SVP, Customer Care and Operations Strategy

Unum Group•Chattanooga, TN

About The Position

When you join the team at Unum, you become part of an organization committed to helping you thrive. Here, we work to provide the employee benefits and service solutions that enable employees at our client companies to thrive throughout life’s moments. And this starts with ensuring that every one of our team members enjoys opportunities to succeed both professionally and personally. To enable this, we provide: Award-winning culture Inclusion and diversity as a priority Performance Based Incentive Plans Competitive benefits package that includes: Health, Vision, Dental, Short & Long-Term Disability Generous PTO (including paid time to volunteer!) Up to 9.5% 401(k) employer contribution Mental health support Career advancement opportunities Student loan repayment options Tuition reimbursement Flexible work environments All the benefits listed above are subject to the terms of their individual Plans . And that’s just the beginning… With 10,000 employees helping more than 39 million people worldwide, every role at Unum is meaningful and impacts the lives of our customers. Whether you’re directly supporting a growing family, or developing online tools to help navigate a difficult loss, customers are counting on the combined talents of our entire team. Help us help others, and join Team Unum today! General Summary: The SVP, Operations & Customer Engagement is responsible for defining and driving the enterprise operations strategy while leading an integrated Customer Engagement and Shared Services organization with empathy, speed and quality. This role unifies service strategy, enablement, partner management, and customer-facing service delivery to strengthen end‑to‑end accountability and elevate the overall customer experience. The leader will shape how services are delivered in an emerging technology future state, building capabilities that allow Unum to anticipate customer expectations, respond with greater agility, and deliver consistently high‑value interactions across channels. In addition, this role ensures operational teams are equipped with the tools, insights, and support they need to serve customers and stakeholders effectively, enabling them to perform at their best and focus on delivering exceptional outcomes.

Requirements

15+ years leading enterprise operations with 8–10+ in customer facing and shared services/enablement or CoE leadership; proven record centralizing functions and scaling standards in insurance/FS/healthcare settings.
Proven track record shaping multi‑year operations strategies and delivering measurable outcomes at enterprise scale
Strategic Foresight & Innovation: Anticipates future opportunities and drives innovative solutions that advance enterprise value.
Transformational Change & Adoption: Leads large‑scale change with clarity and influence to ensure teams adopt and sustain new ways of working.
Analytical Insight & Data‑Driven Decisions: Uses data and analytical rigor to generate actionable insights and guide value‑based decisions.
Enterprise & Systems Thinking: Optimizes end‑to-end flow; prioritizes enterprise and customer outcomes over local efficiency.
Influence Without Authority: Builds alignment across functions; navigates conflict constructively.
Execution & Follow‑through: Translates strategy into action; drives accountability and removes systemic blockers.
Demonstrated success governing third‑party delivery and aligning with Strategic Sourcing on S2P, performance SLAs, and risk/compliance.
Led AI‑enabled operations (self‑service, routing, agent assist) with measurable impact and model oversight.
High integrity and ethical standards; role model for corporate values and accountability.
Results-driven with a strong orientation toward continuous learning and performance excellence.
Exceptional communicator with the ability to inspire, inform, and mobilize teams.

Responsibilities

Shared Services Enablement: Operate an operations focused service catalog and scorecards with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) covering a breadth of leading and lagging indicators not limited to: Operational Performance, Knowledge Management, Workforce Operational Risk, Process Improvement, Quality Assurance and program management.
Customer Engagement & Service Design: Leverage Value Stream framework to integrate Service Strategy & Design with delivery and enablement to ensure customer outcomes are designed, delivered, and measured end‑to‑end. Drive consistent experience standards across channels, with strong Voice of Customer and Voice of Employee feedback loops.
Operational Excellence Portfolio prioritization : Run an intake/triage and sequencing process with joint prioritization council in Partnership with Transformation Acceleration Office.
Partner Management (Third-Party Oversight): Build and execute strategy for business led external labor partnerships; Centralize governance of external labor; align to Strategic Sourcing on Source‑to-Pay, commercial strategy, performance credits/penalties, and risk. Target BPO vendor rationalization and value capture. Develop forward thinking strategies for BPO disruption including paths for GenAI and AgenticAI opportunities.
AI Operations & Digital Service: Implement and scale intelligent routing, real-time agent assist, automate routine tasks, route work smarter and guide teams to higher value efforts. Partner with enterprise teams to leverage and increase utilization of self-service portals and virtual assistants for customers and intuitive knowledge bases for employees. Ensure ethical, compliant AI operations with robust data governance and model performance monitoring.
Performance architecture: Own OKRs that connect experience, speed, quality, and cost‑to-serve; maintain enterprise dashboards; conduct QBRs with business units. Establish a unified performance architecture: elevated SLAs, cost‑to-serve/unit cost, FCR, digital containment, cycle times, quality, and experience metrics. Own operational risk posture across Operations; remediate gaps proactively.
Leadership & Culture: Cultivate a high-performing, inclusive culture that fosters employee engagement, accountability, and ethical behavior. Build bench strength by attracting, developing, and retaining top talent with a focus on diversity and long-term succession planning.
Enterprise Strategy & Roadmap: Create and maintain the multi‑year Operations Strategy and priority roadmaps aligned to Customer Operations; translate strategy into funded, sequenced programs with clear value cases and OKRs.
Customer Engagement: Leverage Value Streams to integrate service strategy, enablement, partner management, and service delivery to ensure end‑to‑end accountability for outcomes and customer success.
Shared Services/Enablement: Stand up and lead CoEs for Knowledge Mgmt, Workforce Operations, Operational Risk, Process Improvement, Quality Assurance and Program/Portfolio Management; deliver standardized methods, tools, and SLAs across functions.
AI Operations & Digital: Operationalize AI/automation and intelligent workflow at scale (e.g., intelligent routing, self‑service, agent assist) to improve containment, accuracy, and cost‑to-serve.
Partner Management: Accelerate external labor strategy with GenAI and AgenticAI engagement and governance; align tightly with Strategic Sourcing on Source‑to-Pay strategy, performance, and value realization.
Service Delivery Orchestration: Drive adoption of intelligent routing, ensure seamless handoffs, and enable Value Delivery Experts (e.g., CBAs) to optimize end‑to-end Value Streams.
Performance & Risk: Own operational Success Metrics & OKRs (elevated SLAs and unit cost), benefits tracking, and operational risk controls across the shared services footprint.

Benefits

Award-winning culture
Inclusion and diversity as a priority
Performance Based Incentive Plans
Competitive benefits package that includes: Health, Vision, Dental, Short & Long-Term Disability
Generous PTO (including paid time to volunteer!)
Up to 9.5% 401(k) employer contribution
Mental health support
Career advancement opportunities
Student loan repayment options
Tuition reimbursement
Flexible work environments