Associate Director, Customer Experience

Catbird, a DTC demi-fine jewelry company, is looking for an Associate Director of Customer Experience to own the full CX function, from high touch customer engagement to the operational backbone of our repairs and returns process. This person will be a hands-on leader who can sit with a customer on a delicate issue in the morning and dig into a process bottleneck in the afternoon. They bring deep subject matter expertise in customer service and work autonomously to build and continuously improve how Catbird serves customers at scale.

Key Responsibilities

Team Leadership

• Manage a team of 7-10, ensuring consistent quality, coverage, and performance across time zones
• Set clear goals, coach for growth, and build a culture of ownership in customer interactions
• Partner with HR on hiring, onboarding, and performance management for the team

Customer Experience

• Serve as an escalation point for complex, high touch, or sensitive customer situations
• Define and uphold service standards that reflect Catbird's brand voice and values across all channels
• Define and evolve Catbird's CX strategy, setting the long term direction for how service quality builds customer loyalty and repeat purchase behavior
• Partner closely with manufacturing, warehouse and merchandising partners to resolve fulfillment issues, shipping delays, inventory discrepancies, and order exceptions
• Monitor the returns experience for domestic and international orders and troubleshoot issues as they arise
• Deliver high touch clienteling for VIP and high value customers, building lasting relationships through personalized support and proactive outreach
• Build feedback loops from customer interactions into product, retail, and merchandising teams
• This role works closely with our retail store teams to bridge the in-store and online customer experience, serving as a key partner for escalations, issue resolution, and ensuring consistency across channels

Operational Strategy

• Bring subject matter expertise to evaluate and evolve CX tooling, workflows, and staffing models as the business grows
• Track CX KPIs and provide actionable insights and recommendations to improve performance
• Act as subject matter expert for CX and clienteling systems (e.g. Kustomer, Endear, NetSuite), maintaining fluency in new features and capabilities
• Support the evaluation and adoption of AI powered customer service tools and automation opportunities to improve productivity and customer satisfaction
• Own end to end repairs processing, including intake, manufacturing coordination, status tracking, customer communication and reporting
• Partner cross functionally with Retail, Product Development, and Manufacturing on issues that touch repairs, product quality, or customer satisfaction
• Report on CX KPIs to senior leadership

Our Ideal Candidate

• 8+ years in customer experience, with at least 2 to 3 years managing teams
• Experience managing a service or repairs operation with real logistical complexity, retail, ecommerce, or luxury goods background strongly preferred
• Comfortable being both the calm, high touch voice with a customer and the person redesigning a workflow
• Strong process orientation, able to build structure without adding unnecessary bureaucracy
• Experience with customer service and returns platforms (e.g. Kustomer, Gorgias, LOOP, Shopify or equivalent)
• Experience implementing AI or automation tools in a CX context
• Comfortable with data for reporting and decision making
• Based in or able to commute to NYC, onsite at Brooklyn Navy Yard 3 days/week