Synchrony Financial

SVP, Contact Center Modernization

Stamford Site Full time

Role Summary/Purpose:

As the SVP, Contact Center Modernization, you will oversee and be accountable for Synchrony’s Contact Center Modernization (CCM) strategy, roadmap, delivery, and value realization. CCM will leverage Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) to drive the transformation of legacy call center technologies and processes to a modern cloud-based contact center platform with unified customer journey context. This initiative enables customer engagement, automation, and seamless omnichannel servicing across digital, voice, chat, and messaging channels. You will serve as the executive program leader and will be expected to lead with a consumer-first mindset to deliver standout customer experiences with focus on NPS while enhancing frontline associate experiences.

In addition to improving customer outcomes, CCM is equally focused on elevating the frontline employee experience—reducing friction, modernizing tools, and simplifying operational processes—so frontline associates can focus on the work that matters most: confidently and efficiently servicing the customer to the best of their ability. This leader will ensure modernization is not “technology for technology’s sake,” but instead delivers a practical, intuitive, and scalable product grounded in how work is performed in servicing environments.  This includes deeply understanding frontline employee experiences, operational practices, and root causes of friction. This leader will translate those insights into prioritized capabilities, partner on training/enablement, and adoption plans—ensuring that new tools and processes improve effectiveness, reduce cognitive load, and meaningfully improve both customer and associate outcomes.

The SVP, Contact Center Modernization will be driving the strategy, integrated planning, change management, risk and issues management, critical path, prioritization, and delivery of “epics” and capabilities. This role will play a pivotal role in enabling the adoption of cross-functional initiatives, tools, technologies, and programs for our operations across servicing, collections, fraud, recovery, and other critical areas. This role will be responsible for executing the multi-year comprehensive strategy, roadmap, and driving adoption and sustained usage of new contact center modernization platforms, capabilities, and experiences across all stakeholders.

The SVP, CCM leader will be accountable for and to key stakeholders, including program epic and capability leaders, senior technology and operations leadership, communication, training, learning and development, governance, compliance, and operations to deliver on a multi-year vision and priorities.

The successful candidate will lead a cross-functional team and stakeholders to collaboratively execute on a strategic grouping of multiple related capabilities that collectively deliver a business mandate to modernize the contact center with a customer-first mindset and deliver standout customer and frontline associate experiences with focus on NPS (net promoter score).  This leader will model a “listen, learn, and engage” approach—actively partnering across Operations, Technology, Product, Risk, Compliance, Training, HR, Workforce planning, and frontline leadership—to build shared ownership, surface insights early, make informed trade-offs, and deliver outcomes together. Success will depend on strong cross-functional collaboration, transparent communication, and a consistent focus on what will work in production for customers and associates.

Essential Responsibilities:

  • Define and execute Synchrony’s enterprise Contact Center Modernization vision and multi-year roadmap, aligning business outcomes, experience strategy, and technology modernization across both customer and frontline employee needs

  • Lead Contact Center Modernization as the executive program owner, delivering the “workplace of the future” through workstation transformation, digital + voice enablement, and next-generation servicing capabilities that reduce friction and enable frontline associates to focus on high-value customer interactions

  • Modernize omnichannel customer engagement across voice, IVR, chat, SMS, messaging, and emerging channels, ensuring consistent experiences and seamless channel transitions

  • Drive AI-powered transformation including intelligent self-service, agent assist, and real-time insights to improve resolution, quality, and speed and frontline confidence in decisioning and customer guidance

  • Deliver integrated service and operations solutions, applying strong operational depth and process engineering to simplify workflows, increase platform agility, and strengthen controls

  • Own the integration strategy for CCM platform into core Synchrony systems, including CRM and enabling unified customer context, CTI/screen pop, routing, and end-to-end interaction visibility —minimizing tool switching and improving associate efficiency

  • Partner with Business Development and Sales to support onboarding new B2B2C and B2C clients and maintain top-tier service for existing partners

