Director Of Customer Operations Jobs in Appleton, WI

About Us:

Trilliant Food & Nutrition is a leading manufacturer of premium coffees and powdered beverages, proudly headquartered in Little Chute, Wisconsin. With a legacy rooted in quality, innovation, and service, Trilliant delivers branded and private label solutions across retail, foodservice, and e-commerce channels.

Horseshoe Beverage Company, based in Neenah, WI, is a leading ready-to-drink beverage manufacturer dedicated to delivering an exceptional beverage experience. By combining industry-leading talent, cutting-edge equipment, and a vertically integrated supply chain, we drive innovation and consistently deliver the highest quality products to our customers-first and fast.

Our brand portfolio includes Victor Allen's, Dutch Bros beverages and Nurri, our better-for-you protein beverage line. We are passionate about beverages - and about building a team that's just as energized. We invite you to explore opportunities at Trilliant or Horseshoe, to see if your talents and career aspirations may fit with our openings.

Our Core Values:

Position Overview:

The Director of Customer Operations provides strategic and people leadership across Customer Service and Customer Operations, ensuring an exceptional customer experience while driving operational excellence, accountability, and cross-functional execution. This role leads the teams, governance, operating rhythms, and business processes required to support customers from onboarding through ongoing service. The Director serves as a senior escalation and strategic partner across Sales, Supply Chain, Operations, Quality, Finance, IT, Marketing, and other functions; develops high-performing teams; establishes clear ownership and service expectations; identifies and mitigates customer and operational risk; and drives continuous improvement across the customer lifecycle.

Responsibilities:

Lead, manage, coach, and develop Customer Service and Customer Operations teams, including leaders and individual contributors, to achieve departmental objectives, strengthen accountability, and build organizational capability.

Develop and implement customer operations strategies that improve customer satisfaction, service levels, operational efficiency, accountability, and scalability.

Own the Customer Operations strategy for strengthening strategic customer relationships through service performance, operational partnership, proactive risk management, and cross functional execution.

Provide strategic oversight and governance for order management, customer onboarding, service support, account maintenance, and escalation processes, ensuring appropriate ownership, controls, pricing accuracy, and contract compliance.

Lead cross-functional alignment with Planning, Supply Chain, Logistics, Sales, Operations, Quality, Finance, Marketing, and IT to resolve customer-impacting issues and support reliable execution.

Establish and govern Customer Operations KPIs and operating reviews, including order accuracy, fill rate, OTIF/on-time delivery, customer complaints, service risk, and other customer performance measures; drive corrective actions and executive escalation when required.

Provide governance and cross-functional leadership for customer onboarding, launches, transitions, and major operational changes, ensuring accountable functional owners, readiness criteria, testing, escalation paths, and post-launch support.

Lead continuous improvement, process governance, MBOs, SOP development, and operating-model improvements across Customer Service and Customer Operations.

Partner with Quality and Operations to ensure Customer Operations processes support applicable food safety, traceability, quality, and customer compliance requirements.

Represent Customer Operations as the business owner/SME for system and process improvements, partnering with IT and technical teams responsible for solution design, development, troubleshooting, EDI execution, testing, and technical support.

Lead and participate in customer and internal business reviews; provide Customer Operations insight into forecasting, inventory, service risk, capacity, and SIOP-related decisions.

Partner with executive and functional leadership on organizational priorities, resource/capacity decisions, customer risk, performance expectations, and corporate excellence metrics.

Establish governance for customer-specific operational requirements, including OTIF, MABD, routing, labeling, fulfillment expectations, service-level commitments, penalties, and other customer requirements, ensuring requirements are clearly documented, communicated, and assigned to the appropriate functional owners.

Lead cross-functional review of recurring or material customer service failures, ensuring root causes are identified, corrective actions have clear owners and timelines, and unresolved risks are appropriately escalated.

Represent the Voice of the Customer internally by identifying recurring customer pain points, service trends, emerging risks, and improvement opportunities and translating those insights into actionable organizational priorities.

Provide leadership and coordination during significant customer, supply, quality, system, or operational disruptions, ensuring appropriate functional ownership, timely decision-making, escalation, and internal and external communication.

Lead Customer Operations through organizational, customer, process, system, and business changes by establishing clear communication, accountability, training, adoption expectations, and transition plans.

Partner with Sales, Finance, and other appropriate functions to ensure customer pricing, commercial terms, allowances, penalties, and contractual service requirements are accurately translated into operational requirements, with clear functional ownership for approvals and execution.

Qualifications:

Bachelor's degree in Business, Supply Chain, Food Science, or related field.

7+ years of experience in customer operations, supply chain, or logistics within the food manufacturing industry.

Proven leadership experience managing cross-functional teams.

Strong understanding of food manufacturing processes, regulatory requirements, and customer service best practices.

Proficiency in ERP systems (e.g., SAP, Oracle) and CRM tools.

Excellent communication, analytical, and problem-solving skills.

Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-volume environment.

Strong executive communication, decision making, prioritization, and change management capabilities.

Experience with customer escalation management, process governance, KPI/operating reviews, and continuous improvement.

Demonstrated ability to lead cross functionally and influence senior stakeholders without direct authority.

Demonstrated people leadership and leader-development experience, including performance management, coaching, succession, and organizational change.

Familiarity with EDI systems and order automation.

Collaborative and confident working across departments.

Detail-oriented with a passion for helping others succeed.

Entrepreneurial mindset with persistence and adaptability.

Strong intellectual curiosity and ability to ask insightful questions.

Compensation and Location: We offer a competitive compensation package and benefits package for full-time associates. This position is onsite at our Little Chute, WI facility Monday - Friday, standard business hours. This position will require travel between the site locations.

Physical and Mental Demands:

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to sit, hear, use hands to type data, use a personal computer and telephone. This employee may occasionally have to operate business machines and lift and/move up to 50 pounds.

Specific vision abilities required in this job include close vision and the ability to adjust focus. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Mental demands include multi-tasking, decision making, problem solving, comparing, copying, computing, compiling, analyzing, coordinating, and synthesizing data.

Potential for exposure to chemicals, heights, loud noises, mechanical equipment, wet environments, and other potential hazards exists.

Safety Statement:

At Trilliant and Horseshoe, safety is every employee's first responsibility. We expect all employees to adhere to all safety practices, have the moral courage to stop other individuals from performing unsafe acts, and immediately report unsafe conditions.

Disclosures:

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified. All personnel may be required to perform duties outside of their normal responsibilities from time to time, as needed.

Responsible for following food safety/regulatory policies and procedures, executing responsibilities as identified in standard operating procedures, and reporting food safety/regulatory concerns to the Production or Quality Manager.

Trilliant Food & Nutrition and Horseshoe Beverage Company are Drug Free Workplaces. All applicants are subject to a drug screen and background check as a condition of employment.

Trilliant Food and Nutrition and Horseshoe Beverage participate in the E-Verify process.

EEO/AA including Vets and Disabled

If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us by email at HR@trilliantfood.com and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information.

Trilliant Food and Nutrition and Horseshoe Beverage are Equal Opportunity Employers.

The principles of the OECD and UN have been taken into consideration and used as guidance in our human rights practices and procedures.