How to hire a customer operations director

How to hire a customer operations director, step by step

Here's a step-by-step customer operations director hiring guide:

• Step 1: Identify your hiring needs
• Step 2: Create an ideal candidate profile
• Step 3: Make a budget
• Step 4: Write a customer operations director job description
• Step 5: Post your job
• Step 6: Interview candidates
• Step 7: Send a job offer and onboard your new customer operations director
• Step 8: Go through the hiring process checklist

What does a customer operations director do?

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1. Identify your hiring needs

   The customer operations director hiring process starts by determining what type of worker you actually need. Certain roles might require a full-time employee, whereas part-time workers or contractors can do others.

   Determine employee vs contractor status

   Is the person you're thinking of hiring a US citizen or green card holder?

   Yes

   No

   A customer operations director's background is also an important factor in determining whether they'll be a good fit for the position. For example, customer operations directors from different industries or fields will have radically different experiences and will bring different viewpoints to the role. You also need to consider the candidate's previous level of experience to make sure they'll be comfortable with the job's level of seniority.

   This list shows salaries for various types of customer operations directors.

   Type of Customer Operations Director	Description	Hourly rate
   Customer Operations Director	Top executives devise strategies and policies to ensure that an organization meets its goals. They plan, direct, and coordinate operational activities of companies and organizations.	$48-91
   Director Of Sales And Operations	Directors of Sales and Operations are executives who oversee the performance of the company. They set the strategic direction for the company's sales force... Show more	$48-90
   Director Of Business Operations	The position of a director of business operations involves the direction and coordination of an organization. It is the main responsibility of the directors of operations to oversee the profitability and overall growth of their organization... Show more	$32-87

   Show more

2. Create an ideal candidate profile

   Common skills:

   • Customer Satisfaction
   • Account Management
   • Project Management
   • KPIs
   • QA
   • CRM
   • Customer Feedback
   • Continuous Improvement
   • ROI
   • Business Objectives
   • NPS
   • Process Improvement
   • Customer Retention
   • Digital Marketing

   Check all skills

   Responsibilities:

   • Manage, develop and deploy 3rd party and custom in house tools for care operations and call center KPIs.
   • Manage annual budget/forecast, including event marketing, customer communication and CRM.
   • Finance and billing accountability across Medicaid, manage care commercial insurance, insurance verification, contract management, and benefits administration.
   • Conduct data analysis to disprove hypothesis of spare parts logistics performance issues and re-prioritize investments to improve customer experience.
   • Maintain all KPIs relate to client adoption and ongoing retainer success.
   • Handle regulatory issues involving ISO 13485, FDA and 510K submissions.

   More customer operations director duties

3. Make a budget

   Including a salary range in your customer operations director job description is a great way to entice the best and brightest candidates. A customer operations director salary can vary based on several factors:

   • Location. For example, customer operations directors' average salary in oklahoma is 50% less than in district of columbia.
   • Seniority. Entry-level customer operations directors earn 47% less than senior-level customer operations directors.
   • Certifications. A customer operations director with a few certifications under their belt will likely demand a higher salary.
   • Company. Working for a prestigious company or an exciting start-up can make a huge difference in a customer operations director's salary.

   Average customer operations director salary

   $138,432yearly

   $66.55 hourly rate

   ---

   Entry-level customer operations director salary

   $100,000 yearly salary

   Updated December 20, 2025

   Average customer operations director salary by state

   Rank	State	Avg. salary	Hourly rate
   1	District of Columbia	$195,232	$94
   2	California	$169,081	$81
   3	Washington	$166,678	$80
   4	Nevada	$151,122	$73
   5	New Jersey	$148,113	$71
   6	Colorado	$146,090	$70
   7	New York	$145,965	$70
   8	Rhode Island	$142,758	$69
   9	Massachusetts	$142,434	$68
   10	Oregon	$141,625	$68
   11	North Carolina	$136,396	$66
   12	Virginia	$135,731	$65
   13	Texas	$134,734	$65
   14	Wisconsin	$133,434	$64
   15	Arizona	$132,624	$64
   16	Illinois	$129,452	$62
   17	Maryland	$129,363	$62
   18	Pennsylvania	$129,273	$62
   19	Indiana	$128,190	$62
   20	North Dakota	$126,653	$61

   Average customer operations director salary by company

   Company

   Rank	Company	Average salary	Hourly rate	Job openings
   1	Adobe	$186,455	$89.64	32
   2	DoorDash	$180,380	$86.72	90
   3	Bill.com	$178,821	$85.97	3
   4	VMware	$165,654	$79.64
   5	Microsoft	$164,589	$79.13	60
   6	Crown Castle International	$162,544	$78.15
   7	Udemy	$162,022	$77.90
   8	Palo Alto Networks	$159,824	$76.84	26
   9	CyberCoders	$158,850	$76.37
   10	Tripadvisor	$155,139	$74.59	2
   11	Snap	$154,174	$74.12	9
   12	Salesforce	$153,853	$73.97	42
   13	Inbenta	$152,465	$73.30
   14	Visor	$152,182	$73.16
   15	K1 Investment Management	$151,860	$73.01
   16	BeiGene	$151,576	$72.87	7
   17	Pursuit Collection	$151,525	$72.85	2
   18	Noom	$151,064	$72.63
   19	Passageways	$150,291	$72.26
   20	VidMob	$149,900	$72.07

4. Writing a customer operations director job description

   A good customer operations director job description should include a few things:

   • Summary of the role
   • List of responsibilities
   • Required skills and experience

   Including a salary range and the first name of the hiring manager is also appreciated by candidates. Here's an example of a customer operations director job description:

   Customer operations director job description example

   Rapid7 (NASDAQ: RPD) helps organizations across the globe protect what matters most so innovation can thrive in an increasingly connected world. Our comprehensive technology, services, and community-focused research simplify the complex for security teams, helping them reduce vulnerabilities, monitor for malicious behavior, be in 10 places at once, and shut down attacks. We're on a mission to make security solutions easier to use and access so we can bring safety and resilience to more people. With more than 10,000 customers across 140+ countries, Rapid7 is a leader in cybersecurity that has earned numerous industry accolades and recognition for our technology and culture.
   The Opportunity
   
   Rapid7 is seeking an experienced leader to join as the Director of Customer Success Operations to lead our Customer Success Operations team. This key role is critical to ensure our customer facing teams are able to focus on delivering consistent value-add engagements across our global customer base. The Director, Customer Success Operations will be responsible for supporting the systems, processes, and analytical needs of our Customer Success organization. In addition, this role will support strategic decision making, cross-functional project execution, customer health and retention programs, capacity planning, renewal forecasting and execution, and customer segmentation efforts.
   
   As the Director, Customer Success Operations your goal is to support the health, retention, and value realization of our customers across their engagements with Rapid7. Successful candidates will have a strong attention to detail, strong business acumen, and the ability to drive from analysis to action in support of our customer facing teams. You have the ability to minimize friction in our processes, identify areas of opportunity, and develop and launch solutions with the support and commitment of your core stakeholders. You must have a sense of urgency, the ability to manage multiple projects and priorities, and exceptional communication skills. Strong candidates will have a proven track record of scaling and developing teams of operations professionals across, project management, analytics, and data solutioning.
   
   Reporting to the Vice President of Customer Achievement and Health Operations, and partnering closely with the VP and SVP of Customer Success, you will play a key role in the current and future strategy of our business operations. This role will partner and lead project execution across various Rapid7 teams including Sales, Customer Success (CSM), Technical Customer Success, Product, and IT.
   Essential Responsibilities
   Provide operational, analytical, and decision-making support to Rapid7's executive team in the support of our customer health and retention activities Become an expert on our customer retention and renewal process, applying your expertise to drive improvements in revenue performance Explore and recommend continuous improvement to our customer segmentation and servicing models, including headcount allocation and resource management Lead Rapid7's retention and renewal forecasting capability, including the development of forecasting models, CS team forecasting processes, and regular cadence readouts to executives Support performance management initiatives and analysis across our Go-to-Customer organizations, including weekly, monthly, and quarterly performance reviews Support incentive plans including variable compensation and SPIF programs Drive and scale our Customer Success team operations across tools, processes, data capture and accuracy, and business intelligence Solve for the holistic customer experience, creating consistent and high value engagements across our various customer success teams and customer profiles Lead and develop a world class organization. Manage and provide direction to ensure the overall highest-level delivery, quality control, and management of projects
   