  • Deliver measurable results across customer experience, agent productivity, operational robustness, and cost efficiency through disciplined execution, governance, and value tracking including improved employee experience and sustained adoption

  • Foster product innovation & management by leading market and vendor intelligence to shape the product strategy and roadmap; translate insights and frontline feedback into prioritized features/user stories, run pilots/POCs to accelerate value, and ensure all innovation meets regulatory, security, and governance standards, and scale accordingly

  • Establish and maintain mechanisms to continuously listen and learn (e.g., frontline listening sessions, journey walk-throughs, QA/analytics insights, operational deep dives) to ensure delivered capabilities reflect real operational needs and lead to sustained adoption

  • Drive Project Planning & Program Management by owning and leading integrated program planning and execution across workstreams—managing milestones, resources, dependencies, and risks—while coordinating delivery with product/engineering/release teams and tracking OKRs and benefit realization through to measurable outcomes.

  • Partner with Supplier Management to drive vendor governance and performance, shape build-vs-buy decisions, and long-term platform evolution.

Key Epics and Deliverables:

  • Core Telephony (Voice Integration): Deliver reliable inbound/outbound voice services including carrier integration, cloud telephony/call control, dialer, outbound IVR campaigns, and customer-friendly callback/virtual hold.

  • Conversational Interactions (Virtual Agents): Implement NLU/NLP-driven voice and chat virtual agents to automate high-volume intents, maintain context, and hand off seamlessly to live agents.

  • Messaging: Enable omnichannel messaging across synchronous/asynchronous chat, SMS, secure co-browse, and proactive notifications to support digital-first engagement.

  • Frontline Technologies and Agent Experience: Deploy next gen knowledge and quality management, to improve agent experience, resolution accuracy, compliance, and frontline manager coaching effectiveness.

  • AI-Powered Support: Roll out agent assist, automated after-call summaries, real-time sentiment, customer journey context with next-best-action recommendations, and future-state speech analytics.

  • Workforce Planning & Optimization: Support the evolution of our Workforce Planning technologies with forecasting, scheduling, intraday management, adherence, and performance analytics—plus intelligent call/chat routing to meet SLAs and contractual obligations.

  • Analytics & Reporting: Integrate enterprise data (EDL/DWH/Snowflake) and deliver real-time and historical dashboards/reports, interaction analytics, and connectivity to Synchrony reporting tools (e.g., Tableau) for performance reporting and continuous KPI optimization (CCT, CSAT / NPS, FCR, ASA, Digital Self-Service and Agent Productivity Metrics).

  • Integration (Enterprise Platform): Build a secure, scalable integration layer across Salesforce/CRM agent desktop, CCaaS, and core Synchrony systems using APIs/microservices, IAM (e.g., Okta/SSO), and operational integrations to enable CTI/screen pop, context transfer, routing alignment, and end-to-end visibility.

  • Perform other duties and/or special projects as assigned.

Qualifications/Requirements: 

  • Bachelor’s Degree and 10+ years of relevant work experience in Operations, Technology or other relevant enterprise platform, applications, or self-service digital and mobile capabilities; in lieu of bachelor’s degree, high school diploma and 15+ years of equivalent work experience  

  • 10+ years Product and Program management managing complex multiple-year enterprise initiatives / projects simultaneously across multiple functions and stakeholders 

  • 10+ years of Leadership experience, including working with cross-functional business partners and senior c-suite executives and leadership

  • Demonstrated ability to distill data / for both technical and non-technical resources

  • Exceptional verbal and written communication and presentation skills (including developing strategy decks) demonstrated through executive and cross-functional stakeholder engagement, detailed-oriented documentation, and visual storytelling

  • Experience managing scope and expectations of technology projects including business/technical requirements, budgets, schedules, distributed resources, and dependencies 

  • Experience working in Agile at Scale (Scaled Agile Framework SAFe preferred)  

  • Demonstrated experience in and deep understanding of frontline contact center operations (e.g., servicing, collections, fraud, recovery, etc.) and associate experience needs; ability to translate operational realities into technology and process requirements.

