Senior Director, Customer Operations

The Senior Director of Customer Operations has the overall responsibility to define, implement, and maintain the end-to-end strategy and execution of customer-facing operations for the Great Midwest Region. The Great Midwest is a complex region covering 20 states, and a wide range of geographies, customer segments, and demographics. This presents a unique opportunity for a leader who relishes solving complex problems, and who is committed to driving customer delight.

Traditionally, the role has been primarily operations focused, but we have embarked on a journey of reimagining how we want to evolve the Customer Operations team to be a strategic partner and a key enabler of commercial growth and driving better margins, while managing the day-to-day operations. The leader will bring a much stronger focus on a Systems Thinking, deeper use of data analytics, and shifting the operating approach to being more proactive in managing the customer relationship lifecycle all the way from initial contact, through onboarding, and long-term relationship management.

• Define the overall vision and strategy for customer operations and develop short-term and long-term plans for implementing that vision.
• Collaborate with Commercial, Operations (patient services, logistics, lab operations, and billing), IT, and other functions to ensure a seamless and delightful experience for customers throughout their lifecycle with Quest.
• Work directly with each of the core leaders to define new standard process architecture / workflow that leads to step-function improvements in quality, cost, and customer satisfaction
• Implement/Maintain strong operational processes and metrics to manage any day-to-day issues or escalations.
• Develop and champion the end-to-end process and associated metrics for customer engagement to drive significant improvement in speed (quoting, winning, and onboarding), and the quality (onboarding/integration, and ongoing relationship) to drive growth and improvement in margins.
• Use of data and analytics techniques to proactively identify at-risk customers, and a robust cross-functional mechanism to address those concerns.
• Collaborate closely with the commercial team to provide the operational insights and inputs to effectively manage, strengthen and grow customer relationships, which is part of the commercial “own-the-dirt” strategy.
• With the IT Leadership team, define the system requirements, timing, and expense to automate / improve our current systems to enable any new workflows, and continuous improvement ideas.
• Define the overall sequencing of workflow changes that will result in simultaneous improvement in cost, quality, and customer satisfaction, with an eye towards generating near term cash flow and margin benefits.
• Develop infrastructure, strategy, tools and supporting materials, including training to support the Company’s drive to improve the customer experience.
• Lead and act as an ambassador for transformation, cost excellence and process excellence across the GMW region, enabling operational excellence, superior customer experience, and growth.
• Be comfortable driving big step changes (vs. incremental improvements), taking calculated risks, and a driver of innovation – but do it with process rigor, lean tools, system thinking, and risk management approaches. Especially have demonstrated strength in facilitating Change Acceleration process to get broad buy-in within the team, and with internal and external partners to drive adoption.
• Drive effective on-going communications throughout the organization on the amplified customer experience to help drive culture change.
• Build a high-performance team. Oversee the development of direct reports and ensure that an active succession plan is in place.
• Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s in Business Administration preferred.
• Minimum of 12 years professional experience at a management consulting firm or equivalent work setting, preferably with a focus on service operations within the healthcare industry.
• Strong internal relationships with key stakeholders at a senior management level required.
• Ability to communicate complex ideas to both team members and senior management.
• Strong listening, written and oral presentation skills suitable for C-Suite and external partner discussions.
• Ability to maneuver comfortably through complex policy, process, and organizational dynamics.
• Strong Project Leadership skills and QMS preferred.