Vice President IT, Customer Care Technology

About , Inc.

, Inc. is a leading online gifting and experiential commerce company with a family of iconic brands including , Harry & David, Cheryl’s Cookies, , Things Remembered, and more. Our mission is to inspire more human expression, connection, and celebration—powered by innovative customer experiences and a seamlessly integrated technology ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Technology Leadership

• In conjunction with the Business and Product Management, define and execute a multi-year technology vision and roadmap spanning:
• Customer Care platforms (CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service), CRM, customer accommodations, digital engagement, WFM and analytics
• Develop and execute Enterprise Order Management integrations for exception handling
• Collaborating with Product Management to develop AI & Virtual agents’ strategy and execution
• Align technology investments to measurable business outcomes including:
• CSAT / NPS improvement
• Cost-to-serve reduction
• CSRs end-to-end productivity improvements
• Establish scalable, API-first, cloud-native architecture aligned to enterprise standards.

Technology Platform & Solution Ownership

• Ensure reliable, secure, compliant, and scalable technology platform to deliver operational capability across:
• Voice, chat, email, SMS, and digital service channels
• Integrated order capture and exception handling
• Work collaboratively within IT (and business) on integrations across ERP, WMS, TMS, Digital Commerce, Payments, real-time Inventory visibility and enterprise data platforms to drive a seamless customer and agent experience
• Collaborate on Customer Center strategy, design, reliability, and optimization:
• IVR, call routing, telephony platforms
• Order exception management workflows
• Self-service and agent assisted transactions
• Ensure peak-readiness and high availability (99.9%+ uptime) across all platforms.

Delivery & Modernization

• Lead large-scale technology transformation programs including:
• CCaaS implementation & migrations
• CRM modernization
• Workforce forecasting, planning and scheduling solutions
• Autonomous agents and customer experience improvements
• Implement agile engineering practices with outcome-based delivery.
• Establish architecture standards for technology selection, deployment, lifecycle management, and technical governance.
• Support modernization initiatives leveraging:
• Intelligent call routing and speech recognition
• Predictive inventory analytics
• Automated order exception handling

Innovation& Intelligent Automation (AI/ML, Agentic AI, Bots)

• Support adoption of AI, machine learning, and intelligent automation across customer care.
• Support implementation of Agentic AI and autonomous workflow agents to:
• Address and resolve WIMO calls
• Resolve order exceptions
• Automate refunds, replacements, and adjustments
• Proactively manage inventory imbalances
• Assist agents with real-time recommendations and next-best actions
• Collaborate and support conversational AI, chatbots, voice bots, and virtual assistants to increase containment, improve personalization, and reduce cost-to-serve.
• Deploy predictive analytics and ML models for:
• Call volume forecasting
• Order risk scoring
• Inventory demand sensing
• Backorder prevention
• Establish foresight metrics, alerts and early-warning dashboards to anticipate service spikes, fulfillment bottlenecks, delivery and inventory constraints before customer impact.
• Partner with Data & Analytics to operationalize semantic-layer-driven intelligence into customer[1]care systems.

Operational Excellence & Reliability

• Own production support, incident management, and platform stability.
• Reduce incident rates and Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR).
• Ensure resilience, disaster recovery readiness, and business continuity.
• Optimize system performance to handle seasonal and promotional peaks.

Data, Analytics & Automation

• Enable analytics layer to help business improve:
• Call containment
• Forecast accuracy
• Agent productivity
• Customer and Agent experience
• Cost-to-serve
• Establish KPI dashboards measuring both technical and business performance impact.

Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Build and lead high-performing engineering, architecture, and operations teams.
• Partner closely with:
• Product Management and Customer Care Operations
• Supply Chain & Fulfillment
• Digital Commerce
• Finance & FP&A
• Security & Compliance
• Influence executive stakeholders and participate in steering committee governance.
• Ensure alignment with enterprise Intake Planning and capital prioritization processes.

Qualifications:

Experience

• 10+ years of progressive senior technology leadership and management of enterprise platforms experience (Sr. Director or VP level).
• eCommerce environments ($1B+ revenue).
• Experience managing global teams (including off-shore development centers) and large technology portfolios.

Technical Expertise

• Deep knowledge of:
• CCaaS platforms (e.g., Dynamics, Genesys, Five9, NICE, Kodex)
• CRM platforms (e.g., Salesforce, Dynamics, Zendesk, ServiceNow)
• Workforce Management Solutions
• IVR and call/chat routing & optimization
• Strong understanding of:
• Cloud-native architecture
• API and microservices design
• Event-driven integration patterns
• Enterprise security and compliance standards

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic thinker with firm grasp on innovation and emerging technologies.
• Clear communicator with strong business acumen.
• Proven ability to influence C-level executives.
• Strong vendor negotiation and ecosystem management skills.
• Data-driven decision-maker with measurable results orientation.
• Exceptional team player with proven servant leadership style.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology is required.
• Advanced degree preferred