Daniel Vollmer.

Senior leader across commercial strategy, operations, and transformation, with 20 years' experience building, scaling, and redesigning how organisations serve customers, manage partners, and drive commercial outcomes. At Country Road Group, cut the customer experience function's annual operating cost by 63% and made it revenue-generating, converting at 10–20x digital benchmarks. Has led teams of 100+ through complex change, with direct budget accountability up to $100m. Most recently consulted to a high-growth apparel ecommerce group on commercial strategy and AI, deploying AI agents into core commercial and operational workflows. Now seeking a senior role shaping direction and strategy while staying close to the work.

• Commercial & Revenue Strategy
• AI & Automation Strategy
• Customer Experience Strategy
• Operational Transformation
• Crisis & Change Leadership
• Executive Stakeholder Management
• BPO Delivery & Vendor Governance
• P&L / Budget Management
• Workforce Planning & Design
• Multi-Brand, Multi-Region Operations

• Retained by the founder and leadership of a high-growth, multi-brand apparel ecommerce group (nine online stores, four owned brands, plus a B2B print-on-demand platform) to set commercial strategy and lead AI-enabled transformation across the business.
• Led the AI agenda end to end: designed and deployed AI agents into core commercial and operational workflows, and set the delivery cadence that lets a lean team ship continuously.
• Set the commercial strategy for CRM, customer experience, and social, making each accountable for revenue and retention, and introduced the attribution model that ties activity directly to revenue.
• Transformed the operating model and core platform: turned an end-to-end review into a prioritised risk and growth backlog, and restructured the team, exiting offshore support and elevating internal talent to own CRM, CX, and operations.
• Repositioned customer experience as a conversion and retention engine rather than a reactive support function, redefining the service operating model, tooling, and the commercial measures it answers to.

• Led the customer experience function across Country Road, Witchery, Mimco, Trenery, and Politix: strategy, operations, AI enablement, revenue generation, and a full-scale outsourcing (BPO) transformation. Reported to the GM Customer & Digital, presented to the ExCo Steering Committee and Brand MDs, worked regularly with the CIO, and prepared board-level materials.
• Cut annual operating cost by 63%, from $5.8m to ~$2.1m, by designing and delivering a 2-phase offshore transition to a tier-1 global BPO provider: built the business plan, co-authored and led the development of the Statement of Work, and negotiated directly over 6 months.
• Wrote transformation requirements for AI, reporting, data, and sales into the Statement of Work, creating contractual accountability for ongoing improvement, and completed delivery independently after the consulting partner departed the project.
• Built the case for the business's first use of generative AI, endorsed by the GM Customer & Digital. With product and engineering, built and deployed an AI CoPilot for Live Chat and SMS that cut average handle time by 20–25% within the first 6 months and enabled a 30% headcount reduction before the BPO transition. Integrated order management, CRM, loyalty, shipping, and store availability APIs with bespoke per-brand knowledge bases.
• Developed and ran the CX knowledge base program behind the AI CoPilot, and as one of a two-person team assessed vendors and designed the Voice of Customer program.
• Inherited an underperforming service sales operation and grew it until the function earned more than its operating and capital costs. Achieved 20–25% conversion on customer-initiated contact against a 1–2% digital benchmark, with $12m in CX-attributed revenue (FY23), outperforming other revenue-generating channels across the business.
• Led the team through two successive waves of transformation (AI-enabled efficiency, then the offshore transition), redesigning team structure, reporting lines, and role mandates for each phase. Maintained top-quartile team engagement throughout, on the group's own survey and against an external benchmark, including through significant role reductions. Held daily office hours and wrote a weekly digest for the team.

