Vice President of Customer Support

Vice President, Customer Support

Location: Austin, TX (hybrid 2-3 days/week)

Type: Full-time, Senior leadership

Role Overview:

We are seeking a seasoned, hands-on Vice President of Customer Support to build and lead a best-in-class customer support organization for our B2B SaaS business. The ideal leader will have a proven track record at the Director / Senior Director / VP level running enterprise support organizations, deep operational experience with Zendesk, strong analytics and KPI discipline, and demonstrated success applying AI to scale service and improve outcomes. You'll own the support strategy, people & culture, operational excellence, and executive reporting — partnering closely with Product, Engineering, Sales, Customer Success, and Operations to deliver exceptional experiences that drive retention and growth.

Responsibilities:

• Set the vision and operating model for the Customer Support organization across tiers (L1–L3), channels (email, in-app chat, phone, knowledge base), and geographies.
• Lead, coach, and scale a high-performing team of managers and individual contributors; recruit top talent and drive career development and succession planning.
• Own day-to-day support operations and end-to-end metrics: SLAs, response and resolution times, CSAT, NPS (where applicable), FCR, backlog, queue health, and cost per ticket.
• Serve as the Zendesk subject matter expert: design ticketing workflows, triggers, macros, views, forms, reporting (Explore or equivalent), and integrations with CRM, product telemetry, and other systems.
• Design and operate reporting and analytics frameworks — produce executive dashboards and regular reviews, provide insights to influence product roadmaps and business decisions.
• Implement and scale AI/automation to improve scale and quality (chatbots/virtual agents, AI-assisted agent workflows, routing, knowledge mining, RAG/LLM solutions, automation of manual processes), while balancing automation with human touch.
• Establish and own KPIs and SLAs that align with customer outcomes and company objectives; relentlessly drive continuous improvement and operational efficiency.
• Manage escalations and enterprise customer relationships when necessary; present program status, trends, and proposals to executive leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Develop processes for major incident and incident communications management in partnership with Product and Engineering.
• Own budget, workforce planning, vendor management, and third-party support relationships.
• Promote a customer-obsessed culture focused on empathy, reliability, and measurable outcomes.

Qualifications:

Required (Hard Skills & Experience):

• 10 years of progressive customer support experience in B2B and SaaS businesses, including prior leadership at the Director, Senior Director, or Vice President level.
• Direct, hands-on experience with Zendesk administration and operations (ticketing architecture, automations, macros, views, forms, Explore or reporting, and common integrations).
• Demonstrated experience implementing AI/automation in customer support (chatbots/virtual agents, LLM/GenAI workflows, AI routing/triage, knowledge-base automation, or similar).
• Strong analytics and reporting skills — comfortable with dashboarding tools (Zendesk Explore, Power BI, or equivalent) and SQL/data queries to produce executive-grade insights.
• Track record of defining and driving KPIs and SLAs (CSAT, NPS, FCR, MTTR, SLA compliance, cost-per-ticket) and using them to improve performance.
• Experience presenting to executive teams and influencing cross-functional leaders and board/external stakeholders.
• P&L, budget ownership, and workforce planning experience preferred.
• Familiarity with integrations between support, CRM (e.g., Salesforce), product telemetry, and SSO/identity systems.

Required (Soft Skills & Leadership):

• Strategic operator: able to translate business strategy into an achievable support roadmap and operational plan.
• Customer obsession: relentlessly focused on customer outcomes and experience improvements.
• Data-driven decision maker: uses metrics and qualitative feedback to prioritize and measure impact.
• Exceptional communicator and presenter: comfortable communicating complex ideas clearly to executives, peers, and customers.
• People leader and coach: proven ability to hire, motivate, and grow managers and teams; builds inclusive, high-trust cultures.
• Change agent: experience leading organizational change, process transformation, and new technology adoption.
• Problem solver and calm under pressure: handles escalations and incident response with composure and decisiveness.
• Collaborative influencer: works effectively across Product, Engineering, Customer Success, Sales, and Operations to align priorities.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience in enterprise or mid-market B2B SaaS with complex integrations and multi-stakeholder buying cycles.
• Prior experience scaling support for rapid growth / high-velocity SaaS environments.
• Advanced degree (MBA or similar) or certifications in customer service operations.