Director Customer Operations & Assistance

Please attach a document with your response to the following questions (1 page maximum). Failure to respond to these questions may preclude you from moving forward in this process. Please do not indicate "refer to resume" as a response to the questions as it will be viewed as incomplete.

1. 
   

   Describe how your experience has prepared you to be successful in this role.

   
   
2. 
   

   Tell us why you are passionate about doing work that supports a healthy, inclusive, sustainable, and thriving community in the Sacramento region and SMUD territory?

   
   

To plan, organize, manage and provide direction and accountability for Customer Operations to include managing the activities, operations, resources, and functions associated with SMUD's customer advocacy, outreach, billing, credit and collections, field, metering, power theft, and other related operational functions; identifies operational strategies and priorities within the business and allocates resources necessary to ensure efficient and effective customer operations.

This is a department director level position. It is distinguished from other director positions by its emphasis on Customer Operations. This position is accountable for business plan development, implementation and evaluation. This position provides ongoing direction and management control to ensure the ongoing reliability and efficiency of customer services business operations.

• Provides management, direction and accountability for SMUD customer operations; plans, organizes, directs, manages, coordinates, and controls activities, operations, and functions associated with customer advocacy, outreach, billing, credit and collections, field, metering, and power theft operations.
• Communicates in a variety of public forums and events with the public, business stakeholders and community organization to present and explain information and influence direction regarding SMUD operations.
• Establishes and maintains an internal and external customer-centric focus within the business unit and promotes positive and collaborative relationships with other business segments and community partners.
• Develops, implements and manages operating policies, practices and procedures to support successful execution and delivery of special assistance, Energy Assistance Program Rate (EAPR), MEDrate, and energy saver programs and services for the business unit; evaluates operating policies, procedures, and practices and modifies them to increase operational efficiency and/or customer service.
• Provides financial acumen to enable overall financial management of business unit including cost management and budget development, implementation, and monitoring.
• Assists in the development and maintenance of performance metrics to measure progress against performance targets and provides recommendations and implementation strategies achieving and evaluating best practices.
• Hires, trains, directs, manages, and motivates a high-performance team to meet departmental goals and objectives; coaches, guides and evaluates the work of staff and provides development opportunities that increase staff expertise.
• Keeps abreast of customer trends, patterns, and issues; evaluates current trends and decides if existing policies or procedures should be modified to better serve our customer operations; monitors competitor services for impact to existing operations; creates solutions to business issues based on customer input and business strategies.
• Performs other related duties as needed to include working outside of typical business hours when necessary.

Bachelor's degree in applicable disciple or equivalent years of experience. If no degree, a minimum of 11 years of relevant experience is required.

• At least seven (7+) years of extensive experience in the design, development, delivery and implementation of customer operations products and services entailing diverse activities and functions.
• At least five (5+) years of supervisory and/or management experience which demonstrates the ability to provide direction and effective management of a diverse workforce, advocating for the customer and achieving operational objectives

Customer Operation functions including those related to customer advocacy, outreach, billing, credit and collections, field, metering, and power theft operations; the customer operations landscape including markets, programs, and trends; the political landscape of laws and regulations at the local, state, and federal levels; operational and strategic business planning processes; root cause analysis; work process design and resource allocation; budget development and administration; contract administration; supervisory and management practices and techniques; safety rules and practices; key factors impacting customer services operations utilization rates; legal issues impacting customer services operations; fundamentals for motivating, coaching, mentoring, and performance managing employees; SMUD's community, regional and economic development trends; comprehensive understanding of the electric utility industry, electrical design of developer projects and the theory of energy delivery.

Provide direction and effective management of a diverse work group to achieve Customer Operations goals and objectives; plan and direct business segment initiatives that support the achievement of SMUD's strategic directives; create, communicate and execute the business segment's operating plan; drive and support business segment change initiatives that help SMUD achieve its objectives; create and sustain a business segment culture that promotes continuous process improvement; ensure that the business segments processes are aligned across functions to achieve business segment and SMUD objectives; be an effective member of SMUD's senior management team; conduct risk/benefit assessments; establish credible and effective partnerships with other interdependent operational business units; strategically position operational processes and channels to leverage the overall Customer Operations business strategies through cost, efficiency and quality improvements; work effectively with workgroups with a changing workforce.