   Job Requirements
   Meaningful experience leading, scaling, and developing the strategies and execution of a high-paced enterprise customer success and/or operations organization Proven track record of managing both the modeling and process aspects of install base retention forecasting, ability to create materials for executive audience Proven record of managing all facets of project management including planning, implementation, delivery, and closeout as well as demonstrated ability to synthesize complex information and documentation in a deadline-driven environment Problem solver, impact-oriented, self-motivated, highly-organized and collaborative individual with a sense of urgency Strong financial acumen, ability to support pre-sales approval processes as well as renewal contract processing, include complex multiple product customers Excellent leader with a passion for developing and coaching teams, and driving a cooperative and accountable team environment Proven experience creating operational leverage through recommending, implementing, and integrating processes, tools, and best practices Experience leading cross-functional teams and managing across multiple geographically dispersed offices Significant experience using CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, etc) tools as well as BI tools (PowerBI, Tableau, Looker, etc)
   
   #LI-JC1
   
   All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.

   Copy this example

   

5. Post your job

   To find the right customer operations director for your business, consider trying out a few different recruiting strategies:

   • Consider internal talent. One of the most important sources of talent for any company is its existing workforce.
   • Ask for referrals. Reach out to friends, family members, and current employees and ask if they know or have worked with customer operations directors they would recommend.
   • Recruit at local colleges. Attend job fairs at local colleges to recruit customer operations directors who meet your education requirements.
   • Social media platforms. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter now have more than 3.5 billion users, and you can use social media to reach potential job candidates.

   Post your job online:

   • Post your customer operations director job on Zippia to find and recruit customer operations director candidates who meet your exact specifications.
   • Use field-specific websites.
   • Post a job on free websites.

6. Interview candidates

   During your first interview to recruit customer operations directors, engage with candidates to learn about their interest in the role and experience in the field. During the following interview, you'll be able to go into more detail about the company, the position, and the responsibilities.

   Remember to include a few questions that allow candidates to expand on their strengths in their own words. Asking about their unique skills might reveal things you'd miss otherwise. At this point, good candidates can move on to the technical interview.

   The right interview questions can help you assess a candidate's hard skills, behavioral intelligence, and soft skills.

7. Send a job offer and onboard your new customer operations director

   Once you've selected the best customer operations director candidate for the job, it's time to write an offer letter. In addition to salary, this letter should include details about the benefits and perks you offer the candidate. Ensuring that your offer is competitive is essential, as qualified candidates may be considering other job opportunities. The candidate may wish to negotiate the terms of the offer, and you should be open to discussion. After you reach an agreement, the final step is formalizing the agreement with a contract.

   It's also important to follow up with applicants who do not get the job with an email letting them know that the position is filled.

   To prepare for the new customer operations director first day, you should share an onboarding schedule with them that covers their first period on the job. You should also quickly complete any necessary paperwork, such as employee action forms and onboarding documents like I-9, benefits enrollment, and federal and state tax forms. Finally, Human Resources must ensure a new employee file is created for internal record keeping.

8. Go through the hiring process checklist

   • Determine employee type (full-time, part-time, contractor, etc.)
   • Submit a job requisition form to the HR department
   • Define job responsibilities and requirements
   • Establish budget and timeline
   • Determine hiring decision makers for the role
   • Write job description
   • Post job on job boards, company website, etc.
   • Promote the job internally
   • Process applications through applicant tracking system
   • Review resumes and cover letters
   • Shortlist candidates for screening
   • Hold phone/virtual interview screening with first round of candidates
   • Conduct in-person interviews with top candidates from first round
   • Score candidates based on weighted criteria (e.g., experience, education, background, cultural fit, skill set, etc.)
   • Conduct background checks on top candidates
   • Check references of top candidates
   • Consult with HR and hiring decision makers on job offer specifics
   • Extend offer to top candidate(s)
   • Receive formal job offer acceptance and signed employment contract
   • Inform other candidates that the position has been filled
   • Set and communicate onboarding schedule to new hire(s)
   • Complete new hire paperwork (i9, benefits enrollment, tax forms, etc.)

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