Manager, Customer Experience and Community Engagement - Headfirst Companies

The Position:

The Manager of Customer Experience and Community Engagement oversees year-round customer service initiatives, ensuring all Headfirst Summer Camps parent communication is handled efficiently and effectively. Additionally, this individual drives the division’s engagement and relationship-building with organizations based in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia communities in which Headfirst Summer Camps operate. 

The Manager of Customer Experience and Community Engagement is based at the Washington, D.C. headquarters of The Headfirst Companies year-round. However, significant time will be spent in the local community near our DC-area Headfirst locations throughout the year. This role also requires occasional independent travel to and from our warehouse in Silver Spring, Maryland for event materials management, packing, and transportation. 

The ideal candidate for this position is a highly creative, engaging, driven, and people-oriented individual. They are motivated by Headfirst’s strategic commitment to champion personal connections and community and create exceptional experiences for all Headfirst Summer Camps customers.  

What You'll Do:

Year-Round:  

• Customer Relationships: 

• Manage Headfirst’s CRM platform, HubSpot, and handle inbound email and phone communications from customers. 
• Proactively establish, grow, and maintain positive relationships with customers that enhance and deepen their connection to the Headfirst Summer Camps community.  

• Community Engagement:  

• Manage outreach for new and existing sources of community events and partnerships. 
• Meet monthly community engagement and event KPIs, manage colleague event attendance schedules, and evaluate events for alignment and impact on Headfirst Summer Camp’s goals for enrollment and community outreach. 

• Plan and execute year-round customer events such as open houses, camp fairs, and in-home group meetings. 

• Overall Core Team Contributions: 

• Actively contribute to the Headfirst Summer Camps divisional core team, demonstrating a positive and collaborative approach to achieving team-wide initiatives and goals. 
• Take on additional cross-functional responsibilities as assigned, demonstrating versatility and adaptability. 
• Provide coaching and mentorship to core team members, empowering them to support customer experience initiatives and drive meaningful change – ensuring every touch point with our customers exemplifies complete alignment with our mission, brand and values. 

• Customer Experience Strategy, Systems & Processes: 

• Develop and implement strategies to enhance the overall customer experience, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and objectives. 
• Spearhead initiatives to leverage Hubspot for advanced customer experience intelligence, enhancing our care strategies and optimizing each customer interaction. 
• Lead cross-functional teams to identify areas for improvement and consistency within the customer journey, utilizing customer feedback, data analytics and market research. 
• Implement metrics and KPIs to measure and track customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention – driving actionable insights for improvement. 

January-May: 

• Seasonal Staff Hiring & Management: 

• Serve as the Hiring Manager for essential Customer Experience-based Headfirst Summer Camps positions (including 7-10 seasonal Customer Experience Coordinators & Interns), overseeing recruitment, interviewing, hiring/onboarding, and retention processes. 
• Collaborate with the Talent department to ensure the selection of well-qualified Interns aligned with organizational goals. 

• Training & Pre-Season Preparation: 

• Develop best practices and systems for in-season customer communication, relationship building, and escalated case management. 
• Design and execute comprehensive training programs for seasonal Customer Experience-based leaders to ensure all stakeholders, including parents and guardians, will receive top-notch care on-site. 
• Support the Marketing Team with building out customer-facing camp logistics email content. 
• Oversee and delegate pre-season logistics such as waitlist and refund management, camper licensing paperwork tracking, and proactive camper accommodation conversations. 

• Design a comprehensive VIP customer care program for year-round and in-season service. 

June through August: 

• In-Season Customer Management: 

• Supervise 7-10 seasonal Customer Experience Coordinators & Interns, ensuring top tier team performance guided by organizational Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) through coaching and feedback.  
• Manage the escalated customer service requirements, taking primary responsibility for identifying and escalating urgent and sensitive concerns appropriately, and ensuring the customer receives regular proactive communication during any extended escalation review.  
• Check-in regularly with key customer families, including families with high-volume enrollments and families of staff from our partner facilities.  

• Continuous Improvement and Innovation: 

• Assess summer programming success through real-time feedback and customer survey data to implement informed modifications mid-season, as well as compile themes to drive larger innovations next season.  
• Stay abreast of customer concern trends, integrating new ideas and solutions into programming through collaboration with the Program Operations team. 

September-December: 

• Strategic Oversight of Customer Relationship Development Process: 

• Collect, analyze, and present key customer data to the Summer Core Team and lead improvement strategies for the coming season. 
• Play a critical role in offseason debriefs, project planning, and review of SOPs and customer-facing policies during Headfirst’s “innovation season.”  
• Develop and execute on a customer retention plan implementing strategies to retain and grow customer loyalty in order to deliver on the Summer Camp division’s customer retention goals for the upcoming season.  
• Follow-up with customers to guide improvements to Headfirst Summer Camp’s programming. 
• Own the research, messaging, outreach and continuous relationship development for varying sized business and facility partners. 
• Perfect customer-facing systems and lead modernization/ efficiency efforts - including using HubSpot - to decrease CX manual workload. 
• Continue to hit monthly community engagement and event KPIs, determining the yearly calendar, managing colleague event attendance schedules, and evaluating events for impact on Headfirst Summer Camp’s bottom line. 

• Function & System Improvements: 

• Reimagine and redefine a data-driven Customer Experience function – driving initiatives to streamline processes, reduce friction points and optimize touchpoints across all customer interactions. 

• Product & Programming Input: 

• Match insights on industry trends and best practices with in-season feedback, customer data and customer experience themes to provide recommendations to the Program Operations team to advance our programming to match customer desires. 

About You:

The Requirements 

• Bachelor’s degree with a strong academic record. 
• 3 to 5 years of relevant professional experience in business development, customer relations, event or project management preferred. 
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills. Must be extremely comfortable interacting on the phone and in-person with customers and external partners. 
• Demonstrated experience managing, implementing, and executing challenging operational details. 
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite and proven ability to adapt to new technologies. 
• Strong decision-making and ability to exercise good judgment and discretion to effectively manage customer matters of a sensitive, highly personal, and/or confidential nature. 
• Previous experience in HubSpot or other CRM software viewed favorably. 
• Ability to work autonomously, with a focus on organization and project completion. 
• Flexibility and drive to work until the job is done. 
• Ability and willingness to travel independently, and transport marketing materials and event collateral, to locations around the DMV. 

The Character 

• A solution-oriented individual who shares The Headfirst Companies’ core mission, values, and believes in our ability to work together to make a difference in the lives of children and young adults. 
• A motivated self-starter who is autonomous and dependable. 
• A doer who has an entrepreneurial spirit and a focus on finishing the job every day. 
• An independent thinker who assumes responsibility beyond what is asked and takes initiative for positive change. 
• A consummate professional who has the ability to prioritize and multi-task, managing several projects concurrently, sometimes under pressure, and often with tight deadlines, while maintaining a positive attitude and professional demeanor. 
• A team player who approaches professional hurdles with a strong sense of individual responsibility and a sincere emphasis on team over self. 
• A humble and enthusiastic leader who possesses the passion and polish to serve as an ambassador of The Headfirst Companies and our Headfirst Summer Camps Partners. 
• A flexible, coachable, and down-to-earth teammate who has the desire and capacity to grow through self-reflection, and by both providing and receiving thoughtful, constructive performance feedback. 
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