Senior Director Customer Success

The Sr Director, Customer Success will define, build, and lead Sonova’s North American customer success strategy—while simultaneously ensuring flawless day-to-day execution across Customer Service, Technical Support, Lead Generation and Software Support teams. This leader will blend strategic vision with hands-on operational leadership, establishing a long-term roadmap that evolves with business needs while managing tactical fluctuations in staffing and support needs, particularly around product launches.

This role is critical to positioning Sonova as the undisputed industry leader in customer experience, ensuring high satisfaction through support responsiveness, operational excellence, consistent communication, and rapid issue resolution. The Sr director will oversee 400 employees across onsite and remote teams from our retail and wholesale teams and will integrate processes, align resources, and implement daily management to drive productivity and continuous improvement.

Key Tasks & Responsibilities

• Define the long-term customer success roadmap, balancing a 3–5-year strategic vision with evolving business needs, product launch cycles, and fluctuating support volumes.
• Design and implement customer service strategies/lead generation and initiatives that elevate customer experience, streamline processes, increase revenue and strengthen Sonova’s reputation for service excellence.
• Drive operational excellence through workforce planning, staffing models that flex with demand, and daily management systems that improve productivity and issue resolution.
• Champion and resolve high-impact customer issues, partnering cross-functionally to accelerate solutions and ensure consistency in customer communications.
• Integrate processes and systems across Customer Service, Technical Support, and Software Support to enable seamless customer interactions and best-in-class service delivery.
• Establish scalable reporting frameworks, leveraging CRM, telephony, and ERP data to manage performance, identify trends, and provide insights to Sales, and leadership.
• Evaluate and implement new technologies (CRM enhancements, AI chatbots, analytics platforms).
• Responsible for capturing and analyzing customer feedback to inform product and service improvements.
• Responsible for leading change initiatives, especially during product launches and organizational shifts
• Ability to scale operations for growth and global alignment
• Develop high-performing teams, overseeing recruiting, training, coaching, and performance management to cultivate a customer-centric culture with a growth mindset.
• Manage the Customer Success budget, ensuring cost discipline and cost optimization while maintaining service levels that exceed customer expectations.
• Reinforce and evolve best practices daily, creating a collaborative environment with structured meetings, daily huddles, and continuous improvement routines.
• Comply with all applicable Sonova policies, as well as local, state, and federal requirements.

Periodic travel may be required to support site leadership, team development, and customer interactions- 10-15%

Work Experience

• 15 years of progressive customer support or service leadership experience, including 5 years in a Sr. Director-level/VP role.
• Proven Customer Success Leadership: Experience managing multi-channel teams (retail and wholesale) and driving customer-centric strategies.
• Technical & Analytical Expertise: Ability to understand complex products, leverage data insights, and implement scalable solutions.
• Transformation & Change Management: Track record of leading organizational change and digital transformation initiatives.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration & Strategic Vision: Skilled at aligning CS with Sales, Marketing, and Operations to achieve growth and retention goals.
• Industry & Market Knowledge: Familiarity with regulated or technical industries, plus experience balancing high-touch wholesale service with retail scalability.

• Experience in hearing healthcare, medical devices, consumer electronics, or other high-complexity technical support environments highly preferred.
• Experience with Salesforce.com, Calabrio, Customer Journey Platforms, or other advanced service technologies preferred.

Personal Competencies

• Proven ability to define and execute a customer service strategy in a complex, multi-channel support environment.
• Demonstrated success managing large customer-facing teams (100 ), including remote or hybrid workforces.
• Strong experience driving continuous improvement, daily management, and operational excellence.
• Ability to balance strategic planning with hands-on tactical execution, especially during product launches and support volume fluctuations.
• Deep familiarity with customer service systems (CRM, telephony, workforce management) and the ability to use data to drive decisions.
• Strong influencing skills with the ability to collaborate across Sales, Operations, and cross-functional teams.

Social Competencies

• Teamwork: Must be able to lead team of associates
• Influencing skills: Must be able to inform, convince, persuade others
• Customer focused with business acumen with strong interpersonal and communications skills

Leadership Competencies

• Possess excellent leadership, management, and communication skills – is credible at all levels of the organization and with customers
• Self-starter, must be able to proactively drive customer service priorities and deliver results
• Experience implementing and leading daily management

• Proven success in building high performance teams where individual leadership and personal self-management are the norm

Professional Competencies

• Experience developing and implementing customer service support plans, policies, and procedures
• Experience training, motivating, and leading a team of customer support personnel
• Experience in workforce planning
• Demonstrated understanding of how best to use contact center telephony, CRM systems, workforce management tools and other technology supporting all aspects of the customer experience

• Proficient in analytical skills needed to perform database research, forecasting, trending and analysis of needed business metrics

Customer Journey Platform, Calabrio, Salesforce.com experience