Sr. Support Manager
Who we are
At Help Scout, we’re on a mission to help businesses delight more customers. We’ve been on this journey since 2011, and today more than 10,000 companies use our platform to provide outstanding customer support. We’ve been fully remote from the beginning, and have a team of 130+ people all over the world.
We love crafting beautiful products and growing a business together, but we're also trying to do something bigger. We're building a company that brings out your best and leaves the world a better place — a company that seeks balance between profit and purpose. That's why we've been a Certified B Corporation since 2019 and have pledged 1% of our equity back to the community.
Help Scout’s success hinges on hiring talented, high-accountability people who want to be part of creating a culture where we all feel challenged and supported to do our best work. We hope that excites you to join us!
Time Zone Note
This role must be located in Eastern or Central time zones to effectively support our globally distributed support team. We are only able to hire in the United States and Canada for this role.
Your Impact
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.
The Team
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.
About the Role
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.
On a typical day → 3 things you might do
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.
Your primary responsibilities include:
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
About You
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.
Company values
Happy to Help
Help is in our first name! We show up for each other — not out of obligation, but because we’re invested in the team’s collective success. We share knowledge freely, lead with generosity, and practice empathy with our teammates, customers, and community.
Craft over Convention
Our success relies on the quality and craft of the work we put into the world. The status quo simply won’t work. So we insist on narrow focus, sweating every detail, and relentless pursuit of customer delight.
Progress not Perfection
Achieving our true potential — collectively and individually — requires constant progress and forward momentum. By creating a culture of curiosity and openness, we aim to create a safe space for mistakes, the ability to identify them quickly, and use them to get better.
Own the Outcome
Own the outcome means taking full responsibility for the results of your work, decisions, and contributions. It reflects a mindset of accountability, proactiveness, and follow-through. If you “own the outcome,” you don’t just complete tasks, you ensure your work leads to meaningful results, and take initiative to solve problems rather than passing them along.
Read more about how we define, share, and live these values here.
Benefits And Perks
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.
Hiring Guidelines:
All roles at Help Scout are fully remote. Some positions have specific location requirements. For roles outside the U.S. and Canada, we work with teammates as independent contractors under country-specific agreements.
We do not sponsor visas. Teammates must already be authorized to work from their home country.
We are an equal opportunity employer and are committed to building a company that embraces and celebrates diversity and inclusion. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We have read the studies and understand that diverse teams build better products, bring more perspective to the table, contribute to a company’s financial success, and help foster a more inclusive environment for all employees, but the bottom line is that it's the right thing to do.
To provide you with the best experience, we can support you with accommodations or adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process. Simply inform our recruitment team during your conversation with them.
A note on the use of AI in our interview process
While we understand that AI is an important tool in a modern skillset, we ask that you do not utilize AI assistants live on our interviews. Of course, use any tools you need to prepare! But we'd like for you to have a real human-to-human conversation with our team.
On our end, we utilize a platform called Brighthire as a notetaker and review tool to ensure a fair and transparent hiring process.
Beware of scammers! All legitimate communication from Help Scout regarding your application will come directly from an @helpscout.com email address and through our applicant tracking system, Ashby. We will never ask for personal financial information or conduct interviews outside of these official channels.