Chief Customer Officer

About Us: Bench Accounting is on a mission to help every business owner thrive. As a leading bookkeeping and tax platform for small business owners in a $31B total addressable market, we are proud of our differentiated human touch at scale. We are now seeking an experienced Chief Customer Officer (CCO) to play a pivotal role in shaping and executing our customer strategy, ensuring exceptional service delivery, and fostering a customer-obsessed culture as we become a multi-product company.

Position Overview: The CCO will report directly to the CEO and will guide our high-trajectory technology company to enhance the timeliness and quality of our bookkeeping services, drive customer success, and build robust bookkeeping, tax preparation, advisory, and resolution practices. This strategic leader and experienced operator will excel at scaling through simplicity, dependability, clarity of insights, and relentless execution.

Key Responsibilities:

• Customer Advocacy: Be the voice of the customer across the organization, advocating for their needs and expectations, and ensuring they are met.
• Service Delivery: Ensure the timeliness and quality of bookkeeping and tax services delivery, continuously driving improvement and operational efficiency across people, processes, and systems.
• Customer Success: Drive the adoption of product features, best practices, and retention through effective customer success initiatives as well as employee development programs.
• Expansion and Innovation: Build and expand our tax preparation and tax resolution practice, and help Bench deepen its moat by identifying and collaborating cross-functionally to successfully launch naturally complementing offerings at scale.
• Cultural Leadership: Foster a highly engaged organizational culture that is customer-obsessed, emphasizing a strong sense of ownership, a product-first mindset, and a first-principle approach to delivering value at the speed of technology, leveraging people as our key advantage.
• Strategic Planning: Lead the development and execution of the company’s customer strategy, ensuring alignment with business goals and objectives.
• Customer Experience Design: Implement and optimize customer experience design and process improvement methodologies, such as lean six sigma, to enhance customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
• Team Leadership: Build, lead, and develop high-performing teams to deliver world-class customer experiences while continuously driving gross margin improvements through technology and innovation.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with other areas of the business, including Product, Marketing, Sales, and Biz Ops, to ensure a cohesive and integrated approach to customer experience and success.
• Focus and Accountability: Drive a strong focus on net retention and creating value for our customers, ensuring that our services not only meet but exceed customer expectations.
• Industry Evangelism: Be an evangelist and the voice of Bench at customer or industry events, staying on top of SMB and fintech trends to ensure that Bench remains at the forefront of innovation and customer satisfaction.
• Trend Monitoring: Stay abreast of SMB and fintech trends to ensure that Bench remains at the forefront of innovation and customer satisfaction.

Qualifications:

• Required: 15+ years of proven experience and track record in senior customer-focused leadership roles at several high-profile tech startups that have scaled to $100M+ in annual revenue and 100,000+ customers.
• Preferred: experience leading large accounting and/or tax teams and delivering world-class customer experience while continuously driving net dollar retention and gross margin improvements.
• Strong leadership skills with a history of building, leading, and developing high-performing teams.
• Expertise in customer experience design and process optimization, including lean six sigma and other related disciplines.
• Excellent strategic thinking and problem-solving abilities.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to influence and collaborate effectively across all levels of the organization.
• Proven ability to drive change and inspire a culture of continuous improvement and customer-centricity.
• Experience in driving focus and accountability on net retention and creating customer value.
• Demonstrated ability to be an effective industry evangelist, representing the company at events and staying current with industry trends.

Why Bench:

• Opportunity to make an indelible mark on the future of small business financial technology.
• Collaborative and inclusive company culture.
• Competitive salary and benefits package.
• Chance to work with a passionate and talented team committed to making a difference for small business owners.

If you are a visionary leader with a passion for customer success and a track record of driving operational excellence, we invite you to apply and join us on our mission to help every business owner thrive.