Vice President, Customer Support & Distribution

The Vice President, Customer Support & Distribution is the executive owner of the customer experience after the sale and the leader accountable for CLARK's Urgent Customer Service strategic priority. This role provides leadership for the aftermarket parts business, the parts distribution warehouse, and Product Support, including warranty administration, technical training, customer technical service, and technical publications. The Vice President will connect these functions into one customer-focused operating system that improves responsiveness, parts availability, issue resolution, dealer capability, and long-term customer loyalty. Working cross-functionally with Sales, Quality, Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Finance, and the dealer network, this leader will ensure that post-sale customer needs have clear ownership, timely escalation, and measurable resolution. Essential Functions: • Provide executive leadership for the complete post-sale customer experience, establishing priorities, service standards, and accountability across Parts, Distribution, and Product Support. • Lead the aftermarket parts business, including parts sales growth, pricing and margin performance, product-line development, dealer programs, purchasing coordination, inventory strategy, and commercial execution. • Direct the parts distribution warehouse and related operations, with responsibility for safety, service levels, order accuracy, productivity, capacity, inventory accuracy, fill rate, backorders, freight performance, and continuous improvement. • Lead Product Support operations, including warranty administration, customer technical service, technical training, field technical support, and technical publications. • Serve as the executive owner for urgent dealer and customer escalations after the sale, ensuring each critical issue has a named owner, containment plan, communication cadence, target resolution date, and documented closure. • Create a unified intake, prioritization, escalation, and closure process for issues that cross Product Support, Parts, Distribution, Quality, Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Sales. • Develop and maintain a customer experience scorecard that includes service responsiveness, trucks out of service, escalation aging, first-contact response, parts availability, backorders, warranty cycle time, training effectiveness, publication readiness, and dealer satisfaction measures. • Partner with Quality and Engineering to convert field failures, warranty trends, dealer feedback, and technical support data into root-cause corrective actions and preventive improvements. • Partner with Sales and dealer leadership to identify post-sale obstacles to market share growth, improve dealer service capability, and protect strategic customer relationships. • Establish an operating cadence for dealer and customer issue resolution, including weekly escalation review, aging analysis, action tracking, and executive reporting on systemic risks and trends. • Develop a dealer capability strategy covering technical training, service readiness, parts support, product launch preparation, diagnostic resources, and access to current technical publications. • Ensure technical publications, service information, training content, and diagnostic guidance are accurate, current, accessible, and released in time to support product launches and field service needs. • Improve warranty administration through clear policies, efficient claim processing, sound controls, transparent communication, timely disposition, and feedback loops that support Quality and Engineering. • Lead distribution network and facility improvement initiatives related to parts availability, warehouse capacity, layout, technology, automation, business continuity, and future facility transitions. • Use data, digital tools, and AI-enabled capabilities to improve forecasting, inventory deployment, dealer self-service, knowledge access, issue trend detection, and response speed. • Build annual operating plans, budgets, capital requests, staffing plans, and performance targets for assigned functions; manage results against revenue, margin, service, inventory, cost, and customer-experience objectives. • Develop leaders and create clear succession, cross-training, and capability-building plans across Parts, Distribution, Warranty, Technical Service, Training, and Publications. • Promote a culture in which safety is personal, the customer receives an urgent response, leaders take ownership, and cross-functional teams solve problems without functional barriers. • Represent post-sale customer needs in executive planning, S&OP, product launch, quality, and strategic project discussions. • Perform other duties as assigned or as required by the needs of the business. Key Leadership Accountabilities: • Urgent Customer Service: Own the company-wide post-sale response model and ensure critical dealer and customer issues are visible, actively managed, and resolved with urgency. • Aftermarket Growth: Deliver profitable growth in parts and support offerings while strengthening dealer participation and customer retention. • Distribution Excellence: Build a safe, reliable, scalable, and cost-effective parts distribution operation. • Dealer Capability: Improve dealer technical readiness through training, technical information, parts support, and consistent service processes. • Cross-Functional Resolution: Connect customer-facing symptoms to Quality, Engineering, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain actions that prevent recurrence. • People and Culture: Develop leaders, clarify accountability, and create a service culture based on responsiveness, ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement. Performance Measures: • Aftermarket parts revenue, gross margin, and growth versus plan. • Parts fill rate, backorder dollars and aging, order accuracy, on-time shipment, inventory turns, and inventory accuracy. • Trucks out of service greater than 48 hours and greater than seven days. • Open technical, warranty, dealer, and strategic customer escalations, including aging and on-time closure. • Dealer and customer initial response time, containment time, and resolution cycle time. • Warranty claim cycle time, warranty cost trends, repeat failures, and recovery or chargeback effectiveness. • Technical training participation, certification, completion, and demonstrated effectiveness. • Technical publication readiness and on-time release for product launches and field requirements. • Safety performance, employee development, engagement, retention, and succession readiness within assigned functions. Qualifications: • Proven senior leadership experience in aftermarket parts, distribution, product support, customer service, service operations, or a related industrial business function. • Demonstrated ability to lead multiple functions and integrate commercial, operational, and technical teams around a common customer outcome. • Working knowledge of dealer or distributor networks, aftermarket business models, warehouse and inventory operations, warranty administration, technical service, and customer escalation management. • Experience building service-level metrics, operating reviews, escalation processes, and continuous-improvement systems. • Strong financial and business acumen, including revenue, margin, inventory, working capital, operating expense, capital planning, and cost-to-serve management. • Ability to interpret customer, warranty, quality, inventory, service, and operational data and translate findings into clear priorities and action plans. • Excellent leadership, communication, and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence executives, dealers, customers, suppliers, and cross-functional teams. • Demonstrated success leading organizational change, developing people, resolving conflict, and improving processes in a fast-moving environment. • High standards of integrity, accountability, follow-through, and commitment to the customer. • Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Supply Chain, Operations, Engineering, or a related field required; advanced degree preferred. • Experience in material handling, industrial equipment, automotive, heavy equipment, or another dealer-supported durable-goods industry preferred. • Ability to travel as required to dealers, customers, distribution operations, and company locations. • Must be authorized to work in the United States indefinitely. Disclaimer: This position description is not intended and should not be construed to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, skills, efforts, or working conditions associated with the job; it is intended to be an accurate reflection of those principal job elements essential to the job. Incumbents may be required to perform other duties as assigned or as required by the needs of the business. CLARK Material Handling Company retains the discretion to change or add to the duties of the position at any time.