Director, Vendor Delivery
College Board - Operations
Location:
- This is a remote role. Candidates who live near CB offices have the option of being fully remote or hybrid (Tuesday and Wednesday in office). All CB employees are required to occasionally travel to meet in person for business purposes.
Role Type:
- This is a full-time position
About the Team
The Operations Division at College Board is focused on leading the organization’s transformation to support delivery of digital assessments. The division aims to provide strong customer engagement and world-class digital assessment delivery experience that supports millions of students and thousands of schools and test centers annually. The Customer Engagement & Experience (CEE) department is a combination of teams that support our key constituents: students, parents, educators, and our state partners that represent approximately two million contacts per year. This integrated team serves as the organization’s ‘front line’ and represents the voice of the customer, partnering across the organization to help improve the overall customer experience.
About the Opportunity
As the Director, Vendor Delivery, you are responsible for leading and directing how educators and students engage successfully with College Board to ensure an optimal experience at every touchpoint. In this pivotal role, you own the end-to-end delivery of SSD Tier 1 support through our third-party contact center partners, ensuring every interaction meets the highest standards of excellence. Through careful oversight of performance metrics, real-time insights, and direct observation, you translate data into purposeful action. You will collaborate closely with CEE leaders, program stakeholders, and various third-party delivery teams to raise the bar on service quality. Your leadership drives the consistent execution of best practices and nurtures strong relationships with program partners, the Directors of Customer Engagement Strategy & Solutions and the Tier 3 SSD Customer Care Team. Together, you ensure the delivery of a world-class customer experience—one that truly supports educators and uplifts students on their path to opportunity.
In this role, you will:
Performance & Process Excellence – 50%
- Driving exceptional performance results and an optimal customer experience by leveraging data-driven insights and combining analytics, systems expertise, and improvement frameworks to unlock service excellence and consistently surpass operational goals.
- Own the operational integrity of SSD (Services for Students with Disabilities) Tier 1 support, ensuring every vendor team is fully compliant with all defined standards, policies, and handling procedures before an interaction ever reaches Tier 3.
- Track call center vendor performance against defined SLAs and KPIs, including contact volumes, call efficiency, abandonment rates, staffing utilization, shrinkage, and occupancy, ensuring vendors are consistently meeting and exceeding what's outlined in the SOW. Support budget alignment and manage incentive and penalty structures.
- Build and maintain the quality gates, audits, and checkpoints that catch compliance gaps early, so escalations arriving at Tier 3 are clean, well-documented, and free of avoidable rework.
- Track escalation quality as a core metric, not just volume, holding vendors accountable for the completeness and accuracy of what gets handed off, while ensuring escalation rates to Tier 3 remain low and valid.
- Interpret performance data to identify trends, diagnose issues, and make data-driven decisions that sustain daily operational success.
- Implement improvement strategies with vendor teams using data-driven methodologies such as Lean or Six Sigma, ensuring all actions are tied to measurable outcomes.
- Identify agent-level performance outliers through data analysis and QA trends; implement targeted coaching, action plans, and performance tracking to accelerate improvement and align outcomes with service standards.
- Use ERP systems, analytics tools, and automation platforms to conduct deep dives, identify inefficiencies, and optimize workflows.
- Partner with SSD program stakeholders to keep standards current as policy, accommodation guidelines, or eligibility rules evolve, and ensure those updates are reflected in vendor procedures without delay.
- Evaluate and mitigate operational risks by developing contingency plans that protect service continuity and customer satisfaction.
Operational Leadership & Vendor Delivery – 25%
- Own the strategic delivery of vendor-led customer support services (call center environments), ensuring seamless, high-quality engagement for educators and students at every stage of the journey.
- Drive alignment between daily operations and long-term service objectives by leveraging deep expertise in contact center strategy, performance management, and coaching excellence. Lead with a focus on scalability, consistency, and impact—ensuring Tier 1 and Tier 2 support not only meet expectations but help advance College Board’s mission and program goals.
- Proactively manage contact center operations, including coaching sessions and documentation, QA score reviews, business review preparation, outlier and glide-path performance management.
- Collaborate with the Senior Directors of Customer Engagement & Learning Development to ensure coaching plans and training initiatives are implemented, assessed, and adjusted based on agent group needs.
- Conduct root cause analyses and implement remedies, balancing proactive and reactive strategies to ensure that services delivered meet and exceed expectations.
- Lead and motivate vendor teams to meet and exceed performance goals, fostering a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.
Stakeholder Engagement & Strategic Communication – 25%
- Champion cross-functional alignment and strategic collaboration to deliver seamless, mission-aligned customer experiences—ensuring every stakeholder contributes to impactful, student- and educator-focused outcomes.
- Serve as the program SME for vendor teams, offering leadership and guidance in complex, multi-stakeholder environments with defined service goals.
- Communicate vendor performance, escalations, and action plans to CEE leaders and program partners, in close collaboration with the Director, Customer Engagement Strategy & Solutions.
- Build and maintain strategic relationships across departments, divisions, vendors, and partner organizations.
- Drive cross-functional collaboration on customer-facing action plans, ensuring transparency, alignment, and accountability.
- Implement innovative, scalable solutions in complex scenarios to elevate workflows and support best-in-class service delivery.
About You:
To qualify for this role, you must have:
- 7+ years of progressive experience in contact center operations, with a strong track record of managing large-scale, multi-channel environments (voice, email, chat, self-service, etc.)
- Proven leadership capabilities, including the ability to:
- Lead and influence cross-functional and vendor teams
- Optimize key performance metrics (e.g., SLAs, AHT, FCR, NPS, CSAT)
- Design and implement scalable service delivery strategies
- Drive continuous improvement initiatives across Tier 1 and Tier 2 support models
- Experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions
- Independently and proactively learn new tools and apply emerging industry best practices to drive stronger customer experience outcomes
- Expertise in core operational areas, including:
- Workforce management and capacity planning
- Quality assurance and performance monitoring
- Coaching frameworks and frontline development
- Familiarity with Generative AI applications in contact center operations
- Bachelor’s degree preferred in a relevant field (e.g., Business, Operations, Organizational Leadership); equivalent practical experience in contact center operations and leadership will also be considered.
- The ability to travel 3–4 times a year to College Board offices or on behalf of College Board business, including potential international travel to vendors abroad
All roles at College Board require:
- A passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work
- Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and comfort with learning and applying new digital tools independently and proactively.
- Clear and concise communication skills, written and verbal
- A learner's mindset and a commitment to growth: welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously improving through iterative learning and user input.
- A drive for impact and excellence: solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing what matters most, and continuously improving through learning, user input, and external benchmarking.
- A collaborative and empathetic approach: working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success
- Authorization to work in the United States
About Our Process
- Application review will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.
- While the hiring process may vary, it generally includes: resume and application submission, recruiter phone/video screen, hiring manager interview, performance exercise such as live coding, a panel interview, a conversation with leadership and reference checks.
What We Offer
At College Board, we offer more than a paycheck: we provide a meaningful career, a supportive team, and a comprehensive package designed to help you thrive. We’re a self-sustaining nonprofit that believes in fair and competitive compensation grounded in your qualifications, experience, impact, and the market.
A Thoughtful Approach to Compensation
- The hiring range for this role is $80,000 - $125,000
- Your exact salary will depend on your location, experience, and how your background compares to others in similar roles at the College Board.
- We aim to make our best offer upfront, rooted in fairness, transparency, and market data.
- We adjust salaries by location to ensure fairness, no matter where you live.
You’ll have open, transparent conversations about compensation, benefits, and what it’s like to work at College Board throughout your hiring process. Check out our careers page for more.
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