Lead, Customer Advocacy

Affirm is reinventing credit to make it more honest and friendly, giving consumers the flexibility to buy now and pay later without any hidden fees or compounding interest. About The Role Affirm’s Customer Advocacy and Retention (CAR) team houses our customer advocacy experts. When customers share their most challenging experiences with Affirm, the CAR team provides critical insight into the breaking points of our products, processes, and policies. By championing these customers, we use their voices to improve the customer experience, deliver fair outcomes, and repair relationships. As a Customer Advocacy Lead, you will serve as the Voice of Affirm - leveraging deep service and product expertise to resolve highly complex complaints while leading a team of Customer Advocacy Associates. The team facilitates coordination across cross-functional partners to identify root causes, assess complaint validity, and determine appropriate, compliant resolutions. Beyond individual case resolution, this role owns key components of Affirm’s complaints and customer advocacy ecosystem, including quality assurance operations, escalation management, and vendor performance. You will act as a critical operational leader across internal and external partners - proactively identifying risks, removing bottlenecks, and driving scalable solutions that improve service levels, reduce complaint rates, and increase customer satisfaction. This role requires navigating complex, cross-functional challenges and leading initiatives that enhance both customer outcomes and operational effectiveness at scale. Key Attributes - Experience as a people manager with a track record of building high-performing teams - Strong ownership mindset with the ability to lead complex, cross-functional initiatives - Deep commitment to customer-centric solutions and fair, empathetic outcomes - Data-driven decision maker with strong analytical and critical thinking skills - Process improvement mindset with strong operational rigor - Ability to influence and drive alignment across multiple stakeholders - Sound judgment and accountability when handling sensitive, high-risk issues - Experience managing external vendors, BPOs, or third-party partners (or similar) - Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to convey complex topics clearly and concisely What you’ll do Lead and develop a high-performing team - Manage, coach, and develop a team of Customer Advocacy Associates - Drive team performance using key metrics such as productivity, quality, customer outcomes, and service levels - Foster a high-performing, engaged team environment that operates effectively in a fast-paced, evolving environment - Partner with recruiting to hire, onboard, and retain top talent Deliver exceptional customer outcomes - Resolve complex and highly escalated customer complaints with efficiency, empathy, and sound judgment - Review and respond to sensitive, high-risk complaints, reinforcing and shaping the “Voice of Affirm” - Communicate with customers across channels, including email and phone, as appropriate - Represent and advocate for the complaints function in cross-functional forums to ensure consistent, high-quality customer experiences Own operational excellence across internal and external partners - Own QA operations and processes, ensuring consistent, high-quality complaint handling across the team - Evolve QA frameworks to maintain depth, rigor, and scalability as the organization grows - Own vendor performance and accountability for third-party complaint handling, ensuring alignment with Affirm standards for quality, compliance, and customer experience - Establish and monitor service level expectations (SLAs/KPIs), proactively identifying risks and driving corrective actions - Oversee internal escalation workflows and act as a point of escalation for the most complex and sensitive issues - Establish scalable support models and coverage strategies to maintain service levels during periods of fluctuating volume or constrained bandwidth - Own capacity planning and resource allocation across internal teams, vendors, and contractors - Manage and oversee contractors supporting the CAR team to ensure consistent performance and coverage Drive cross-functional impact - Lead complex, cross-functional initiatives across teams such as Vendor Partners, Compliance, Legal, Risk, Product, and Communications - Act as the primary operational interface with partner teams to improve intake quality, routing accuracy, and escalation effectiveness - Remove operational bottlenecks and drive alignment on processes, tooling, and customer experience standards - Influence product, policy, and process improvements based on customer insights and complaint trends Drive continuous improvement at scale - Analyze complaint data to identify trends, root causes, and opportunities for systemic improvement -