Vice President Customer Experience

We are partnered with an innovative SaaS product start-up that is looking for a VP of Customer Experience to join their team. This position is fully on-site 5 days per week in Downtown Chicago (River North).

Job Overview:

We’re looking for a VP of Customer Experience to build and scale our enterprise customer support function from the ground up. This leader will design and own the end-to-end service model, including workflows, tooling, SLAs, and operating metrics, while building a high-performing team that delivers technically credible support to enterprise, government, and consumer customers.

The role requires close partnership with Engineering, Product, and other internal teams to ensure fast issue resolution, strong feedback loops, and continuous service improvement as the organization scales.

Success in this role depends on deep experience building and operating technical customer support organizations in high-growth environments, ideally within SaaS, cybersecurity, fintech, or cloud infrastructure.

Responsibilities

Own the customer service function

• Build and lead the Customer Service team, including hiring, training, performance management, and workforce planning

• Define service tiers, support coverage models, SLAs, and escalation protocols

• Establish service standards that reflect our brand and client expectations including governments, enterprises and consumers.

Design & scale service operations

• Implement and manage ticketing systems (e.g., Salesforce Service Cloud, Jira, etc…) and knowledge base platforms

• Create workflows for case intake, triage, prioritization, escalation, and resolution

• Build structured documentation and reporting processes

• Develop onboarding materials, playbooks, and customer-facing support resources

Cross-functional partnership

• Partner with Engineering and Product to escalate bugs, prioritize fixes, and close feedback loops

• Work with Sales and RevOps to ensure smooth handoffs from pre-sale to post-sale support

• Coordinate with Security and Compliance teams on sensitive or security-related inquiries

• Align with Finance and Operations on customer billing or contract-related service matters

Data, reporting & continuous improvement

• Establish KPIs (response time, resolution time, CSAT, NPS, backlog health, SLA adherence)

• Deliver regular reporting to executive leadership

• Identify trends in tickets and recommend product or process improvements

• Build dashboards and operational reviews to monitor service performance

Customer experience leadership

• Act as executive escalation point for high-priority customer issues

• Lead incident response communications when necessary

• Ensure high professionalism and clarity in all external-facing communications

• Build trust with enterprise clients through structured, consistent service delivery

Qualifications

Experience

• 12 years in customer service, technical support, or customer operations roles

• 5 years leading and scaling customer service teams

• Experience in high-growth SaaS, cybersecurity, enterprise software, or infrastructure environments

• Demonstrated experience building service processes from early-stage to scale

• Experience supporting enterprise or security-conscious customers

Systems & Tools

• Hands-on experience with ticketing platforms (Salesforce Service Cloud, Jira Service Management, Zendesk, etc.)

• Experience building reporting dashboards and service analytics

• Experience with Salesforce CRM and knowledge management tools

• Comfort working with data to determine staffing and operational decisions

Leadership & Delivery

• Strong team leadership and performance management skills

• Experience defining SLAs and managing escalations

• Proven ability to operate in high-accountability, high-expectation environments

• Clear communicator capable of translating technical issues into structured customer updates