Senior Director, Head of Client Services (CS) – SMT Cluster, Global Clients and Global/Regional Acquirers

Company Description

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Job Description

Team Summary

The SMT Cluster, Global Clients & Global/Regional Acquirers Client Services team is currently a team of 9 located across the region covering clients in 3 countries: Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. It also covers Global Clients and Global Acquirers who have presence in the Asia Pacific region. 

The team is accountable for managing the post-sale and operational relationships of clients by overseeing onboarding and implementation processes, maximizing adoption of deployed products, driving Client Success outcomes, and optimizing client performance.

What a Senior Director, Head of Client Services (CS) – SMT Cluster, Global Clients and Global/Regional Acquirers does at Visa?

The Senior Director, Head of Client Services (CS) – SMT Cluster, Global Clients & and Global/Regional Acquirers is a senior leadership role, reporting to the SVP, Head of AP Client Services, and will lead the team responsible for managing the post-sales and operational relationships of clients by overseeing onboarding and implementation processes, maximizing adoption of deployed products, driving Client Success outcomes, and optimizing client performance across the SMT markets, Global Clients and Global/Regional Acquirers.

The Senior Director is expected to provide strategic, functional, and technical leadership for all the operational activities for applicable clients, including the cross functional delivery of systems and services. They will define and deploy client service strategies across the different client types including proactive Client Success planning. This will ensure their client operational goals/success metrics are understood, intended outcomes are met and client readiness activities for upcoming mandates are tracked in Client Success Plans. In addition, a key tenet will be to develop and enhance success metrics for the team they lead to ensure Client satisfaction is not only measured, but is exceeded, using net promoter scores, survey results, OKRs, in person meetings, outreach calls, and other factors to determine accountability and proactive engagements by their team members. 

The Senior Director is accountable for building a high-performing and cohesive team, aligned to the global Client Success strategy, by providing leadership to a team of individual contributors. They should do this through coaching, setting strategic direction and applying working knowledge of Visa products, systems, and procedures. They are accountable for personifying the Visa leadership principles while providing guidance to direct reports, cross-functional staff, and senior management to proactively drive Client Success whilst ensuring effective resolution of high-priority issues with potential of significant financial implications.

In this role, you are expected to:

• Lead courageously to inspire the SMT Cluster, Global Clients and Global/Regional Acquirers Client Services team, focused on delivering excellent client experience and optimizing our clients’ performance.
• Be a member of, and active participant in, the AP Client Services Leadership Team and the SMT Cluster, Global Clients & Acquiring Leadership Team.
• Own the expense budget for this group, as well as revenue and sales targets and Objectives/Key Results based on the multi-year Client Success transformation.
• Drive the development and delivery of key strategic initiatives in support of the global Client Success transformation, inspiring and holding team members to account for enacting key changes in support of the future state vision.
• Establish and foster outstanding relationships with executive management team stakeholders from Clients and is adept at independently managing and resolving challenging and complex client escalations by obsessing about clients. 
• Develop and maintain outstanding relationships with key Visa cross-functional stakeholders. Represents the voice of the client on all operational initiatives and issues with key internal partner organizations including Sales, Product, Global Clients, Global/Regional Acquirers, Finance, Risk, Legal and Technology.
• Build and maintain highest quality relationships across all key clients, industry participants and regulatory bodies. Establishes thought leadership in domains on payments, operations, innovation and technology. 
• Own the holistic post-sale and operational relationship of the client portfolio, acting as a key ambassador of all Client Services teams by providing the central voice of Client Services to Clients and Sales Account Owners.
• Act, on an ad-hoc and as needed basis, as the central escalation point for managing client escalations concerning major incident/crisis responses.
• Provides thought leadership expertise on the latest global payment processing trends, Visa solutions, and technologies to provide a world class Client experience.
• Manage all Client Services staff in the SMT cluster, some of whom dual report to other Client Services functions, requiring partnership and coordination with other Client Services Leads.
• Be available for international travel 40% of the time due to the regional footprint of clients, direct reports and team members.

Why this is important to Visa?

This senior leadership role is an exciting opportunity to be at the forefront of and shape Visa’s Client Success transformation, by leading and developing a high-performing team of Client Success Managers to maximize client benefits realization and value from Visa products via proactive optimization processes.

Qualifications

What you will need:
We are looking for an individual who brings breadth of experience, a curiosity about payments, is results-driven and client focused. As a candidate, you should have:

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent, Graduate degree/MBA preferred.
• 15+ years of successful experience in progressive leadership roles with client facing accountability, preferably in the Payments industry.
• Superior leadership qualities with the ability to build high performing teams, provide direction, motivation and holding self and team accountable for results and the required behaviors.
• Outstanding demonstrated strategic ability to solve complex cross-functional issues exercising critical thinking and sound judgment.
• Outstanding ability to strategically lead cross-functional teams through high impact complex business issues that do not have precedent.
• Inspiring leadership and management of a team of technical and/or professional services professionals.
• Demonstrated ability to build and maintain outstanding business relationships with internal and external stakeholders at senior and executive management levels.
• Working knowledge of Client business drivers for their operations and processing businesses, demonstrating detailed knowledge of the full breadth of systems, products and services offered by Visa.
• Knowledge and experience of Acquiring business and operations.
• Experience managing relationships with large global clients.
• Experience and understanding of global practices and management.
• Excellent presentation, communication and networking skills.
• Ability to make and build strong connections with government and regulators in markets
• Highly disciplined and organised approach to managing self and team to execute consistently and systematically on both immediate and long term priorities.
• A strategic thinker who creates a clear vision and then breaks the objective into clear deliverables phases.
• Disciplined approach to risk management, identifies and analyses the risks when making decisions.
• Self-starter with demonstrated ability to take the initiative, and adapt in a fast changing, often ambiguous market context.

Personal Characteristics

• An inclusive leader with experience building, empowering and developing high performing diverse teams.
• Creative and resourceful in overcoming barriers and unexpected roadblocks.
• Takes a hands-on approach to all activities with real passion and high levels of energy.
• An intellectually curious but humble leader with a high degree of compassion, able to engage, enable and inspire others.
• An authentic leader who intuitively engenders an inclusive environment, enabling the business to reach its ambitious goals.
• High levels of learning-agility with a real interest in the fintech ecosystem and a ‘technology / digital-first’ approach.
• Entrepreneurial and comfortable with ambiguous and change-led environments, self-confident with an authentic style that gravitates to championing change.
• Eager to seek a challenge and expand frontiers, brings a visionary approach. Sets and meets a high bar of goals and principles.
• Committed to building a community through Visa’s Leadership Principles.

Additional Information

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.