Sr. Support Manager

Help Scout • Boston, MA

5d • Remote

About The Position

As our Senior Support Manager, you'll lead the day-to-day operations of our frontline support team, ensuring we consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences while meeting our performance goals. You'll work alongside a highly skilled team of support professionals, coaching them to success while staying hands-on in the queue yourself. Your focus is simple but critical: make sure the queue is running the way it should.

You'll manage our 6-person frontline support team that spans the European, US, and Australian time zones. Help Scout is a technical product with a high bar for excellence in support, so your direct reports are highly skilled professionals who work autonomously. You'll collaborate closely with our Product Support Lead for training needs and our Support Operations Lead for technical solutions and tooling. You'll report to the VP of Customers, Abigail Phillips.

This is a hands-on leadership role where you'll spend time in the queue every day alongside your team. Your job is to ensure they have what they need to succeed, spot opportunities for improvement, and maintain the high quality standards our customers expect so that we can meet our metrics.

Here's what your work at Help Scout will cover:
Queue Leadership: You might spend your morning in the queue helping customers on a complex issue alongside your team, identifying patterns in the types of questions coming in, and spotting opportunities to improve response quality or efficiency.

Team Support & Quality: You could conduct quality reviews on recent conversations, jump into a Slack thread to help a teammate navigate a difficult customer situation, or champion great work when you see it. You're a go-to resource for the team to answer questions and provide guidance.

Performance & Improvement: You might review KPI dashboards to understand how the team is tracking against goals, request specific product training from the Product Support Lead when you notice knowledge gaps, or work with the Support Operations Lead to create a new workflow or agent that solves a recurring issue.

Requirements

• Experienced Support Leader: You've led a SaaS support team before, so you understand what great technical support looks like and you’re technical yourself. You're comfortable with metrics and performance management, but you know that numbers tell only part of the story. You've managed skilled professionals who don't need micromanagement—they need a leader who trusts them and removes obstacles from their path.
• Autonomous & Empowering: You're comfortable giving people the freedom to make decisions and do what's right for customers. You hire for judgment and trust your team to use it. You step in when needed but default to empowering others.
• Hands-On Operator and Product Expert: You're not a manager who stays out of the weeds to help customers. You can understand the product deeply, and you can jump in to help with challenging customer situations. Your team respects you because you do the work alongside them and help them level up.
• Collaborative Problem-Solver: You know you don't have to solve every problem yourself. When you see a training gap, you loop in the Product Support Lead. When you need a technical solution, you partner with Support Operations. You're comfortable asking for help and coordinating across teams to get your team what they need, and let you stay focused.
• Quality-Focused: You have a strong sense of what excellent customer support looks like and can articulate why one response is better than another. You give clear, actionable feedback that helps people improve, and you celebrate great work when you see it.

Responsibilities

• Overseeing all frontline support team members and ensuring smooth queue operations
• Monitoring and ensuring the team meets established KPIs and performance standards
• Working in the queue daily alongside your team to stay connected to the customer experience and your team
• Supporting autonomous decision-making while providing guidance when needed
• Raising concerns and advocating for resources when the team needs additional support
• Maintaining team morale and creating a positive, respectful, and collaborative work environment

Benefits

• Competitive salary and an internal, transparent salary formula based on market data
• Flexible time off – you choose the holidays and vacations that make sense for you
• 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave for all new parents, including adoption and foster care
• A home office stipend to help you get set up and productive
• A co-working stipend up to $300 a month if you choose to work out of your house
• A yearly professional development stipend of $1,800 to help you grow in your craft
• If you’re in the U.S. or Canada, we offer top tier health insurance for you and your dependents.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed