Customer Operations Manager

Ira Green•Providence, RI

About The Position

The Customer Operations Manager leads the customer operations function, connecting sales, planning, production, and field teams with customers and retail partners. The role is responsible for the team, its processes, and performance visibility, including support for major accounts, operational programs that keep products available at retail partners, and tracking channel performance against plan. This is a build-and-improve role focused on developing an independent team, replacing legacy practices with standard, measurable processes, and applying an operational and commercial mindset to customer operations. The manager leads and develops the team, establishes account-support standards, owns customer and retail-partner processes, monitors channel performance, and drives improvements across customer operations. The role works cross-functionally with Finance, Operations, Sales, Planning, IT, inventory, and logistics.

Requirements

At least 5 years of experience in customer service, customer operations, or order management.
At least 3 years leading a team.
Demonstrated experience building and developing a team, including hiring and performance management.
Track record of process improvement with measurable results.
Strong working knowledge of ERP systems in a manufacturing, distribution, or service environment, or similar.
Comfort with data, including building reports, interpreting variances, and explaining results to leadership.
Direct, clear communication skills and ability to manage up, across, and down, while holding people accountable.
Proficiency in Excel, Outlook, Word, and Teams.

Nice To Haves

Lean or similar methodology experience.
Experience with retail replenishment, consignment, or vendor-managed inventory programs; this experience is a plus but not required.

Responsibilities

Lead, develop, and hold the customer operations team accountable, including hiring, training, performance management, and staffing decisions.
Establish clear team roles, cross-training, backup coverage, expectations, coaching, and consistent performance management; encourage ownership and professional growth.
Address employee concerns and workplace issues professionally, escalating matters to a supervisor or Human Resources when appropriate.
Build and maintain a channel performance scorecard against budget, publish it regularly, identify variances and their drivers, and coordinate follow-up through resolution or escalation.
Support Finance with channel planning and budget development.
Design support for the largest accounts, including team relationship ownership, service standards, and issue-escalation and resolution practices.
Develop team members into capable account owners and serve as the escalation point and internal voice for accounts when issues exceed the team's ability to resolve them.
Monitor key accounts for recurring issues, patterns, and service-improvement opportunities.
Use ERP and reporting data to guide decisions and measure results; eliminate work that does not add value.
Lead customer-operations process improvement and partner with Operations, Sales, Planning, and IT on cross-functional changes.
Propose the future direction of customer operations over a one-to-three-year horizon.
Own order management, order-status communication, return authorizations, credits, and customer escalations for traditional customers.
Establish standard work for recurring customer processes, define cycle times and error rates, and hold the team accountable to those standards.
Resolve escalated customer issues and address underlying process causes.
Manage daily back-office processes for retail partner programs, including inventory transfers, receipts, store-level adjustments, and support for field merchandising.
Partner with inventory, planning, and logistics to maintain accurate store inventory and stocked shelves.
Identify gaps and failure points in retail-partner processes and lead corrective action.