Chief Operating Officer/Chief Experience Officer

About the role

The Chief Experience Officer is Safeware’s senior executive leader for the end-to-end customer journey, from the moment a customer engages with Safeware through order placement, fulfillment, and post-sale support. This leader is accountable for customer experience outcomes and for the operational systems and cross-functional coordination that make the Safeware brand promise real.

Key Responsibilities

• Customer Experience Strategy and Ownership

• Shape the customer experience.

• Own and drive customer experience outcomes across the full lifecycle, including satisfaction, retention, long-term customer value, repeat business, and broader growth progress.

• Architect and deliver a fully integrated customer experience platform, including self-service capabilities, AI-enabled account support, ecommerce excellence, and punchout marketplace functionality.

• Ensure Safeware’s brand promise is embedded into every customer touchpoint, so customers experience customization, accessible expertise, and frictionless purchasing.

• Use data, customer intelligence, and frontline insight to continuously improve the experience and build feedback loops that surface problems before they become losses.

• Provide consistent operational leadership for the company, and in particular the managers and employees tasked with operations within the company.

• Sales Led Customer Journey

• Partner closely with sales and marketing leadership to strengthen the experience from first touch through conversion, account development, and long-term customer retention.

• Improve how customers navigate complex purchasing environments, including quoting, contracts, ordering, communication, and issue resolution.

• Ensure customer experience directly supports commercial growth and reinforces Safeware’s position as a trusted partner, not just a product source.

• Customer Order Experience

• Own the full customer order experience, including order accuracy, issue resolution, shipment visibility, return rate reduction, and customer communication through delivery.

• Identify and eliminate friction in the fulfillment process, including manual steps, disconnected systems, poor handoffs, and communication gaps that create customer frustration.

• Drive integration of fulfillment data into the customer experience so customers always know where their orders are, what to expect next, and how issues will be resolved.

• Build the operating muscle required to support fulfillment at significant scale, including the processes, staffing models, supplier coordination, and technology needed to handle substantial growth.

• Lead improvement of the customer order process in a business where much of the volume is fulfilled through supplier drop ship relationships, requiring strong coordination across internal teams and external partners.

• Technology Modernization as Business Owner

• Lead evaluation, selection, and implementation of a next-generation ecommerce platform to replace the current proprietary environment, with strong self-service and punchout marketplace capabilities.

• Own CRM strategy from the business side, including integration into the broader operating environment and, if needed, selection and implementation of a replacement platform in partnership with technology leadership.

• Set business requirements and own outcome accountability for major modernization efforts, including Prophet 21 data work, ecommerce evolution, CRM decisions, data strategy, and the development of customer-facing and internal workflow tools, applications, dashboards, and other business enablement solutions.

• Champion Safeware’s AI strategy as a business leader, including AI-powered customer intelligence, workflow automation, and practical productivity improvements across operations and service.

• Drive the design and adoption of business tools that improve visibility, execution, and decision-making across the customer journey, including customer workflows, internal apps, dashboards, and related digital capabilities.

• Partner closely with technology leadership through ongoing transition and modernization efforts, providing input on future technology leadership needs.

• Operational Continuity and Scale

• Take ownership of operational continuity, ensuring no disruption to customer service, fulfillment execution, and supply chain coordination.

• Capture and document critical institutional knowledge, preserving what works while identifying what must evolve to support the next stage of growth.

• Build and lead a high-performing operations and customer experience team, with the bench strength required for succession, scale, and sustained execution.

• Build the operating discipline needed to support Safeware’s growth ambitions without compromising responsiveness, customer confidence, or service quality.

• Executive Leadership and Cross-Functional Partnership

• Model the Safeware Way, Wisdom, Accountability, Relationships, and Excellence, across every team and interaction.

• Represent the voice of the customer in every strategic conversation and enterprise priority discussion.

• Lead through influence, judgment, and accountability, aligning functions that do not report directly to this role but materially shape the customer experience.

Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate has done this before. They have taken a company’s customer experience from fragmented to best-in-class while simultaneously modernizing the operations behind it. They are tech strategic without needing to be technologists. They lead with values and deliver with accountability.

Experience and Qualifications

• 10+ years of senior leadership experience in distribution, including direct experience as an operations executive in a distribution environment, or in a closely adjacent industry.

• Demonstrated track record of building or transforming the customer experience end-to-end, not just improving scores, but redesigning the journey, the systems, and the team behind it.

• Hands-on experience owning the customer order process, including accuracy, issue resolution, shipment visibility, and customer-facing execution at scale.

• Experience leading or actively partnering on major platform modernization involving ecommerce, CRM, ERP, data, or related systems.

• Track record of scaling an organization through significant revenue growth, ideally in the $200M to $500M+ range.

• Experience leading customer experience transformation that included self-service, ecommerce, digital buying, punchout capabilities, or similar customer-facing improvements.

• Experience with Prophet 21 or similar ERP environments and familiarity with data, master data, or related business modernization efforts.

• Experience evaluating, selecting, implementing, or replacing customer-facing platforms in a B2B environment.

• Public sector experience, including operating in, selling to, or understanding public procurement and contract vehicles, is strongly preferred.

Leadership Capabilities

• Customer obsessed with strong operational discipline.

• Able to hold customer experience and execution quality to the same high standard.

• Tech strategic mindset that sets vision, defines requirements, and holds partners accountable for outcomes.

• Strong relationship builder with executive peers, frontline teams, suppliers, channel partners, and customers.

• Financial fluency, including understanding of margin, lifetime value, cost to serve, and how customer experience investments translate to growth.

• Strong change leadership, able to move people through transformation without losing the culture that made Safeware successful.

• High accountability, and trusted through consistency rather than title.