  • Proficient in the use of MS Office product suite, particularly Excel, PowerPoint  

  • Proven ability to communicate in an effective and timely manner

  • Track record of problem solving and ability to thrive in a cross-functional and technology facing environment

  • Ability to work Eastern Time Zone, while managing an offshore team

  • Ability and flexibility to travel for business as required

  

Desired Characteristics: 

  • MBA or advanced degree

  • Preferred experience and expertise leading implementation and management of CCaaS and omnichannel CRM and contact center management platforms

  • Preferred experience with AI technologies such as conversational AI, agent assist, speech analytics, augmented reality, and computer vision

  • Advanced critical thinking skills in analytical problem-solving and the ability to use data to break down complex models

  • Experience working with technical teams and guiding the creation and implementation of self-service products and platforms  

  • Certified SAFe professional and working knowledge of JIRA / JIRA Align

  • Experience with technology related to payment of bill in a consumer/retail finance setting

  • Experience managing an offshore team and leading teams that are responsible for various projects

  • Self-starter, self-directed, highly motivated and self-driven to accomplish tasks 

Grade/Level: 15

The salary range for this position is 200,000.00 - 330,000.00 USD Annual.  This position is also eligible for an Annual Incentive Plan target of 25% of salary and an Annual Equity target of 25% of salary.  

Actual compensation offered within the posted salary range will be based upon work experience, skill level or knowledge.

Salaries are adjusted according to market in CA, NY Metro and Seattle.

Our Way of Working:

We’re proud to offer you flexibility. At Synchrony, our way of working allows you to have the option to work from home near one of our Hubs or come into one of our offices. You will be required to commute to your nearest Hub (either virtual or physical) for in-person engagement activities such as regular business or team meetings, training and culture events. 

 

*Field Sales and some Commercial team roles may have varied location requirements based upon partner obligations or preferences.

Eligibility Requirements:

  • You must be 18 years or older

  • You must have a high school diploma or equivalent

  • You must be willing to take a drug test, submit to a background investigation and submit fingerprints as part of the onboarding process

  • You must be able to satisfy the requirements of Section 19 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act.

  • New hires (Level 4-7) must have 9 months of continuous service with the company before they are eligible to post on other roles.  Once this new hire time in position requirement is met, the associate will have a minimum 6 months’ time in position before they can post for future non-exempt roles.  Employees, level 8 or greater, must have at least 18 months’ time in position before they can post.  All internal employees must consistently meet performance expectations and have approval from your manager to post (or the approval of your manager and HR if you don’t meet the time in position or performance expectations).

Legal authorization to work in the U.S. is required.  We will not sponsor individuals for employment visas, now or in the future, for this job opening. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status. 

Our Commitment:

When you join us, you’ll be part of an inclusive culture where your individual skills, experience, and voice are not only heard – but valued. Together, we’re building a future where we can all belong, connect, and turn ideals into action. More than 50% of our workforce is engaged in our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), where community and passion intersect to offer a safe space to learn and grow.

 

This starts when you choose to apply for a role at Synchrony. We ensure all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status. We’re proud to have an award-winning culture for all. 

Reasonable Accommodation Notice:

  • Federal law requires employers to provide reasonable accommodation to qualified individuals with disabilities. Please tell us if you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job or to perform your job. Examples of reasonable accommodation include making a change to the application process or work procedures, providing documents in an alternate format, using a sign language interpreter, or using specialized equipment.

  • If you need special accommodations, please call our Career Support Line so that we can discuss your specific situation. We can be reached at 1-866-301-5627.   Representatives are available from 8am – 5pm Monday to Friday, Central Standard Time

Job Family Group:

Contact Center Operations