Job Summary:
The Director, Client Services leads Blossom’s client-facing delivery organization across all product lines — Core, Digital, Cards, AI, and Hardware. The area comprises three functions: Implementation, which brings new clients live; Professional Services, which delivers paid client-requested work; and Client Education, which makes credit union staff proficient and keeps them informed.
Supervisory Responsibilities:
- Oversees staffing, training, and performance management to ensure high-quality, consistent delivery.
- Provides mentorship, coaching, and professional development opportunities for all direct reports.
Duties/Responsibilities:
Implementation Delivery
- Directs all client implementation projects across Core, Digital, Cards, AI, and Hardware, ensuring on-time, on-scope, and high-quality launches.
- Exercises independent judgment in scoping, sequencing, and approving client implementation plans, including production cutover go/no-go decisions.
- Establishes go-live readiness criteria spanning data readiness, training readiness, and site readiness, and approves readiness at each gate.
- Serves as the senior escalation point for at-risk implementations, engaging credit union executives directly to define and commit to remediation approaches.
- Establishes and chairs a portfolio-level risk and status cadence, tracking risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies across concurrent engagements, and reports portfolio health to the executive team.
- Negotiates implementation scope, milestones, and timelines directly with client credit union executives.
- Personally leads or accompanies strategic implementations — merger conversions, first deployments of a new product, flagship and reference clients, at‑risk recoveries, and multi‑branch hardware rollouts.
Data Conversion
- Owns end-to-end client data conversion — conversion strategy, mock conversion cycles, balancing and data-integrity validation, cutover planning, and post-conversion verification.
- Directs merger conversions, including dual‑institution data reconciliation, member record consolidation, and coordination against a committed regulatory close date.
- Directs card processor conversions and the core‑side work they depend on, including file formats, posting logic, and card record setup.
- Formulates conversion standards, validation criteria, and acceptance thresholds, and authorizes deviation from standard procedures where client circumstances warrant.
- Directs post‑conversion issue triage and resolution through stabilization.
Professional Services Engagements
- Directs the delivery of paid client‑requested engagements — configuration, custom development, integrations, custom reporting, and data extracts.
- Approves engagement scope and estimates, and authorizes Statements of Work within delegated authority.
- Approves post-signature scope changes and change orders, and commits the company to revised timelines and delivery approaches.
- Is accountable for estimate accuracy — actual effort against scoped effort — and directs corrective action to scoping standards when variance exceeds threshold.
- Manages the services backlog and prioritizes engagements against implementation commitments and available capacity.
Delivery Partner Management
- Owns Blossom’s relationship with the onsite implementation partner, including scope definition, service levels, and performance standards.
- Is accountable to clients for partner-delivered outcomes, including installation quality, schedule adherence, and onsite client experience.
- Monitors partner performance against agreed service levels, conducts periodic performance reviews, and directs remediation where standards are not met.
- Directs coordination with third‑party vendors, OEMs, card processors, and integration partners on dependencies affecting client go-live dates.
Client Education
- Owns Blossom’s client education function, directing the design and delivery of onboarding curricula for new clients and role-based training for credit union staff.
- Establishes competency standards and certification criteria for client staff, and determines client training readiness as an input to go-live approval.
- Directs ongoing post-launch client training, including refreshers, new‑feature enablement, and training tied to new product deployments, whether included in a setup fee or scoped under a Statement of Work.
- Directs client-facing product and release communications, ensuring credit unions understand and can act on product changes.
- Directs the development of internal staff training and knowledge resources, including onboarding for new hires across the Client Services organization.
- Partners with Product and Engineering to identify enablement needs and to build knowledge resources that measurably reduce support volume and delivery friction.
Team Leadership
- Directs the work of the Client Services organization. Recommendations regarding hiring, performance, promotion, discipline, and other changes of status are given particular weight.
- Provides mentorship, coaching, and professional development, and manages performance to consistent quality and delivery standards.
- Forecasts resource capacity against the combined implementation and services backlog, and plans staffing and assignment to meet committed dates across all product lines.
Commercial and Operational Ownership
- Owns the Client Services budget and is accountable for delivery cost and team utilization against plan.
- Partners with Sales during the pre‑sales cycle to scope and estimate implementation effort and to define Statements of Work.
- Establishes scoping and estimation standards, and is accountable for the quality of estimates the organization commits to.
- Is accountable for professional services revenue delivery and backlog realization against plan.
Process, Standards, and Reporting
- Formulates and maintains Blossom’s delivery methodology, project plan templates, quality gates, and milestone tracking, and revises them as the product portfolio and client base evolve.
- Establishes delivery and education metrics and quality benchmarks across all product lines, and drives measurable improvement against them.
- Directs the transition from implementation to ongoing support, ensuring clients are fully trained and support‑ready at go‑live and that Client Support receives complete handoff documentation.
- Interprets and applies regulatory and contractual requirements in implementation design and configuration decisions.
- Reports on delivery performance, services revenue, training completion, and client satisfaction to senior leadership on a defined cadence.
- Performs other related duties as assigned.
Required Skills/Abilities:
- Demonstrated ownership of a departmental budget or equivalent financial accountability.
- Proven success running concurrent, complex implementations across multiple products or business lines.
- Working knowledge of financial institution operations and core banking systems, including data conversion methodology and integration concepts.
- Demonstrated ability to establish delivery metrics and drive measurable improvement against them.
- Strong problem‑solving, troubleshooting, and analytical abilities.
- Outstanding written, verbal, and presentation skills, with proven executive presence in client‑facing settings.
- Proficiency with project and knowledge management tooling — for example [Jira / Confluence / Smartsheet / Salesforce / LMS platform].
- Proficiency with Google Workspace or similar productivity tools.
Education and Experience:
- Bachelor's degree in Business,Information Systems, or related field (Master's degree preferred).
- 8+ years in client implementation, project management, professional services, technical onboarding, or delivery leadership within financial technology, SaaS, or financial services.
- 4+ years leading and developing a client‑facing delivery team, with accountability for team performance and outcomes.
- Experience scoping and estimating project effort and documenting solutions in Statements of Work.
- Experience managing third‑party delivery partners or subcontracted implementation resources, with accountability for their performance to the client.
Physical Requirements:
- Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
- 25% travel to client sites, training sessions, or conferences may be required.
- Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at times.
What We Offer
- Company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees
- Company-paid life and AD&D insurance
- Company-paid short- and long-term disability
- 401(k) retirement plan
- Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)/ Dependent Care Spending Account (DCSA)
- Unlimited PTO
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- Voluntary supplemental insurance options