Head of Customer Care — Job Description

Role Overview

The Head of Customer Care is accountable for the end-to-end customer support operation across all channels (voice, chat, email, social, in-app) and all geographies. This role typically leads 50–500+ customer care professionals (mix of in-house and BPO) and manages an annual budget of $5M–$20M depending on scale and channel mix. The leader owns the strategy, delivery, tools, and outcomes that keep customer effort low, satisfaction high, and operating costs optimized.

Reporting to the COO or Chief Customer Officer, the Head of Customer Care sets a 12–24 month roadmap aligned to company growth plans (e.g., launching 24/7 coverage by Q2, opening an EMEA hub in 2026, or consolidating three CRMs into one by year-end). The leader is hands-on with operational metrics—service level, CSAT, NPS, first contact resolution, QA scoring, cost per contact—and is comfortable balancing short-term SLAs with long-term automation and deflection initiatives that reduce total contact volume by 10–30% YoY.

Core Responsibilities

Own the global support operating model. Design staffing, shifts, and channel strategy to meet targets such as voice 80/20 (80% of calls answered in 20 seconds), chat <30s average wait, and email 90% within 4 business hours. Build and lead a management layer (Sr. Managers, WFM, QA, Training, Knowledge, and Vendor Management) with clear charters and measurable quarterly OKRs.

Run a data-driven organization. Partner with Product, Engineering, and Marketing to translate customer insights into roadmap items, reduce avoidable contacts (e.g., by fixing top 5 defect types), and instrument a single source of truth for KPIs. Maintain strict financial control over labor, licenses, telephony, WFM, QA, and BPO spend; deliver within ±3% of quarterly budget while maintaining or improving quality.

• Define and enforce SLAs, escalation paths, and service recovery policies (e.g., credits up to $200 per incident with manager approval tiers and root-cause capture in tickets).
• Lead workforce management: accurate volume and handle-time forecasting (MAPE ≤10%), schedule adherence ≥90%, occupancy 75–85%, shrinkage planned at 30–35% for PTO/training/meetings.
• Own tool stack: CRM (e.g., Salesforce Service Cloud), CCaaS (e.g., Genesys/NICE/Five9), chat, IVR, WFM, QA, and knowledge systems; drive ROI by consolidating vendors and automating 15–25% of contacts via bots and self-serve.
• Institute rigorous QA (≥5 evaluations per agent per month) and training (40–80 onboarding hours; 2–4 hours monthly recurrent) with scorecards tied to coaching plans and promotion gates.
• Govern vendor/BPO relationships: multi-site redundancy, rate cards by skill/language, quarterly business reviews, and performance-linked fee adjustments (±5–10%).
• Stand up crisis management and outage communications: status page updates within 10 minutes, proactive email/SMS to affected cohorts, and an internal war-room runbook with RACI.
• Ensure compliance with GDPR/CCPA/PCI/HIPAA as applicable; implement role-based access, data retention policies (e.g., 365-day ticket retention, 30-day call recording purge if PII), and annual SOC 2 controls testing.
• Publish weekly and monthly business reviews with trend analyses, cohort views, and actions prioritized by expected impact (e.g., reduce AHT by 12% via macro optimization and knowledge pruning).

Required Experience and Qualifications

10–15 years in customer support/contact center leadership with at least 5 years leading multi-site or multi-region teams of 100+ headcount. Demonstrated success scaling operations through periods of 2–3x volume growth, while improving CSAT/NPS and reducing cost per contact. Strong command of contact center math (Erlang C, occupancy, shrinkage), forecasting, and capacity planning.

Fluency with a modern support stack is essential: CRM and case routing, omnichannel telephony, WFM scheduling/forecasting, QA platforms, knowledge management, and reporting/BI. Working knowledge of SQL and dashboard tools is a plus; the leader should be able to inspect data quality, define metric definitions, and challenge anomalies. Certifications such as COPC, ITIL, Lean Six Sigma Green/Black Belt, or HDI Support Center Director are valued, as is experience with BPO selection and governance.

Excellent stakeholder management and communication are required—capable of presenting trade-offs to executives (e.g., cost of 24/7 vs extended business hours), negotiating vendor pricing, and coaching managers. Experience operating in regulated environments (payments, health, fintech) and across time zones (NA/EMEA/APAC) is preferred. Bachelor’s degree required; MBA or commensurate experience beneficial. Travel 10–20% for site visits and QBRs.

KPIs and Success Metrics

Success is measured through a balanced scorecard that blends customer outcomes, operational efficiency, and financial discipline. Targets vary by industry, but a mature B2C/B2B support org typically holds CSAT at 88–95%, NPS at +30 to +60, and First Contact Resolution at 70–85% depending on complexity. QA pass rates should exceed 92% with consistent calibration across evaluators.

Efficiency measures include AHT (voice 4–6 minutes, chat 6–8 minutes with 2–3 concurrent sessions, email 10–12 minutes per case), abandonment rate under 5% for answered channels, and cost per contact typically ranging $5–$12 (voice), $3–$8 (email), and $2–$6 (chat). Forecast accuracy should be within ±10% weekly, and annual voluntary attrition held under 25–30% with a robust career ladder and coaching culture.

• Service level: Voice 80/20; Chat ≤30s ASA; Email 90% in ≤4 business hours; Social first reply ≤1 hour.
• Quality: QA ≥92% pass; 100% mandatory compliance checks passed; calibration delta ≤5 points across QA coaches.
• Customer outcomes: CSAT ≥90%; FCR ≥75%; NPS ≥+40 for post-resolution surveys.
• Productivity: Schedule adherence ≥90%; Occupancy 75–85%; AHT within defined band per queue; After-call work ≤45 seconds.
• Financial: Cost/contact within target; Tooling cost/agent/month $60–$150 (CRM/CCaaS core) kept in budget; BPO utilization within ±5% of plan.
• People: 90-day new-hire retention ≥85%; time-to-proficiency ≤45 days; internal promotion rate ≥15% of leadership roles.

