VP, Customer Success

The VP, Customer Success leads the direction and vision for the Global Customer Success organization, ensuring the team delivers exceptional product adoption and value realization for D2L customers. Reporting to the Chief Revenue Officer, this role is responsible for developing and executing strategies that empower Customer Success Managers (CSMs) to act as product and adoption experts, driving customer engagement through training, workshops, and ongoing health checks. The VP, Customer Success partners across all markets and geographies to maintain industry-leading customer retention and growth, with a focus on maximizing product usage and customer health. The VP, Customer Success ensures the Customer Success organization excels at driving product adoption, facilitating account planning practices inclusive of organizing internal stakeholders as required, identifying usage gaps,  and providing actionable feedback to the Product team, supporting overall business outcomes via the above through increased customer value realization

Major Responsibilities (How Will I Make an Impact?):

•    Lead, expand, and coach the Global Customer Success teams, prioritizing Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) that center on product adoption, satisfaction, and customer value realization.
•    Develop frameworks and playbooks for CSMs to identify gaps in product usage, run adoption initiatives via partnership with key customer stakeholders, and deliver group enablement on new features supporting customers' jobs to be done.
•    Ensure CSMs conduct ongoing health checks and provide expert guidance to end users and administrators to reduce risk and increase value realization.
•    Create and manage customer communication plans focused on product engagement and adoption outcomes, while partnering with the Account Managers/Directors leading executive alignment and QBRs.
•    Serve as the vital link between the customer, Sales, Product, Support and Engineering; Create meaningful dialogue across executive leadership within these functions and increase communication of customer feedback to Product & Engineering teams.
•    Partnering with D2L Leadership to define and drive the overall customer journey.
•    Design and execute a customer feedback strategy across various listening channels so that D2L evolves customer engagement, addresses risk and translates feedback into customer retention strategies
•    Establish leadership and champion the Customer Success organization as a valued partner within D2L, recognized for driving product adoption, strong customer relationships, and customer satisfaction.
•    Accountable for customer retention and growth targets, achieved through high levels of product and services adoption and usage depth.
•    Influence future lifetime value of Brightspace by promoting customer satisfaction and health , and actionable promoter measures through expert adoption support and relationships.

People Leadership and Performance

•    Manage a team of D2Lers and champion a high-performing culture.
•    Connect your team’s day-to-day accountability to D2L’s mission by setting clear objectives and performance expectations with your team members.
•    Coach, provide regular feedback, provide career path and development or growth opportunities, and create a collaborative and open environment.
•    Collaborate through cross-functional teams to accomplish established corporate and team goals and effectively manage relationships with other D2L teams
•    Responsible for supporting vision, planning and defining team objectives, and leading execution of objectives
•    Work with your peers and leaders to drive productivity and efficiency, and hold the team accountable for high-quality outcomes
•    Play a key role in interviewing, hiring, and onboarding new team members. Provide expertise and coaching/mentorship to the team members.
•    Produce and actively participate in knowledge sharing as well as professional development initiatives

Competencies (What you’ll bring to the role):

• 10+ years’ experience in a Customer Success (or equivalent) leadership role; leading teams managing client portfolios of varying sizes across multiple markets and geographies.
• Experience hiring, onboarding, managing, and developing high-performing teams while still contributing to the team’s deliverables
• Demonstrated ability to drive continuous improvement in adoption strategies and customer satisfaction
• Ability to effectively communicate to stakeholders at all levels of the organization – with excellent written, oral, and presentation skills
• Ability to quickly establish rapport with all levels of personnel up to and including C-Suite executives
• Model high energy level, demonstrated drive to succeed, with a sense of urgency
• Strong communication skills to facilitate feedback between customers and Product/Engineering teams.
• Acumen with Artificial Intelligence tools
• Experience within a growth-oriented SaaS companies is ideal and with Customer Success technology is an asset ( ie: PlanHat, Gainsight)
• This position may require up to 30% travel varying by seasonality and business need

Education Recommendations:

Bachelor’s degree recommended (technical, business or education-related is ideal)

NOTE: While we encourage applicants from varied backgrounds, candidates who do not have leadership experience in Customer Success will not be considered for this role. Thank you for your understanding.