Vice President IT, Customer Care Technology

About 1-800-Flowers.com, Inc. 1-800-Flowers.com, Inc. is a leading online gifting and experiential commerce company with a family of iconic brands including 1-800-Flowers.com, Harry & David, Cheryl’s Cookies, PersonalizationMall.com, Things Remembered, and more. Our mission is to inspire more human expression, connection, and celebration—powered by innovative customer experiences and a seamlessly integrated technology ecosystem. Key Responsibilities Strategic Technology Leadership
In conjunction with the Business and Product Management, define and execute a multi-year technology vision and roadmap spanning:
Customer Care platforms (CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service), CRM, customer accommodations, digital engagement, WFM and analytics
Develop and execute Enterprise Order Management integrations for exception handling
Collaborating with Product Management to develop AI & Virtual agents’ strategy and execution
Align technology investments to measurable business outcomes including:
CSAT / NPS improvement
Cost-to-serve reduction
CSRs end-to-end productivity improvements
Establish scalable, API-first, cloud-native architecture aligned to enterprise standards. Technology Platform & Solution Ownership
Ensure reliable, secure, compliant, and scalable technology platform to deliver operational capability across:
Voice, chat, email, SMS, and digital service channels
Integrated order capture and exception handling
Work collaboratively within IT (and business) on integrations across ERP, WMS, TMS, Digital Commerce, Payments, real-time Inventory visibility and enterprise data platforms to drive a seamless customer and agent experience
Collaborate on Customer Center strategy, design, reliability, and optimization:
IVR, call routing, telephony platforms
Order exception management workflows
Self-service and agent assisted transactions
Ensure peak-readiness and high availability (99.9%+ uptime) across all platforms. Delivery & Modernization
Lead large-scale technology transformation programs including:
CCaaS implementation & migrations
CRM modernization
Workforce forecasting, planning and scheduling solutions
Autonomous agents and customer experience improvements
Implement agile engineering practices with outcome-based delivery.
Establish architecture standards for technology selection, deployment, lifecycle management, and technical governance.
Support modernization initiatives leveraging:
Intelligent call routing and speech recognition
Predictive inventory analytics
Automated order exception handling Innovation& Intelligent Automation (AI/ML, Agentic AI, Bots)
Support adoption of AI, machine learning, and intelligent automation across customer care.
Support implementation of Agentic AI and autonomous workflow agents to:
Address and resolve WIMO calls
Resolve order exceptions
Automate refunds, replacements, and adjustments
Proactively manage inventory imbalances
Assist agents with real-time recommendations and next-best actions
Collaborate and support conversational AI, chatbots, voice bots, and virtual assistants to increase containment, improve personalization, and reduce cost-to-serve.
Deploy predictive analytics and ML models for:
Call volume forecasting
Order risk scoring
Inventory demand sensing
Backorder prevention
Establish foresight metrics, alerts and early-warning dashboards to anticipate service spikes, fulfillment bottlenecks, delivery and inventory constraints before customer impact.
Partner with Data & Analytics to operationalize semantic-layer-driven intelligence into customer[1]care systems. Operational Excellence & Reliability
Own production support, incident management, and platform stability.
Reduce incident rates and Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR).
Ensure resilience, disaster recovery readiness, and business continuity.
Optimize system performance to handle seasonal and promotional peaks. Data, Analytics & Automation
Enable analytics layer to help business improve:
Call containment
Forecast accuracy
Agent productivity
Customer and Agent experience
Cost-to-serve
Establish KPI dashboards measuring both technical and business performance impact. Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration
Build and lead high-performing engineering, architecture, and operations teams.
Partner closely with:
Product Management and Customer Care Operations
Supply Chain & Fulfillment
Digital Commerce
Finance & FP&A
Security & Compliance
Influence executive stakeholders and participate in steering committee governance.
Ensure alignment with enterprise Intake Planning and capital prioritization processes. Qualifications: Experience
10+ years of progressive senior technology leadership and management of enterprise platforms experience (Sr. Director or VP level).
eCommerce environments ($1B+ revenue).
Experience managing global teams (including off-shore development centers) and large technology portfolios. Technical Expertise
Deep knowledge of:
CCaaS platforms (e.g., Dynamics, Genesys, Five9, NICE, Kodex)
CRM platforms (e.g., Salesforce, Dynamics, Zendesk, ServiceNow)
Workforce Management Solutions
IVR and call/chat routing & optimization
Strong understanding of:
Cloud-native architecture
API and microservices design
Event-driven integration patterns
Enterprise security and compliance standards Leadership Competencies
Strategic thinker with firm grasp on innovation and emerging technologies.
Clear communicator with strong business acumen.
Proven ability to influence C-level executives.
Strong vendor negotiation and ecosystem management skills.
Data-driven decision-maker with measurable results orientation.
Exceptional team player with proven servant leadership style. Education
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology is required.
Advanced degree preferred