Tools, Systems, and Data

The leader standardizes on a primary CRM/case system (e.g., Salesforce Service Cloud or Zendesk), a CCaaS platform (e.g., Genesys Cloud, NICE CXone, Five9), and WFM (e.g., Verint, Calabrio) to unify routing, reporting, and scheduling. Typical per-agent licensing costs range from $60–$150/month for CRM/CCaaS core, plus $15–$40/month for WFM/QA add-ons. Integrations to identity (SSO), billing, order management, and product telemetry enable precise customer context and deflection.

Define canonical metrics and data contracts early: unique customer identifier, ticket/contact taxonomy (reason, subreason), channel, handle times, disposition, and resolution codes. Implement a near-real-time data pipeline to a warehouse (15–30 minute latency) and publish standardized dashboards (executive, operations, quality, finance) with drill-down to agent and queue. Maintain strong data governance: access by role, PII masking/redaction in transcripts/recordings, and retention policies aligned to regulation.

Operating Model and Headcount Planning

Workforce planning is grounded in forecasted volume, AHT, service level targets, and shrinkage. For example, with 1,200 chats/day, AHT 8 minutes, concurrency 2.5, and occupancy 80%, you need roughly (1,200 × 8 ÷ 60 ÷ 2.5) ÷ 0.8 ≈ 64 FTE for coverage before adding 30–35% shrinkage, landing near 86–90 FTE for steady-state operations. Similar Erlang C modeling is applied to calls to ensure the 80/20 target while controlling abandonment.

Plan capacity quarterly and refine weekly; align hiring lead times (4–8 weeks), training slots (15–25 new hires per cohort), and nesting. Use split shifts and part-time coverage for peak windows. Multi-skill agents to balance queues and smooth variability. For global coverage, a “follow the sun” model with hubs in NA, EMEA, and APAC reduces overnight premiums and improves language coverage. Reassess in-house vs. BPO mix semiannually to optimize cost, quality, and resilience.

Compliance, Quality, and Risk Management

Implement layered quality controls: interaction QA, process audits, and compliance checks (PCI redaction, HIPAA minimum necessary, GDPR data subject requests). Train every agent annually on privacy and security; enforce role-based access and 2FA across tools. If handling payments, ensure PCI DSS scope reduction via tokenization and avoid collecting PAN/CSC in free text; for healthcare, align with HIPAA and maintain BAAs with vendors.

Establish business continuity with documented RTO/RPO (e.g., RTO 4 hours, RPO 15 minutes), secondary telephony routes, and at least two physically separate sites or a hybrid in-house/BPO arrangement. Run quarterly disaster recovery simulations and after-action reviews. Track and remediate defects that create repeat contacts; aim to lower top-5 defect-driven volume by 20–30% within two quarters through cross-functional fixes.

Compensation, Benefits, and Career Path

In the U.S., total compensation for a Head of Customer Care typically includes a base salary of $140,000–$220,000, 15–30% annual bonus tied to KPIs, and equity (e.g., RSUs or options in the range of 0.05–0.25% depending on stage). In the U.K./EU, base ranges commonly fall between £95,000–£160,000 / €110,000–€180,000 with 10–25% bonus. Package elements vary by company size, profitability, and location cost indices.

Benefits often include a professional development budget ($1,500–$5,000/year), conference attendance, and leadership coaching. A clear career path spans to VP Customer Experience/Support or GM roles, with scope expansion into Success, Renewals, or Service Delivery. Build a succession plan that develops Senior Managers into Directors within 12–24 months through stretch assignments and MBR ownership.

Interview Process and Timeline

Typical process spans 2–3 weeks: recruiter screen (30 minutes), hiring manager deep-dive (60 minutes), panel interviews covering operations, cross-functional partnership, and people leadership (2–3 hours total), and a case study. The case may include a WFM exercise (staffing to meet 80/20 given forecast/AHT), a KPI deep-dive on a messy dashboard, and a 90-day plan presentation. Final stage includes executive alignment and reference checks.

To express interest, submit a resume and a 1-page overview of a support transformation you led (goals, actions, results) via the careers portal at https://careers.yourcompany.com/roles/head-of-customer-care or email [email protected] with subject “Head of Customer Care — Application.” Please include availability, location preference (onsite/hybrid/remote), and compensation expectations. Standard background and compliance checks apply prior to offer.

What are 5 qualities of great customer service managers?

These five qualities can be discovered by carefully constructing each interview question, which we’ll cover in a moment.

• They are loyal.
• Good employee traits.
• They are natural problem-solvers.
• They are highly conscientious.
• They are persuasive.

What are the skills of a head of customer experience?

Effective CX leadership requires the ability to inspire and manage cross-functional teams. A CX leader must be able to motivate their team, provide clear direction, and foster a collaborative environment.

What are the main responsibilities of a customer service manager?

Duties / Responsibilities:
Resolve customer complaints or answer customers’ questions regarding policies and procedures. Supervise the work of the office, administrative, or customer service employees to ensure adherence to quality standards, deadlines, and proper procedures, correcting errors or problems.

What is the highest position in customer service?

The hierarchy is the following:

• Chief Customer Officer (CCO).
• Vice President of Customer Service.
• Director of Customer Service.
• Customer Service Manager (CSM).
• Individual Contributors.
• Entry Level.