Director of Customer Operations

About Rewards Network

Celebrating our 40th year, Rewards Network has helped restaurants increase their revenue, traffic, and customer engagement through our innovative financial, marketing services, and premier dining rewards programs. We connect diners to fantastic restaurant experiences by offering unique card-linked offers. Our offers leverage advanced technology and powerful data analytics, providing value to our restaurants, diners, and strategic partners' loyalty programs.

Our Culture

At Rewards Network, you will find a passionate and diverse group of professionals that enjoy working collaboratively, solving problems, and taking ownership of not only their own careers and success, but the success and continued growth of the organization. We take pride in partnering with the world's most powerful loyalty programs to bring full price paying customers and better ways to access working capital options to local restaurants. We offer a challenging and rewarding environment where you can maximize your potential.

Job Overview

The Director, Customer Operations will report into the Revenue Operations function, leading our talented Client Success, B2B and B2C Customer Support, and Sales Development teams. With restaurants and members throughout the US and strategic partnerships with some of the largest global travel brands and other partners, this role will ensure streamlined operations and processes, lead efforts to ensure repeatable quality interactions, and leverage data to inform business decisions.

This role is Chicago-based and requires regular and consistent time in our Chicago office (3-4 days per week ) to collaborate with their teams and key internal partners. As the leader of a nearly 40-person team, the Director, Customer Operations will play a critical role in coaching and developing individual contributors and people managers at various levels.

What you’ll bring to the table: (Responsibilities)

1. Continuously evaluate and improve operational processes to enhance efficiency and quality, with a specific emphasis on optimizing the customer journey to improve customer retention and deliver high levels of customer satisfaction.
2. Utilize data-driven insights to inform decision-making and identify opportunities to build customer loyalty by assessing and driving strong customer satisfaction scores across the customer experience.
3. Develop and execute strategies to reduce customer churn rates, including implementing proactive customer success initiatives and addressing root causes of churn.
4. Build and lead a high-performing team of client and member services representatives, client success professionals, sales development representatives, supervisors and managers; provide mentorship, guidance, and support for continued career development.
5. Collaborate closely with department leaders across multiple functions, such as Sales, Product, Marketing, and Technology to ensure seamless integration and alignment of operations across teams.
6. Partner with sales leadership to align efforts across field-based and corporate-based account managers, ensuring clear ownership and accountability based on named accounts, account size, business relationship and other metrics.
7. Drive account renewals, upsells, and expansions to increase the customer lifetime value of our top customers.
8. Serve as an escalation point for customer-related issues that require leadership oversight.
9. Manage a team of nearly 40, including Managers, Supervisors, and individual contributors at various levels.
10. Expected to manage a budget and guide an overall staffing plan to meet the needs of the business; will be measured by revenue, churn, and other key business and operational KPIs.

Do you have the right mix of ingredients: (Requirements)

1. Bachelor’s degree in business, finance, marketing, or related field or equivalent combination of education and experience.
2. 7+ years leading operational teams in a complex and fast-paced environment.
3. Experience in payments, financial services or technology industry a plus.
4. Strong leadership and people management skills with a proven ability to develop talent.
5. Proficiency with Salesforce, including case management.
6. Experience with customer service, call center, or other platforms.
7. Strong problem-solving skills and an ability to motivate teams to solve problems with a focus on urgency and quality.
8. Demonstrated success building or improving repeatable and measurable processes, a keen eye for identifying bottlenecks, efficiencies, and root causes of existing process gaps.
9. Strong communication skills and an ability to present complex data to a diverse audience.
10. Strong attention to detail and analytical skills, able to interpret customer data and translate it into insights.
11. Potential minimal travel for in-field experience or off-site meetings.
12. In office 3-4x per week, this is a Chicago-based position.

What you’ll love about us:

1. Competitive Paid Time Off and company holidays.
2. Generous dining reimbursement when you dine with our restaurant clients.
3. 401(k) plan with a company match.
4. Two medical plan options- Standard PPO or High Deductible Health Plan (HSA with company match for HDHP participants).
5. Partnership with Rx n Go, offering certain prescriptions for free.
6. Two dental plan options and a vision plan.
7. Flexible Spending Accounts and a pre-tax commuter benefit program.
8. Accident, Critical Illness, and Hospital Indemnity Insurance Plans.
9. Short Term and Long Term disability.
10. Company-paid life insurance and AD&D insurance, supplemental employee, spouse, and child life insurance.
11. Employee Life Assistance Program.
12. Hybrid working space in our state-of-the-art office downtown located by the Metra and Ogilvie train stations.
13. Catered lunch on Tuesdays in our Chicago office for all employees.

Rewards Network is an Equal Opportunity Employer (EOE). We encourage and strongly support workplace diversity.