Client Experience Manager

SUMMARY

The Client Experience Manager is a manager-level role responsible for leading Oregon Tilth’s client experience strategy across the organic certification lifecycle, from applicant transition and onboarding through renewal, retention, service recovery, and long-term client partnership. This position strengthens lifecycle continuity, client retention, service standards, CRM visibility, escalation pathways, and cross-functional coordination to ensure clients and applicants experience Oregon Tilth as clear, responsive, coordinated, and mission-aligned.

The Client Experience Manager supervises the Administrative and Transaction Services Assistant and provides oversight for frontline applicant support, inquiry intake, readiness support, CRM tracking, onboarding coordination, and certification handoffs. This role ensures the applicant and client experience functions operate as a connected lifecycle strategy that supports growth, retention, service quality, operational accountability, and Oregon Tilth’s brand promise.

The Client Experience Manager serves as a cross-functional leader and internal partner to Certification, Inspection, Quality and Accreditation, Accounting, Information Technology, Education and Advocacy, and Communications and Marketing. This role uses CRM data, client feedback, dashboard insights, retention trends, complaint and concern patterns, and service indicators to identify friction points, strengthen handoffs, support service recovery, and recommend improvements across the certification journey.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The responsibilities of the Client Experience Manager include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Serve as the functional lead for Oregon Tilth’s client and applicant experience strategy, ensuring continuity, clarity, responsiveness, and service quality across the organic certification lifecycle.
• Supervise and provide functional oversight to the Administrative and Transaction Services Assistant, including assigning work, setting priorities, providing coaching, supporting performance feedback, monitoring workload, and ensuring alignment with service standards and organizational goals.
• Lead the connection between Applicant Experience and Client Experience to support a seamless journey from initial inquiry to applicant onboarding, certification handoff, renewal readiness, and long-term client partnership.
• Oversee applicant inquiry intake, lead follow-up, applicant readiness support, onboarding coordination, CRM tracking, applicant documentation, and certification handoffs to ensure prospective clients receive timely, accurate, and mission-aligned support.
• Monitor applicant pipeline activity, including new inquiries, warm leads, high-priority prospects, applicants in onboarding, applicants awaiting follow-up, partner referrals, strategic opportunities, and complex or sensitive applicant situations.
• Lead weekly applicant and client pipeline reviews to assess active leads, applicant status, client concerns, CRM accuracy, escalation needs, handoff status, response times, and workload capacity.
• Steward the organic certification lifecycle from applicant inquiry and onboarding through renewal, mid-cycle updates, service recovery, and long-term client engagement.
• Lead client journey mapping and lifecycle review across key organic certification touchpoints, service milestones, renewal phases, communication moments, onboarding steps, and operational handoffs to identify and improve friction points.
• Lead proactive client retention efforts by strengthening long-term engagement, renewal readiness, trust-building, client health visibility, and lifecycle continuity across organic certification services.
• Identify early indicators of dissatisfaction, service disruption, surrender risk, applicant drop-off, onboarding delays, or lifecycle instability, and coordinate proactive interventions that strengthen client confidence and retention.
• Develop, monitor, and maintain client health indicators, applicant pipeline indicators, retention risk signals, service flags, conversion trends, renewal readiness markers, and escalation thresholds to improve lifecycle visibility and response planning.
• Stabilize high-risk client and applicant situations through structured escalation support, expectation setting, issue coordination, follow-up tracking, and cross-functional communication.
• Lead or oversee a centralized complaint, concern, and service recovery intake process that strengthens accountability, issue tracking, response consistency, documentation, and resolution planning.
• Steward client and applicant feedback loops, including post-service feedback, voice-of-client insights, applicant experience insights, and service trend observations to identify opportunities for workflow, communication, and service improvements.
• Lead post-inspection survey review and analysis to identify recurring pain points, service strengths, dissatisfaction trends, communication gaps, and opportunities for operational improvement.
• Oversee CRM stewardship, lifecycle status visibility, applicant and client segmentation, workflow monitoring, data quality practices, communication triggers, retention tracking, and applicant pipeline reporting.
• Partner closely with the Data and Reporting Analyst to support dashboard development, applicant and client experience reporting, retention transparency, lifecycle metrics, lead funnel visibility, onboarding trends, and operational-service insights.
• Monitor and interpret client and applicant experience metrics, including retention trends, renewal readiness, surrender-risk indicators, lead conversion, applicant pipeline movement, onboarding outcomes, complaint patterns, service-level issues, lifecycle delays, response trends, and other relevant measures to support data-informed improvement.
• Connect client and applicant experience insights with organic certification operations data, including workflow bottlenecks, delays, timeline predictability, capacity impacts, handoff gaps, and service-level risks that affect applicants and clients.
• Define, reinforce, and monitor service standards, fulfillment expectations, communication expectations, response-time practices, and consistency across applicant-facing and client-facing organic certification touchpoints.
• Lead implementation and refinement of fulfillment and service-level processes, including lifecycle handoffs, role clarity, communication expectations, escalation pathways, workflow documentation, and cross-department accountability points.
• Work closely with Certification, Inspection, Quality and Accreditation, Accounting, Information Technology, Communications and Marketing, and Education and Advocacy to improve coordination, communication, applicant readiness, client retention, and service continuity.
• Ensure applicants and clients receive clear, timely, accurate, audience-centered communication that supports understanding, readiness, accountability, and trust throughout the organic certification process.
• Support applicant education and readiness efforts in collaboration with internal teams by helping develop, refine, or reinforce guidance, resources, templates, FAQs, webinars, workshops, and communications that prepare applicants for successful onboarding and certification.
• Maintain and improve applicant-facing and client-facing templates, guidance language, referral language, follow-up communications, certification pathway explanations, timeline expectations, and commonly used resources.
• Support long-term client engagement initiatives, including anniversary recognition, relationship reinforcement, lifecycle communications, renewal support, client education touchpoints, and other trust-building or retention-focused efforts.
• Document recurring applicant and client issues, escalation pathways, service guidance, lifecycle pain points, handoff expectations, CRM practices, internal reference materials, and knowledge-sharing resources that improve consistency and continuity across teams.
• Use applicant and client experience data, feedback, service trends, operational observations, and CRM insights to recommend and help implement practical improvements that strengthen lead conversion, onboarding outcomes, client retention, service quality, responsiveness, and lifecycle coordination.
• Strengthen Oregon Tilth’s applicant-centered, client-centered, and data-informed culture by ensuring applicant and client experience insights are monitored, communicated clearly, and used to inform decision-making, planning, and process improvement.
• Contribute expertise to trainings, workshops, applicant education efforts, service planning efforts, internal process reviews, cross-functional planning conversations, and occasional presentations as assigned.
• Maintain strong working knowledge of relevant certification pathways, regulation compliance context, applicant support practices, client lifecycle service practices, internal workflows, CRM systems, and organizational resources in order to provide accurate and effective guidance.
• Coordinate and manage multiple applicant and client experience priorities, follow-ups, escalations, projects, requests, reporting needs, and special assignments in a timely and organized manner.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

