Lead, Customer Advocacy

Lead, Customer Advocacy

Company: Affirm Location: Remote (Canada) Contract: Permanent Industry: Finance

Affirm is reinventing credit to make it more honest and friendly, giving consumers the flexibility to buy now and pay later without any hidden fees or compounding interest.

About the Role

The Customer Advocacy and Retention (CAR) team at Affirm is dedicated to understanding and resolving customer challenges. By championing customers who share their most difficult experiences, the CAR team provides critical insights into product, process, and policy breaking points. This role leverages customer voices to improve the overall customer experience, ensure fair outcomes, and rebuild relationships.

As a Customer Advocacy Lead, you will embody the "Voice of Affirm." You will utilize deep service and product expertise to resolve highly complex complaints while leading a team of Customer Advocacy Associates. This team collaborates with cross-functional partners to identify root causes, assess complaint validity, and determine appropriate, compliant resolutions.

Beyond individual case management, this role oversees key components of Affirm’s complaints and customer advocacy ecosystem, including quality assurance operations, escalation management, and vendor performance. You will act as a critical operational leader, proactively identifying risks, removing bottlenecks, and driving scalable solutions to enhance service levels, reduce complaint rates, and increase customer satisfaction. This position requires navigating complex, cross-functional challenges and leading initiatives that improve both customer outcomes and operational effectiveness at scale.

Key Responsibilities

Lead and Develop a High-Performing Team:

• Manage, coach, and develop a team of Customer Advocacy Associates.
• Drive team performance using key metrics such as productivity, quality, customer outcomes, and service levels.
• Foster a high-performing, engaged team environment that operates effectively in a fast-paced, evolving setting.
• Partner with recruiting to hire, onboard, and retain top talent.

Deliver Exceptional Customer Outcomes:

• Resolve complex and highly escalated customer complaints with efficiency, empathy, and sound judgment.
• Review and respond to sensitive, high-risk complaints, reinforcing and shaping the “Voice of Affirm.”
• Communicate with customers across channels, including email and phone, as appropriate.
• Represent and advocate for the complaints function in cross-functional forums to ensure consistent, high-quality customer experiences.

Own Operational Excellence:

• Oversee QA operations and processes, ensuring consistent, high-quality complaint handling.
• Evolve QA frameworks to maintain depth, rigor, and scalability.
• Manage vendor performance and accountability for third-party complaint handling, ensuring alignment with Affirm standards.
• Establish and monitor service level expectations (SLAs/KPIs), proactively identifying risks and driving corrective actions.
• Oversee internal escalation workflows and act as a point of escalation for complex issues.
• Establish scalable support models and coverage strategies.
• Own capacity planning and resource allocation.
• Manage and oversee contractors supporting the CAR team.

Drive Cross-Functional Impact:

• Lead complex, cross-functional initiatives across teams such as Vendor Partners, Compliance, Legal, Risk, Product, and Communications.
• Act as the primary operational interface with partner teams to improve intake quality, routing accuracy, and escalation effectiveness.
• Remove operational bottlenecks and drive alignment on processes, tooling, and customer experience standards.
• Influence product, policy, and process improvements based on customer insights and complaint trends.

Drive Continuous Improvement at Scale:

• Analyze complaint data to identify trends, root causes, and opportunities for systemic improvement.
• Deliver measurable impact by reducing complaint rates and improving customer satisfaction.
• Drive remediation of thematic issues through strong cross-functional collaboration.
• Continuously improve the internal complaints management program, tools, and workflows.
• Identify emerging risks, operational gaps, and service-level challenges, and drive end-to-end solutions.
• Improve customer-facing resources and education to streamline service and reduce friction.

Requirements

• 5+ years of people management experience in a customer operations or service delivery environment with a Bachelor’s degree; OR 3+ years with a Master’s degree; or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years of experience in customer support, service delivery, or complaint resolution.
• Experience managing vendors, BPOs, or external partners.
• Experience owning multi-domain operational functions (e.g., QA, escalations, service delivery).
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex, cross-functional initiatives and drive measurable outcomes.
• Strong operational mindset with experience managing SLAs, KPIs, and service performance.
• Ability to operate independently and drive execution with minimal oversight.
• Resilience and ability to navigate ambiguity, complexity, and high-pressure situations.
• Collaborative mindset with strong stakeholder management skills.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with attention to detail, tone, and