Customer Care Manager

Elkay Manufacturing•Erie, PA

8d•Onsite

About The Position

The Customer Experience Manager is a senior people leader accountable for delivering an exceptional end-to-end customer experience through multiple teams delivering superior customer support and improving ease of doing business for our representatives and customers. This role oversees customer care, order management, fulfillment execution, and escalations while building, coaching, and leading high-performing teams. With a strong emphasis on people leadership and customer-centric execution, the Operations Center Manager leverages AI, analytics, and continuous improvement methods to reduce friction for customers, eliminate waste, improve responsiveness, and create scalable operating models that support growth.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent combination of education and experience.
5+ years of experience in customer care, operations management, or regional operations support, with direct people leadership responsibility.
Demonstrated success leading teams in customer-facing, high-volume, or complex operational environments.
Strong analytical skills with experience using data, dashboards, and technology to improve customer outcomes.
Excellent communication and influencing skills, with the ability to engage frontline teams and senior leaders alike.

Nice To Haves

Experience applying AI, automation, or advanced analytics to improve workflow efficiency or customer experience is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end customer experience across all operations center touchpoints, ensuring timely, accurate, and consistent delivery of products and services.
Serve as the senior escalation point for strategic and high-impact customer issues, resolving complex problems while restoring customer confidence and trust.
Establish and maintain strong partnerships with Sales, Service Center Operations, and Regional Leaders to proactively align on customer needs, priorities, and service commitments.
Monitor customer-facing KPIs (e.g., backlog aging, order accuracy, responsiveness, OTIF) and translate performance insights into actionable improvements that materially enhance customer satisfaction.
Use customer feedback, call/case trends, and service data to identify recurring pain points and lead cross-functional actions to permanently eliminate them.
Lead and inspire supervisors, group leaders, and associates through clear expectations, coaching, accountability, and recognition.
Own all people-management activities including hiring, onboarding, performance management, compensation input, disciplinary actions, scheduling, and workforce planning.
Build a strong leadership bench by developing supervisors and high-potential talent; ensure succession and continuity across the operations center.
Create a culture of engagement, ownership, and customer advocacy, reinforcing behaviors that put the customer first in every decision.
Upskill the organization in data literacy, continuous improvement, and practical AI adoption to future-proof the team.
Ensure effective execution of order management, demand fulfillment, backlog resolution, and inventory visibility to meet service, cost, and quality targets.
Lead continuous improvement initiatives using established CI frameworks (e.g., VDM, ZEBS), with a focus on simplifying work, improving flow, and increasing first-time-right outcomes.
Partner cross-functionally to balance customer commitments with operational capability, capacity, and cost-to-serve considerations.
Leverage AI tools, automation, and advanced analytics to improve customer responsiveness and operational efficiency, including: Intelligent case and order triage, Backlog and demand-risk forecasting, Staffing and workload optimization, Root-cause analysis of customer issues at scale.
Translate analytical insights into practical changes that frontline teams can adopt and sustain.
Utilize and continuously enhance workflows and reporting within enterprise systems such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Ensure consistent application of company policies, governance standards, and customer service expectations.
Act as a trusted operational advisor to leaders, using data-driven and AI-enabled insights to support decision-making.