Customer Experience Manager

ABOUT ALENDEL

Founded in 1981, Alendel Fabrics is a family-run company now in its second generation of ownership. For more than 45 years it has been a single source for fabrics, trimmings, linings and decorative drapery hardware for the interior design trade across North America, offering high-quality products at a range of price points for residential, hospitality and contract projects.

With distribution centres in Toronto and Buffalo, New York, an extensive showroom network and a knowledgeable sales team, Alendel works by a simple promise: Service · Quality · In Stock. It has been recognized for Canadian Business Excellence in consecutive years and as a Great Employer during Canada's Healthy Workplace Month. The business is growing, and its culture is rooted in integrity, accountability and long-term partnerships with customers and team members.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Alendel is looking for an experienced manager to lead its Customer Service function and strengthen the end-to-end customer experience across Canada and the United States. This is a newly created operational leadership and transformation role. Day-to-day service and order support matter, but the bigger mandate is to build a scalable, measurable, technology-enabled North American customer experience model.

You will lead through people, processes, data and systems rather than absorbing transactional work yourself. Reporting to the COO and partnering with Sales, Operations, Warehouse, Finance, Credit, Product and IT, you will set clear standards, create visibility into workload and performance, develop your team, and make sure improvements are implemented, adopted and measured.

WHAT YOU WILL LEAD

Customer Experience & Service Standards

• Own the quality and consistency of the customer experience across email, phone, order support and issue resolution.
• Set measurable service standards - including 95%+ compliance with a four-business-hour response standard - and ensure escalations have clear ownership and follow-through.

People Leadership & Accountability

• Lead, coach and develop a team of approximately eight, with regular one-on-ones, performance reviews and capability building.
• Delegate transactional work so your time stays focused on management, analysis and improvement; build cross-training and backup coverage.

Operational Planning & Execution

• Build and drive a Customer Experience improvement roadmap with clear priorities, owners, timelines and measures of success.
• Run a regular operating cadence on KPIs, service performance and open issues, solving root causes before they need senior-level intervention.

Capacity, Analytics & Reporting

• Create reliable workload and capacity visibility across email, phone, order processing and other activities.
• Use data to separate people, process, technology and capacity issues, and build practical dashboards for service and performance.

Order Service & Open-Order Discipline

• Establish clear ownership of open and aged orders through a weekly review cadence, targeting 90%+ resolution, escalation or customer update within four business days.
• Work with Sales, Warehouse, Finance and Credit to fix the recurring causes of delayed orders.

Process, Technology, AI & Automation

• Develop SOPs, scripts and knowledge tools so the team can resolve routine inquiries without unnecessary handoffs.
• Optimize SAP Business One, lead CRM and ticketing requirements and adoption, and apply AI and automation responsibly to reduce manual work.

Customer Feedback & Continuous Improvement

• Establish a CSAT and feedback baseline and reporting cadence, and turn insights into measurable improvements, including first-contact resolution.

Cross-Functional & North American Structure

• Define clean handoffs and escalation paths with Sales, Operations, Warehouse, Finance, Credit, Product and IT.
• Design and scale a North American service model, covering Canada, the U.S., Home Décor and Piece Goods, that can grow into separate country teams or leads over time.

HOW SUCCESS WILL BE MEASURED

Customer response-time compliance and communication quality · open-order aging and resolution · CSAT and feedback trends · first-contact resolution and fewer handoffs · workload and capacity visibility · team development, delegation and backup coverage · SOP, CRM and technology adoption · fewer recurring service failures · the quality of cross-functional handoffs · improvement initiatives delivered on time with measurable results.

WHAT YOU BRING

• 7+ years of progressive experience in Customer Experience, Customer Service Operations, Order Management or a related B2B service environment, including 3–5+ years leading a multi-person customer-facing or operational support team.
• Experience in B2B distribution, wholesale, manufacturing, textiles, industrial products or a comparable order-driven environment is strongly preferred.
• A track record of establishing service standards, KPIs, capacity measures and accountability routines, and of taking process improvements from diagnosis through implementation, adoption and measurable results.
• Strong ERP and order management experience (SAP Business One is an asset), plus hands-on use of CRM platforms, reporting tools, automation and data analysis.
• Real curiosity about AI and emerging technology, and a record of using it to improve how work gets done.
• Experience supporting Canadian and U.S. customers, and designing or scaling service structures across multiple markets, including country-specific teams or leads.
• Experience leading multi-country, multilingual teams (English, French and Spanish), with strong cross-functional influence, communication and escalation judgment.

WHO YOU ARE

You are an operationally grounded manager who understands the detail without being consumed by it. You lead through delegation, coaching, standards and accountability, and you have a strong bias for getting things finished, not just analyzed or planned. You build repeatable processes instead of relying on individual heroics, use data to challenge assumptions, and enjoy testing better ways of working. You are customer-focused, collaborative and decisive, and when you raise an issue you bring context, options and a recommendation.