide culture of Customer Success
• Align with Sales around cross-sell and up-sell and focus on selling with a retention focus
• Align with Marketing around marketing to existing clients
• Align with Product around driving product roadmap (e.g., training plans & systems)
• Align with Finance around measurement and forecasting
• Align with Executive Team around key metrics and objectives
• Drive company-wide definition of ideal customer
• Create company-wide customer feedback loop

Required Experience/Skills:

• 5+ years experience in leading customer-facing organizations (e.g., customer/client success or similar teams)
• Ability to manage influence through persuasion, negotiation, and consensus building
• Ideally combined background of post-sale and sales experience
• Strong empathy for customers AND passion for revenue and growth
• Deep understanding of value drivers in recurring revenue business models
• Analytical, systems- and process-oriented mindset
• Demonstrated desire for continuous learning and improvement
• Enthusiastic and creative leader with the ability to inspire others
• Excellent communication and presentation skills
• Previous experience in program management and service delivery preferred
• Demonstrated interest in or passion for education or workforce-related work preferred
• Familiarity with working with HR teams and leaders a plus
• Familiarity with Salesforce a plus