John Gibson
CX & Operations Leader | Product Strategy | Driving Margin Optimization & Enterprise Digital Transformation | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jagibson/ | Lexington, NE

Summary
Operations and CX Strategist offering over 20 years of leadership experience bridging product, engineering, and support teams. Expert in centralizing product operations, leading digital enterprise transformations, and managing complex technology stacks. Proven ability to transform siloed workflows into optimized, customer-centric operations that drive measurable value and business growth.

Professional Experience

Arbor Day Foundation – Lincoln, NE
Manager, Support Services | October 2025 – Present

• Strategic Support Operations: Orchestrated a multi-channel support strategy (phone, email, chat, social) to accommodate a 20% growth in the corporate partnership product portfolio and supporting a user base of 1 million members and 300 corporate partners.
• Technical Optimization & AI: Spearheaded the adoption of Zendesk and AI-driven chatbot tools, increasing ticket deflection rate and reducing manual agent workload by 30-35 hours/week through automated macros and knowledge base expansion.
• Leadership & Team Development: Direct and mentor a Tier 1 and Tier 2 support team of 35 agents. Established structured coaching programs that reduced onboarding time and improved first-contact resolution (FCR).
• Vendor & Performance Management: Manage third-party contact center SLAs for 10,000 monthly interactions. Utilized data-driven volume forecasting to maintain a 90% SLA compliance rate and elevate to a 95% CSAT score during peak seasonal tree-distribution trends.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Architected operational dashboards that translate support KPIs into actionable insights, directly influencing product roadmaps and marketing campaigns.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Serve as the primary escalation point for high-impact issues, partnering with IT, Marketing, and Tree Distribution to align support workflows and ensure a seamless end-to-end customer journey.

Khoros – Remote (Seattle and Nebraska)
Director, Product Operations | April 2021 – August 2025

• Global Operational Centralization: Centralized a global Product Operations team, replacing a siloed GM model across four acquired businesses. Established cross-functional planning rhythms that optimized margins by 18% and significantly improved cost management.
• GTM & Revenue Strategy: Modernized GTM strategy across Product, Sales, and Marketing by overhauling the Pricing Committee and Customer Advisory Boards, driving a 20% increase in subscription revenue and strengthening market alignment.
• AI Innovation Leadership: Founded and chaired the company’s inaugural AI Council. Defined high-impact generative AI use cases across Product teams.
• “CX as a Product” Initiative: Directed a cross-functional initiative embedding customer success into Product Engineering and Support workflows. Deployed AI chat and optimized intake processes, reducing service response times by 45% and case volume by 23%, while boosting CSAT to 85%. Refactored Product Engineering feeds (Pendo, Sumo Logic, Domo) into Customer Success health monitoring (Gainsight).
• Product Analytics & CCaaS Prototyping: Guided PM, UX, and Engineering teams to prototype AI-driven summarization and predictive analytics for CCaaS applications. Designed data extraction models to feed product usage metrics, directly influencing Customer Success health scoring. Renewal rates increased from mid 50 percentile to steady 85% after 18 months.
• Tech Stack Optimization: Overhauled the product management tech stack by implementing Aha! across the enterprise. Streamlined capacity planning, bug intake, and incident management processes across the Product and Engineering orgs.

HTC – Seattle, WA
Sr. Director, Customer Experience Operations | January 2018 – April 2021
Sr. Manager, Customer Experience | January 2017 – January 2018

• Global Support Operations: Directed a 250+ agent global support organization across the Americas, managing DTC and B2B post-sales service, technical support, warranty processing, and e-commerce order management for mobile and VR product portfolios.
• Enterprise Tech Stack Transformation: Spearheaded the migration from a legacy CRM to Zendesk, successfully integrating with SAP, partner ERPs, and digital commerce systems. This modernization reduced repeat contacts by 33**%** and time-to-resolve by 25**%**, driving measurable increases in both CSAT and NPS.
• Cross-Functional Quality & Risk Management: Forged strategic partnerships with Legal, Supply Chain, Finance, and Taiwan-based R&D/Manufacturing teams to lead quality improvement and trust and safety initiatives, effectively mitigating risk and optimizing global support performance.
• Voice of Customer (VOC) Intelligence: Built and managed a global social and community team to launch rapid-response VOC initiatives. Established intelligence loops that translated social sentiment and support pain points into actionable defect management and product improvements with Engineering teams.

WDS, A Xerox Company – Seattle, WA & Kansas City, MO
Director, Consulting (Contact Center and Knowledge Management)| December 2009 – January 2017

• Enterprise Digital Transformation: Directed cross-functional programs driving digital transformation and end-to-end customer journey architecture for enterprise clients across the telecom, retail, and SaaS sectors.
• Knowledge Management & Optimization: Spearheaded knowledge platform implementations for major enterprise support organizations, including Microsoft and Sprint. Successfully reduced Average Handle Time (AHT) by 20% and case re-opens by 38%.
• Analytics Center of Excellence (CoE): Established an analytics CoE for Microsoft Xbox support to identify process efficiencies and leverage Voice of Customer (VoC) data. Improved case Time to Resolve (TTR) by 31% and drove a 15% increase in digital service sales during support interactions.
• Strategic Account Management: Delivered overarching business and technology value for marquee clients (including Apple, Verizon, and Best Buy), monitoring ROI health and identifying opportunities for business value growth.

Prior Roles at WDS, a Xerox Company:

• Technical Account Manager | February 2007 – December 2009
• Instructional Design & Training Manager | May 2004 – February 2007
• Operations Lead – Contact Center | 2002 – 2004

Skills (Tri-lingual English, Spanish, and Portuguese)

Customer Experience Platforms & CRM & Contact Center:
Zendesk, Talkdesk, Salesforce, SugarCRM, Five9, Gainsight, Genesys, Khoros, Sprinklr, Hootsuite, NICE, Callminer, Clarabridge, Callabrio, Avaya, Cisco, Twilio, Smooch, Applozic, AWS Connect, Google Dialogflow

Business Intelligence & Planning Tools:
Tableau, Power BI, Qlik Sense, Spotfire, Domo, Jira, Confluence, Aha!

Workforce & Ops Management:
Forecasting, Capacity Planning, SLA Management, Budget Alignment, Headcount Planning, Workforce Management, Vendor Management,, KPI Reviews, BPO

Communication & Messaging Channels:
WhatsApp, Apple Business Messaging, SMS, RCS, X (Twitter), Google My Business, LinkedIn, WeChat, Messenger, Instagram.