Lead, Customer Intelligence Governance & Activation

What You’ll Do

Role Summary

Avalara is scaling an AI-first operating model designed to predict customer needs, reduce systemic friction, protect Gross Revenue Retention (GRR), and lower Cost to Serve (CTS).

Customer signals now exist in volume — across Voice of Customer systems, CX360 intelligence outputs, predictive analytics, and operational data. What does not exist is a single enterprise authority that determines:

• Which signals are credible
• Which signals materially impact revenue or cost
• Which signals get funded
• How impact is verified
• Who is accountable when action stalls

Without a governed decision framework, signal volume increases but executive decisions degrade. Roadmaps fragment. Metrics drift. Friction themes compete without financial validation. Revenue risk remains unquantified.

The Lead, Customer Intelligence Governance & Activation is the enterprise owner of Customer Intelligence activation.

You will define and govern the decision architecture that converts signal into funded, finance-validated action with verified impact. It establishes the standards that determine how Customer Intelligence influences executive prioritization, capital allocation, and accountability.

You will hold formal authority within the Customer Intelligence governance structure and is directly accountable for measurable movement in GRR and CTS attributable to Customer Intelligence activation.

You will not add process. It prevents enterprise revenue leakage and operational inefficiency by enforcing disciplined, data-backed decision standards.

How You will Elevate Avalara

• Ensure validated friction themes are financially quantified before making executive tradeoffs to protect revenue.
• Improve capital allocation discipline by promoting standardized prioritization criteria.
• Reduce cost-to-serve by escalating systemic drivers instead of treating symptoms.
• Increase quality in executive forums through governed signal validation and exposure modeling.

• Ensure recurring customer friction is addressed at enterprise scale.
• Reduce avoidable churn drivers by accelerating signal-to-action velocity.
• Prevent fragmented ownership that allows friction to persist across journeys.

• Eliminate conflicting KPI definitions and metric drift.
• Raise governance rigor across Product, Operations, and GTM.
• Embed AI-driven prioritization within defined confidence and audit standards.
• Increase talent density by holding the system — not just individuals — accountable to measurable outcomes.

A Bar Raiser in this role leaves the enterprise decision system stronger, clearer, and more financially disciplined than they found it.

Responsibilities (Enterprise-Level Ownership)

• Define and govern the end-to-end lifecycle: signal capture → validation → financial quantification → prioritization → funding → impact verification.
• Establish signal eligibility standards and confidence thresholds before signals enter executive forums.
• Embed standardized decision criteria into roadmap and capital allocation governance.
• Eliminate fragmentation across listening systems by enforcing a single enterprise framework.

Authority: Sole enterprise owner of the Customer Intelligence decision architecture.

• Set the decision criteria used in executive forums reviewing customer friction themes.
• Define mandatory business case components for Customer Intelligence–driven projects.
• Present prioritized signal portfolios with quantified revenue and cost exposure.
• Align validated themes to roadmap sequencing and funding tradeoffs.

Authority:

• Partner with Finance to measure revenue risk, retention exposure, and cost drivers tied to validated signals.
• Establish required impact measurement standards before initiative approval.
• Validate pre- and post-intervention financial performance.
• Hold projects accountable to defined GRR and CTS movement.

Accountability: Directly accountable for measurable GRR and CTS movement attributable to Customer Intelligence activation.