Sr. Customer Experience Manager

Applied Labs; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Applied Labs is seeking a Sr. Manager of Customer Experience & Fulfillment to own and scale post-purchase CX across support, fulfillment, returns, and automation.

You will lead a 13+ person team across managers and frontline reps, coordinating with warehouse and logistics to drive rapid, data-driven improvements. In this remote role, you will build an AI-first support organization, automate repetitive interactions, and protect critical human moments.

Qualifications

• Lead customer experience or CX teams in high-growth ecommerce contexts.
• Experience with Shopify platform and order/fulfillment workflows.
• Hands-on AI or automation implementations and self-service workflows.

Responsibilities

• Lead remote CX across email, chat, and phone for ~20k monthly interactions.
• Develop managers, team leads, and frontline reps; ensure KPIs like CSAT, first response time, SLA.
• Own CX automation strategy and monitor performance dashboards and guardrails.

Skills

CX leadership

Shopify experience

AI & automation

Data analytics

Tools

Gorgias

Shopify

Yuma

ShipHero/WMS

Job description

Sr. Manager of Customer Experience & Fulfillment

Location: Fully Remote, US

Job Type: Full-Time

Reports To: VP of Operations

About The Role

We're hiring a Sr Manager of Customer Experience & Fulfillment to own and scale the post-purchase customer experience across support, fulfillment, returns, and automation.

You'll lead a team of 13+ across managers, team leads, and frontline support reps while overseeing customer experience across email, chat, and phone. You'll also work closely with our internal warehouse, 3PL, supply chain, and operations teams to make sure fulfillment issues are caught quickly, escalated appropriately, and solved at the source.

This is a performance ownership role. You'll own the systems, standards, people, and metrics behind the customer experience, not just the support queue.

A major part of the role is building an AI-first support organization that can scale without adding headcount at the same rate as volume. We want to automate repetitive, transactional interactions aggressively while protecting the human moments that actually matter.

Automate the ordinary. Humanize the extraordinary.

Ideal Background

The strongest candidates for this role have led customer experience or support teams inside high-growth DTC/ecommerce businesses, ideally with meaningful order volume and operational complexity. You operated against clear service-level and customer satisfaction targets, and used data to diagnose what is actually driving performance.

You're comfortable getting into the details when needed, but your default is to build systems and leaders that keep the operation running without you becoming the bottleneck.

You likely come from an environment where customer support, fulfillment, refunds, shipping issues, and ecommerce operations are tightly connected.

Strong Signals

• Led a customer support or CX team of 5–10+ people, ideally through team leads or managers
• Managed high-volume DTC/ecommerce customer support
• Shopify experience
• Experience operating against CSAT, first response time, SLA, and QA targets
• Built dashboards and reporting independently
• Hands‑on experience implementing AI, automation, or self‑service workflows
• Experience improving support efficiency without relying primarily on additional headcount
• Comfortable working across support, fulfillment, warehouse, and operations teams
• Experience holding internal teams or external partners accountable to service standards

What you'll do

Customer Experience Operations

• Lead customer support across email, chat, and phone, supporting approximately 20,000 customer interactions per month.
• Manage and develop managers, team leads, and frontline reps across a remote international team.
• Own performance across first human response time, CSAT, SLA adherence, QA, and other core support metrics.
• Build clear operating rhythms across reporting, coaching, escalations, and performance management.
• Stay close enough to the operation to understand what customers are experiencing without becoming the person who has to personally solve every issue.
• Maintain high service standards across a seven‑day support operation.

AI & Automation

• Own the CX automation strategy across Gorgias, Shopify, Yuma, and other tools we adopt.
• Identify repetitive contacts that can be automated, eliminated, or shifted to self‑service.
• Build, test, and improve AI workflows based on actual customer outcomes, not just automation rate.
• Push toward automating the large majority of routine customer interactions without creating a worse customer experience.
• Establish clear guardrails for situations where human judgment is required, including legal issues, complex escalations, and emotionally sensitive customer interactions.
• Continuously evaluate new tools and workflows that allow the team to support more volume without proportional headcount growth.

Fulfillment & Post‑Purchase

• Oversee the customer‑facing performance of our internal warehouse and 3PL.
• Monitor fulfillment SLAs, shipping delays, order exceptions, mis‑picks, damages, lost shipments, and other customer‑impacting issues.
• Hold partners accountable to agreed service levels and elevate recurring operational problems.
• Work closely with supply chain and warehouse teams to solve root causes behind customer‑facing failures.
• Oversee returns, refunds, reships, and service recovery processes.
• Support customer inquiries related to wholesale and drop‑ship orders.
• Ensure major customer‑impacting operational issues are identified quickly and communicated clearly.

Performance & Reporting

• Build and maintain reporting across customer experience and fulfillment performance.
• Track trends across first response time, CSAT, SLA, automation, contact volume, repeat contacts, refunds, reships, and escalations.
• Diagnose why performance changes instead of reacting only to the top‑line metric.
• Identify operational leaks and turn them into clear action plans.
• Use data to determine where we need better automation, better processes, better coaching, or stronger partner accountability.

What we’re looking for

• DTC/ecommerce experience is required: You understand the realities of physical‑product ecommerce, including shipping, returns, refunds, fulfillment issues, and high‑volume customer support.
• Strong analytical chops: You can build your own reporting, identify patterns, diagnose root causes, and turn data into action.
• Hands‑on AI and automation experience: You've actually built, implemented, or improved workflows using AI or automation. Curiosity alone isn't enough.
• Experience managing against clear KPIs: You know how to improve CSAT, first response time, SLA performance, QA, and productivity without gaming the numbers.
• Strong operational judgment: You know when to solve a customer issue immediately and when to fix the underlying system creating the issue.
• Comfort with accountability: You can coach, develop, and make hard calls when performance isn't where it needs to be.
• Cross‑functional ownership: You don't stop at “that's another team's problem” when the issue is impacting the customer.
• Comfort operating in a messy environment: You can build while the business is moving, make decisions with imperfect information, and improve systems as you go.
• Strong written and verbal communication: You can communicate clearly with frontline teams, leadership, external partners, and customers when needed.

Nice to have

• Gorgias experience
• Yuma or similar AI support experience
• ShipHero or other WMS experience
• Recharge experience
• 3PL experience
• Returns operations experience
• Experience launching or scaling phone and live‑chat support
• Wholesale or retail customer support experience
• Experience managing international remote teams

This role is not for you if

• You think customer experience is primarily about managing a ticket queue
• Your first answer to increased volume is adding more people
• You are resistant to AI or automation
• You need someone else to pull or interpret the data for you
• You avoid difficult performance conversations
• You are comfortable repeatedly fixing symptoms instead of solving root causes
• You see fulfillment or warehouse issues as outside your responsibility because another team owns the function
• You need mature systems and perfectly documented processes before you can be effective

Work Requirements

Schedule: Monday-Friday, 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM EST

Workspace: Fixed, professional setup with reliable internet and a backup plan.

Output: Consistent reporting, fast problem escalation, strong management rhythms, and measurable improvements across CX and fulfillment performance.

Benefits & Compensation

• Competitive base salary
• Fully remote
• Paid time off
• Flex days. Enjoy an extra quarterly day off to unwind and recharge
• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• Ownership & autonomy: trusted to build and execute strategy
• Professional development: opportunities to learn and grow with the business