Director of SaaS Customer Support Operations & Automation
★ PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR CV IN ENGLISH ★
Location: Remote
Employment Type: Full-Time | Independent Contractor
Please submit your CV in English
About the Company
A fast-growing B2G SaaS company is helping modernize public transportation through an AI-native transit operations platform. Its cloud-based software enables transit agencies to manage and optimize services such as microtransit, paratransit, fixed-route operations, dispatching, bookings, routing, fleet coordination, and rider experiences.
About the Role
We are seeking a highly experienced Director of SaaS Customer Support Operations & Automation to lead, rebuild, and scale a customer support organization supporting complex, mission-critical SaaS products.
This role is specifically focused on supporting SaaS customers who pay for and actively use a software product. It is not focused on IT delivery, implementation, migration, infrastructure, or managed services projects.
The ideal candidate has deep experience leading customer-facing support teams in a SaaS environment, managing support managers and specialists, improving support operations through data and process optimization, and implementing automation and AI-driven support workflows.
This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can step into a complex support environment, assess what is working, identify gaps, rebuild operational frameworks, and create measurable improvements in customer experience, team performance, efficiency, and scalability.
You will lead a team of approximately 11 professionals, including 3 support managers and 8–9 support specialists, while working closely with Product, Engineering, and Leadership teams.
What You’ll Own
SaaS Customer Support Leadership
- Own the end-to-end customer support function for a complex SaaS product.
- Lead, mentor, and develop support managers and support specialists.
- Manage team structure, hiring, performance management, coaching, accountability, and team culture.
- Build a high-performing support organization focused on customer outcomes, speed, quality, and scalability.
- Drive operational change management across people, processes, tools, and workflows.
- Ensure the support team is equipped to handle technical customer issues, escalations, and product-related inquiries effectively.
Support Operations & Process Improvement
- Evaluate and improve current support processes, workflows, escalation paths, and operating standards.
- Create scalable systems for ticket handling, prioritization, severity management, and customer communication.
- Build repeatable support frameworks that improve resolution quality and reduce unnecessary manual work.
- Identify operational bottlenecks and implement practical solutions to improve efficiency and consistency.
- Develop support playbooks, documentation standards, and internal operating procedures.
- Ensure support processes are designed for scale, not short-term fixes.
AI, Automation & Self-Service Strategy
- Lead automation and AI adoption across the support organization.
- Optimize and expand Intercom AI capabilities and automated support workflows.
- Build scalable ticket deflection and self-service strategies.
- Automate repetitive workflows across triage, routing, escalation, follow-up, and resolution.
- Use AI and automation to reduce manual workload while improving customer experience.
- Identify opportunities to improve knowledge base quality, customer self-service, and support team productivity.
- Demonstrate measurable improvements through automation, such as reduced ticket volume, faster resolution times, improved deflection rates, or improved SLA performance.
Metrics, Reporting & Operational Excellence
- Define and own operational KPIs and service standards for the support organization.
- Track and improve key support metrics, including:
- CSAT
- SLA performance
- Resolution time
- First response time
- Ticket volume trends
- Deflection rates
- Escalation volume
- Backlog health
- Quality of resolution
- Build reporting frameworks that provide actionable insights for Support, Product, Engineering, and Leadership teams.
- Use support data to identify recurring issues, product gaps, workflow inefficiencies, and customer pain points.
- Translate support trends into operational and product improvement recommendations.
Technical Collaboration with Product & Engineering
- Serve as the bridge between Support, Product, and Engineering teams.
- Represent customer technical issues with clarity, accuracy, and appropriate severity.
- Partner with Product and Engineering to prioritize bugs, product improvements, escalations, and recurring customer issues.
- Participate in technical discussions related to product behavior, customer-impacting issues, and supportability.
- Ensure support insights are used to improve the product and reduce future customer friction.
Requirements
- 10+ years of experience in customer support, technical support, support operations, or customer experience operations.
- Significant leadership experience owning customer-facing support organizations end-to-end.
- Previous experience managing managers and support specialists.
- Direct experience supporting SaaS customers who pay for and actively use a software product.
- Strong experience with complex, technical, or mission-critical SaaS products.
- Proven experience improving support processes, workflows, escalation paths, and operational systems.
- Strong experience using data and metrics to improve support performance.
- Hands-on experience with Intercom or similar customer support platforms.
- Proven experience implementing automation, AI, self-service, or workflow optimization within a support environment.
- Strong understanding of support KPIs, including CSAT, SLA performance, resolution time, deflection rates, ticket volume, and backlog management.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to collaborate effectively with Product, Engineering, and Leadership teams.
- Strong technical fluency and ability to understand complex product issues.
- Highly analytical, execution-oriented, and comfortable leading change in a fast-paced environment.
Must-Have Experience
- Experience leading customer support for a SaaS product, not only IT services, consulting, implementation, migration, or delivery projects.
- Experience managing people, ideally including support managers or team leads.
- Experience improving support operations through process improvement, data, automation, AI, or self-service initiatives.
- Experience working closely with Product and Engineering on customer-impacting technical issues.
- Experience building scalable support processes, not just maintaining existing workflows.
Not a Fit For This Role
This role is not a fit for candidates whose experience is primarily in:
- IT delivery projects.
- Software implementation projects.
- Migration projects.
- Infrastructure or field services support.
- Internal IT help desk operations only.
- Technical project management without SaaS customer support ownership.
- AI engineering or automation development without customer support leadership.
- Customer success without direct support operations ownership.
- Individual contributor support roles without management experience.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience building or rebuilding support operations in a high-growth SaaS or technology company.
- Experience leading support transformation initiatives.
- Experience with Intercom AI, conversational AI, workflow automation, or AI-driven support tools.
- Experience creating or scaling knowledge bases, self-service resources, and ticket deflection strategies.
- Strong background in escalation management and incident severity frameworks.
- Experience supporting enterprise or mission-critical SaaS customers.
- Experience creating dashboards, reporting systems, or operational scorecards for support leadership.
What We’re Looking For
- A transformational support leader with strong ownership mentality.
- A hands-on operator who can diagnose problems and implement practical solutions.
- A metrics-driven leader who uses data to improve performance.
- Someone who understands SaaS customer support deeply and can distinguish support operations from project delivery.
- A strong people leader who can coach managers, develop specialists, and create accountability.
- A process builder who can create scalable frameworks, not just react to daily issues.
- A technically credible partner to Product and Engineering.
- A leader who can use automation and AI to make support more efficient, scalable, and customer-focused.