• Senior leader within the commercial team with dual accountability: commercial ownership of the Small & Medium Business restaurant portfolio, and operational excellence across onshore and offshore partner support.
• Owned commercial performance of a 2,000-restaurant SMB portfolio, growing monthly gross transaction value to $5m and increasing SMB share of loyalty revenue by 2.5 percentage points.
• Found partner churn was highest in a restaurant's first eight weeks, redesigned new-restaurant onboarding around it, and lifted partner NPS from -20 to +40 within 12 months. Responsible for the NPS program.
• Contributed to the negotiation and delivery of a national Mastercard partnership (~11m consumer base) and a nationally televised MasterChef partnership activation, representing restaurant experience and SMB commercial interests.
• Led an onshore team of 14 and governed a 145-person offshore operation, alongside the New Restaurant Experience (NRX) onboarding function.
• Consistently met service-level targets that had previously been missed (99% of Level 1 resolved within 24 hours, 90% of Level 2 within 48 hours) through process redesign and data-led operational improvement.

• Accountable for the $100m staffing component of the airport's annual operating budget, working across a matrix planning structure spanning local operations and corporate head office.
• Helped steer Melbourne Airport through the COVID-19 shutdown and restart as part of the broader group effort: the shutdown and staged restart of airport operations, a workforce stand-down of 1,200+ staff over 14 months, and negotiation across 2 unions and 3 Enterprise Bargaining Agreements.
• Managed the local delivery of a major change to Melbourne Airport ground operations arising from a national review, overseeing change management and operational continuity.
• Delivered $3.2m in transformation benefits over 3 years through operational redesign and headcount optimisation.
• Led the Workforce Planning Centralisation project, moving a distributed function to head office with $5m in associated benefits through scale efficiencies and improved planning processes.
• Acted as Head of Melbourne Airport on two occasions, with full operational accountability for the hub.

• Sole senior operational leader on shift for one of Australia's busiest airport operations, across Domestic, International, and Regional terminals. Held full operational decision-making authority across all Qantas and associated airline operations, including out-of-hours oversight for cabin and technical crew.
• Managed real-time responses to disruptions, irregular operations, and service recovery across check-in, boarding, lounges, and arrivals.
• Led on-site crisis response during a 2018 attempted aircraft hijacking at Melbourne Airport. Sole senior leader on-site, coordinated with the Australian Federal Police, and managed multi-airline operations through a full airport precinct lockdown.
• Managed service delivery and stakeholder relationships for 5 client airlines under ground handling agreements, each with distinct service levels, operational requirements, and escalation protocols.
• Improved NPS by 15 points and on-time performance by 5 points year on year through people development, process optimisation, and Lean and Agile principles. Led the Voice of Customer program and was responsible for the NPS program for Qantas Melbourne Airport.
• Led VIP Facilitation for Melbourne Airport, managing discreet end-to-end airport movements for touring artists, performers, promoters, dignitaries, and other high-profile guests, working directly with artists, their management, and promoters.

• Built the multi-brand, multi-channel customer service function from the ground up across 4 brands, and developed a new revenue channel (telephone orders and corporate partnerships) generating $1m+ per annum from a nil base within the first 12 months. Implemented Zendesk and Salesforce CRM platforms.

• BPO contact centre provider with offices in Australia, Fiji and New Zealand; main clients included Optus and Seek. Delivered business-wide process change across 3 countries, resulting in a 10–15% annual revenue increase. Managed up to 200 consultants across 3 clients.

• Led teams of up to 450 in progressively senior roles across operations, sales, and project management. Appointed to the 12-member Global Growth & Transformation Team reporting directly to the CEO.

• AI and automation. OpenAI API, Claude (Anthropic), Microsoft Copilot.
• Customer experience and contact centre. Salesforce Service Cloud, Zendesk, Amazon Connect, Powerfront Inside.
• Data and analytics. Tableau, Power BI, Looker, Snowflake, Qualtrics, Google Analytics.
• Ecommerce and digital. Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, eStar.
• Workforce management and quality. NICE, Amazon Connect QA.
• Project and collaboration. Jira, Confluence, Monday, Slack.

• Bachelor of Business (Marketing), Swinburne University of Technology.
• Diploma of Business, Knowledgespace.
• COPC Customer Experience. AIM Emerging Managers Program. AIM Presenting with Impact. Certificate IV in Customer Contact.