Customer Relations & Comment Management Program Manager

Customer Relations & Comment Management Program Manager

HDR is seeking a Customer Relations & Comment Management Program Manager to establish and manage a public comment response and tracking program that supports infrastructure projects across North America. This individual will design, implement, and manage a scalable customer experience program that provides timely, accurate, and defensible responses to public inquiries, comments, and concerns received during project planning, permitting, construction, and operations.

The successful candidate will bring expertise in customer experience, contact center operations, stakeholder response management, or constituent services and will apply those skills to support transportation, energy, water, environmental, and community infrastructure projects. They will develop response protocols, governance frameworks, quality assurance programs, CRM workflows, reporting systems, and staffing models while working directly with a network of project coordinators and subject matter experts.

This role will partner closely with HDR's Strategic Communications professionals, project managers, technical experts, and clients for consistent, transparent, and risk-aware public engagement across a diverse portfolio of projects.

Key Responsibilities:

• Program Development & Leadership
• Build and lead HDR's Public Comment Response Program.
• Develop standard operating procedures (e.g. sensitive issues, media inquiries, and regulatory comment periods), response protocols, and quality assurance processes.
• Create governance structures supporting consistent responses across projects and geographies.
• Build a scalable program capable of supporting multiple concurrent infrastructure projects.
• Train communications specialists to use and assist in maintaining CRM databases.
• Develop onboarding, training, and quality control programs.
• Foster a culture focused on customer service excellence and continuous improvement.
• Other duties as assigned.

Comment Management Operations:

• Design workflows for managing inquiries and comments received through websites, contact forms, email, surveys, interactive maps, public meetings, open houses, and regulatory comment periods.
• Develop escalation pathways for sensitive, technical, legal, political, or high-profile issues.
• Create response templates, knowledge libraries, and decision trees.
• Monitor response quality, accuracy, consistency, and timeliness.

Technology & Systems:

• Evaluate, administer, and optimize CRM and comment management platforms.
• Improve existing Zoho-based processes and recommend alternative technologies where appropriate.
• Develop dashboards and reporting tools that provide project teams and clients with actionable insights.
• Evaluate opportunities to use AI and automation while maintaining quality and accountability.

Strategic Communications Support:

• Partner with project managers and communications teams to support project engagement goals.
• Advise project teams on stakeholder concerns, emerging issues, and response strategies.
• Participate in proposal development and client presentations.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 10 years of experience in leading customer service operations, customer experience management, contact center leadership, constituent services, stakeholder response programs, or a related field.
• Experience building operational programs from concept to implementation.
• Demonstrated success managing teams and service delivery performance.
• Experience implementing CRM systems, workflow automation, or customer service technologies.
• Experience with Zoho CRM.
• Strong understanding of quality assurance, escalation management, and process improvement.
• Experience supporting highly visible, regulated, or politically sensitive initiatives preferred.
• Knowledge management skills to build response libraries, approved language banks, FAQ repositories, AI-assisted drafting tools, etc.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in related field
• A minimum of 5 years related experience
• Efficient use of the internet and other electronic and hard copy media for research
• Strong Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, Project and Visio skills
• Expert Microsoft Access and Excel skills
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to compile and present summary level information
• Ability to obtain, cleanse, merge and analyze data from multiple sources
• Excellent interpersonal skills and strong relationship, organizational and follow-up skills
• Self-starter with proven track record of accomplishments
• An attitude and commitment to being an active participant of our employee-owned culture is a must