Director Customer Service AI Product

JOB DESCRIPTION

Customer Service/Experience Product- with AI

Join Ashley Furniture’s Customer Service/Experience Product-AI team to build AI-powered experiences that make support effortless and engaging. In this role, you will translate customer needs into intelligent products that improve quality, reduce costs, and elevate the love of home. Help define the future of customer service at Ashley by delivering AI features that are reliable, safe, and impactful.

About Ashley Furniture

Ashley Furniture Industries is the largest manufacturer of furniture in the world. We're driven by our North Star: to inspire the love of home and enrich the lives of those around us. Our mission is to Improve Quality, Reduce Costs, Do More Business, Be Profitable, and Stay In Business. We value Honesty & Integrity, Passion, Drive & Discipline, Dirty Fingernails (hands-on work), Continuous Improvement, and Growth Focus. Our growth pillars are A Culture of Leadership, Customer Centric approach, and Boundaryless collaboration.

The Role

You will report within the Customer Service/Experience Product- AI organization and work cross-functionally with engineering, data science, customer care operations, and digital teams. Day to day, you will define product strategy, write clear requirements, and ship AI-driven features that improve CSAT, reduce handle time, and deflect contacts. You will instrument performance, run experiments, and iterate quickly based on customer feedback and measurable results.

You will focus on high-impact capabilities such as virtual assistants, agent-assist, intelligent routing, and knowledge search. You will ensure responsible AI practices, privacy, and safety are embedded throughout the product. Your work will directly contribute to Ashley’s mission by improving quality of service and reducing costs while creating experiences customers love.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the roadmap for Customer Service/Experience Product- AI across chat, voice, email, and self-service, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing contact volume.
• Translate customer journeys and voice-of-customer insights into detailed product requirements and user stories for features like virtual assistants, agent assist, intelligent routing, and knowledge search, lowering average handle time and improving first-contact resolution.
• Partner with engineering and data science to design, build, and launch LLM/NLP-powered solutions; specify acceptance criteria, model performance targets, and safety guardrails to ensure reliability and accuracy.
• Instrument analytics and establish KPIs; implement A/B tests and experiments to quantify impact on CSAT, FCR, AHT, and ticket deflection, and use results to drive prioritization.
• Integrate AI features with CRM and contact center platforms to create a seamless agent and customer experience; improve workflow efficiency and reduce escalations.
• Establish responsible AI standards for privacy, safety, and content quality; document policies and processes to protect customer data and maintain trust.
• Build feedback loops and annotation processes to continuously improve model quality; monitor error rates and resolution outcomes and iterate on training data and prompts.
• Collaborate with customer care, retail, eCommerce, and operations to align releases with service goals and peak seasons; minimize friction and ensure smooth rollouts.
• Create clear product documentation, release notes, and enablement materials for agents and internal stakeholders; drive adoption and measurable business outcomes.
• Drive continuous improvement aligned with Ashley’s mission by prioritizing features that improve quality, reduce costs, and strengthen customer loyalty.

Technical Requirements

• Working knowledge of machine learning, NLP, and large language models to frame customer service problems; ability to evaluate models using metrics such as intent accuracy, resolution rate, and precision/recall for real-world performance.
• Experience with conversational AI platforms for chat and voice bots (such as Google Dialogflow, Amazon Lex, or Azure Bot Service) to design intents, dialog flows, and integrations that support self-service and agent assistance.
• Familiarity with cloud AI services (such as Azure OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, or Google Vertex AI) for prototyping, fine-tuning, and deploying generative and intent models with appropriate safety filters and monitoring.
• Proficiency with product analytics and data querying (SQL basics) and BI tools (such as Power BI or Tableau) to instrument funnels, cohorts, and dashboards that track CSAT, FCR, AHT, and deflection.
• Experience integrating with CRM and contact center technologies (such as Salesforce Service Cloud, Zendesk, Genesys, or Five9) using APIs and webhooks to streamline agent workflows and unify customer context.
• Comfort working in Agile environments using tools like Jira and Confluence; familiarity with feature flagging and experimentation platforms (such as LaunchDarkly or Optimizely) and collaborating with engineering via Git-based workflows.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Human-Computer Interaction, Business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of product management or equivalent experience delivering customer-facing digital products, including 2+ years building AI-powered customer service or customer experience capabilities.
• Proven ability to ship conversational AI, agent-assist, or intelligent routing features in production by owning strategy, roadmap, requirements, and cross-functional execution.
• Experience mapping customer journeys and writing user stories with clear acceptance criteria tied to service outcomes; ability to use data to drive decisions and prioritize work based on CSAT, FCR, AHT, and deflection impact.
• Ability to query and analyze data (SQL or BI tools) to size opportunities, diagnose performance, and communicate insights to technical and non-technical colleagues.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills to translate technical concepts, align stakeholders, and present trade-offs and recommendations clearly.
• Demonstrated commitment to responsible AI, privacy, and safety in customer interactions; understanding of content quality, prompt design, and failure handling.
• Track record of continuous improvement and iterative delivery that measurably improves quality and reduces service costs.

Preferred Qualifications

• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), AIPMM Product Management certification, Azure AI Engineer Associate, or Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer.
• Advanced skill in conversation design and prompt engineering for LLM applications; experience with retrieval-augmented generation to improve knowledge search and answer quality.
• Experience in omnichannel customer service and contact center operations, including IVR, workforce management, and knowledge base governance.
• Background in retail or eCommerce customer support with familiarity in seasonal volume patterns, delivery issues, and returns/exchanges processes.
• Experience deploying AI features on Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud and applying MLOps practices for monitoring, alerting, and iterative model improvement.
• Strong facilitation skills to lead discovery, usability testing, and agent feedback sessions that inform product decisions.

What We Offer

At Ashley Furniture, we offer competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits. You'll have opportunities for career growth and professional development in a dynamic, fast-paced environment. Our culture values continuous improvement, innovation, and customer-centricity. We invest in our people and provide the tools and support needed to succeed. Join a team that's passionate about inspiring the love of home and making a meaningful impact on customers' lives every day.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Ashley Furniture Industries is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. 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.

If you require reasonable accommodation in the application or interview process, please contact us.