WORKING CONDITIONS

This position primarily works indoors. This is a fully remote work position.

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS

N/A

TRAVEL

This position may require limited travel.

AAP/EEO STATEMENT

Oregon Tilth provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, genetics or genetic information, marital status, protected veteran status, disability, political belief, expunged juvenile record, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by an employee occupying this position. Employees may be required to perform other related duties as assigned, to ensure workload coverage. Employees are required to follow any other job-related instructions and to perform any other job-related duties requested by their supervisor. This job description does not constitute an employment agreement between the employer and the employee and is subject to change by the employer as organizational needs and requirements of the job change.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor’s degree in communications, business, public relations, agriculture, organizational leadership, customer experience, operations, nonprofit management, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience.
• Minimum of 7 years of progressively responsible professional experience in client experience, applicant experience, customer success, organic certification services, retention support, lifecycle coordination, CRM oversight, escalation management, regulated service environments, or a related field.
• Minimum of 2 years of supervisory, team lead, functional leadership, project leadership, or staff coaching experience, preferably in a client-facing, applicant-facing, operations, certification, or service-focused environment.
• Demonstrated experience leading or supporting client retention, applicant onboarding, lifecycle continuity, relationship management, service issue resolution, service recovery, and cross-functional coordination.
• Demonstrated experience supporting or improving applicant pipelines, lead follow-up, applicant readiness, onboarding coordination, CRM tracking, certification handoffs, or customer/client journey processes.
• Strong experience with CRM systems, client and applicant tracking, lifecycle visibility, workflow monitoring, data quality practices, pipeline reporting, and service-related reporting.
• Experience using dashboards, reports, survey feedback, service indicators, applicant pipeline metrics, client health indicators, or client experience metrics to identify trends, evaluate performance, and support continuous improvement.
• Strong client-facing and applicant-facing communication skills, including collaborative communication, expectation setting, issue resolution, de-escalation, follow-up, and the ability to explain complex processes clearly and effectively.
• Strong project coordination, organizational, and time management skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities, deadlines, follow-up needs, escalations, and cross-functional projects.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and detail-oriented skills, with the ability to identify trends, assess service gaps, and recommend practical improvements.
• Ability to work collaboratively across departments and with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders, including Certification, Inspection, Quality and Accreditation, Accounting, Information Technology, Communications and Marketing, Education and Advocacy, applicants, clients, and partners.
• Ability to identify workflow inefficiencies, service gaps, communication breakdowns, lifecycle risks, applicant drop-off points, retention concerns, and capacity issues, and recommend improvements that strengthen the applicant and client experience.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to prepare clear internal updates, recommendations, service guidance, process documentation, applicant-facing communications, and client-facing communications.
• Ability to provide guidance, coaching, prioritization, and accountability support for staff or functional work areas within the applicant and client experience function.
• Ability to work independently while contributing as a collaborative team member and functional leader in a dynamic, mission-driven environment.
• Demonstrated commitment to inclusive, equitable, responsive, and high-quality service practices.

PREFERRED SKILLS/EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE

• Master's degree in business, customer experience, communications, organizational leadership, agriculture, public administration, operations, or a related field
• Experience working in organic certification, regulated service environments, agriculture, food systems, nonprofit organizations, or mission-driven service settings
• Experience with Salesforce, eCert, client lifecycle dashboards, retention reporting, or service performance metrics
• Experience supporting complaint intake, escalation processes, client feedback systems, or service recovery practices
• Experience with post-inspection surveys, satisfaction analysis, voice-of-client programs, or client experience intelligence efforts
• Experience with fulfillment process improvement, service standards, workflow review, or lifecycle handoff coordination
• Familiarity with USDA NOP compliance context, organic certification pathways, or public trust issues related to certification services
• Experience collaborating across client-facing, organic certification, communications, data/reporting, and operations functions
• Demonstrated commitment to inclusive, equitable, and high-quality service practices