Director, Customer Success Operations

$184,000 - $276,000/Yr

Klaviyo - Boston, MA

Full-time - Senior

Boston, MA

Publishing Industries

About the position

Klaviyo is seeking a Director of Customer Success Operations to join our growing Go-to-Market Operations organization. In this role, you'll report to the Sr. Director of Customer Success & Support Operations, partnering closely with global Customer Success leadership. You'll play a key role in aligning Customer Success Operations with the overall Go-to-Market strategy, ensuring a seamless customer experience from acquisition to expansion. This position is critical in supporting strategic Customer Success initiatives, business process transformation, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and rules of engagement for Customer Success Managers (CSMs). You will drive CSM coverage models, manage compensation, and support regional CS leadership in renewals, retention, and expansion efforts. Additionally, you will ensure rigorous execution of CSM playbooks, aid leadership in understanding success outcomes, and support forecasting processes. Partnering with forecasting will be essential to maintain a smooth weekly forecasting rhythm. You will thrive if you have strong skills and experience in Customer Success operations, business analysis, programmatic execution, and overall program management & business enablement. It is preferable that you also have experience with Support and Services operations. Your experience should include supporting global and regional Customer Success leaders, CSM leaders, and CSM managers. The ability to partner with various stakeholders across functions like Incentive Compensation, FP&A, Sales & Deal-Desk Operations, HR Business Partners, Regional Recruiting Teams, Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Engineering is crucial. Proven ability to manage exceptional relationship management with senior and executive stakeholders and partners is also required. The ideal candidate is intellectually curious, strategically and analytically minded, proactive in seeking solutions to challenging problems, and highly focused on creating solutions for our customers. You will be responsible for translating business strategy into actionable plans, processes, SOPs, rules of engagement, and operational playbooks. Leading automation initiatives for processes, workflows, and playbooks to empower CSMs will be part of your role. You will partner with analytics to establish success measurement frameworks and drive continuous improvement, analyzing customer data to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities that align with the Go-to-Market strategy. Additionally, you will frame insights for strategic decision-making, partnering with analytics on customer health metrics, churn data, and customer feedback to identify improvement areas. Your role will also involve guiding the business to identify at-risk customers, activating churn mitigation playbooks, and accelerating adoption. You will partner on programs to address root causes of churn and work collaboratively with Sales and Marketing teams to develop joint customer success programs, ensuring alignment of customer messaging across the lifecycle and creating feedback loops to inform product development.

Responsibilities

• Support strategic CS initiatives, business process transformation, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and rules of engagement for Customer Success Managers (CSMs).
• Drive CSM coverage models and compensation management, supporting regional CS leadership in renewals, retention, and expansion efforts.
• Ensure rigorous execution of CSM playbooks and aid leadership in understanding success outcomes.
• Support forecasting processes and partner with forecasting to maintain a smooth weekly forecasting rhythm.
• Translate business strategy into actionable plans, processes, SOPs, rules of engagement, and operational playbooks.
• Lead automation initiatives for processes, workflows, and playbooks to empower CSMs.
• Partner with analytics to establish success measurement frameworks and drive continuous improvement.
• Analyze customer data to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities that align with the Go-to-Market strategy.
• Frame insights for strategic decision-making, partnering with analytics on customer health metrics, churn data, and customer feedback to identify improvement areas.
• Guide the business to identify at-risk customers, activate churn mitigation playbooks, and accelerate adoption.
• Partner on programs to address root causes of churn.
• Establish KPIs for tracking the effectiveness of the CS team and individual CSMs, identifying areas for improvement in team performance related to customer success, churn reduction, and customer health.
• Work collaboratively with Sales and Marketing teams to develop joint customer success programs and ensure alignment of customer messaging across the lifecycle.

Requirements

• 12+ years of experience leading Customer Success operations in a scaled, global 24/7 Support organization for a SaaS or subscription-based business.
• Demonstrated skills in data-driven decision making, assessing customer conditions, and partnering with Customer Success leadership on expansion, retention, and save strategies.
• Adept at program management and orchestration, translating business needs into programmatic execution, and partnering with systems, analytics, and data teams.
• Strong business analysis skills with the ability to analyze business information, leverage dashboards, track key metrics, draw data insights, and communicate them clearly to executives and senior management.
• In-depth business domain experience in Customer Success, and decent understanding of onboarding and customer education services; and support operations.
• Prior experience with Customer Success tools like Gainsight, SFDC, Gong, and dashboarding tools like Tableau or Thoughtspot.
• Extensive experience partnering with compensation teams on incentive compensation design, with an intricate understanding of levers for churn, expansion, and retention for CSM incentives.
• Experience designing CSM coverage and capacity models, leading CSM book carving and quota management, quarterly book shuffles and book balancing, and designing/managing processes for comp exceptions.
• Excellent executive communication and organization skills, with a demonstrated ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with all stakeholders and partners.
• Proven track record in managing, leading, and motivating teams; actively recruit exceptional talent, and continuously develop your team with constructive mentoring.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with Support and Services operations.
• Experience supporting global and regional Customer Success leaders, CSM leaders, and CSM managers.

Benefits

• Medical, dental and vision coverage
• Health savings accounts
• Flexible spending accounts
• 401(k)
• Flexible paid time off
• Company-paid holidays
• Culture of learning that includes a learning allowance and access to a professional coaching service for all employees.