Customer Experience & Leadership

Maximilian Graf

Customer Experience leader with 10+ years across the full customer lifecycle — from marketing and sales to retention and renewal — and 7+ years leading teams.

Currently Head of Customer Experience & Deputy ISO at Swat.io, a leading Austrian social media management platform with 30,000+ users. I build and scale customer teams, turn reactive support into proactive experience, and drive data-informed decisions across CSAT, NPS, NRR and churn — working at the intersection of people, process and technology.

Based in Vienna, Austria · Speaks DE · EN · ES · PT

Get in touch Download CV

4×

Revenue growth, managed accounts

+450%

Team growth, from 4 to 18 people

<1.5%

Sustained enterprise churn

90%+

Consistent CSAT score

Where I've worked

Swat.io DocPlanner Meister Taboola Kelkoo SiteMinder

Selected Experience

A decade building and leading customer-facing teams across SaaS, adtech and marketplaces in Vienna, Munich and London.

Sep 2024 — present

Swat.io

Head of Customer Experience & Deputy ISO

Vienna, Austria

Own the full CX strategy for a leading social media management tool (30,000+ users). Transformed reactive support into a proactive CX function, scaled Support and Account Management, and own core KPIs (CSAT, NPS, SLAs, NRR, churn). As Deputy ISO, help run and evolve the ISO 27001 information security management system.

CX StrategyTeam LeadershipISO 27001 / ISMSIntercom · Linear

Apr 2023 — Dec 2023

DocPlanner Group · jameda

Head of Key Account Management

Munich, Germany

Built the key account strategy for the German subsidiary jameda and led the enterprise segment — from contracting and ongoing account management to retention, renewal and upsell. Defined customer segmentation, service tiers, staffing and budget.

Key AccountsSegmentationUpsell

Nov 2019 — Mar 2023

MeisterLabs

Head of Customer Success, Support & Community

Vienna, Austria

Built the customer function as a company-wide "Customer Hub", growing the team from 4 to 18 FTEs (450%) across Vienna and Seattle while holding an eNPS of 42+ (best in the company). Led the ISO 27001 certification project, introduced OKRs and reporting metrics, and quadrupled revenue from managed customers.

4 → 18 FTEs4× RevenueeNPS 42+OKRs

2014 — 2019

Earlier roles

Client Partner, Key Account & Sales — London & Vienna

Senior Key Account Manager at Russmedia Digital (Vienna). Client Partner at Taboola Europe (London), joining as the first account manager for the DACH market. Sales Account Manager at Kelkoo UK and Sales Executive at SiteMinder (London) — building new markets from the ground up.

TaboolaRussmediaKelkooSiteMinder

Academic & Research

Alongside my career, I trained as a political economist — bridging organisational practice with research on European social policy.

2024 — 2026

M.A. European Economy & Business Management

FH des BFI Wien · Vienna, Austria

Part-time master's with a specialisation in political science. Master's thesis: "Between collective bargaining and minimum wage: The EU Minimum Wage Directive and its (in)effectiveness in Austria" — the first systematic empirical analysis of Austria's collective agreement landscape based on wage data.

Graduated with distinction

2011 — 2014

B.A. Management & Law

Management Center Innsbruck (MCI) · Innsbruck, Austria

Full-time interdisciplinary degree combining business administration and law, at a school repeatedly ranked among the global top 25 (U-Multirank). Included two bachelor theses on Common European Sales Law and international labour outsourcing.

2013 — 2014

Exchange Semester

Universidad Austral · Buenos Aires, Argentina

Focus on international economics and international business law, with a semester dedicated to Spanish and intercultural communication.

Research Interests

Political economy of European social policy
Labour market regulation & collective bargaining
Minimum wage policy, income distribution & the working poor
European integration & governance

About

I lead at the intersection of people, process and technology. Over ten years I've moved across the full customer lifecycle — from marketing and sales through to retention, renewal and long-term success — with more than six years directly leading and growing teams.

What I care about: designing excellent customer experiences systematically, developing people so they can grow into new responsibilities, and making decisions grounded in data. My academic work in political economy and change management sharpens how I think about institutions, incentives and organisational change.

Languages

GermanNative

EnglishC2

SpanishB2 · DELE

PortugueseB2 / C1

Focus Areas

Leadership & team development Customer experience strategy Data-driven decision making Change management Information security (ISO 27001)

Tools

Salesforce HubSpot Intercom Zendesk Linear Metabase

What people say

From people I've led and clients I've worked with.

“Max has always showcased great leadership… His positive energy is unmatched and works contagiously with anyone who works with him. His extensive experience and people skills, combined with calculated decision-making, make him a perfect fit to run, improve and expand any commercial department.”

Nick WillemsensPartner Manager & AE, Eye Security · reported to Max at Meister

“A fantastic account manager in every respect. Thanks to his proactive, immediate support and highly insightful feedback, we were able to continually scale our ad-spend and deliver highly targeted, focused campaigns.”

Andreas RudloffSenior Sales Manager Enterprise · client at Taboola