How to Write the Best Customer Support Manager Job Description
Customer support managers are the grease that keep most customer support organizations running. While they are not often responsible for the organization's overarching strategy as a whole, customer service managers are responsible for maintaining the day-to-day people management, operations, and decision-making at a team level.
Because it’s such a critical role, making sure you get the right candidates in your pipeline is paramount, and that’s hard to do if you don’t set expectations properly from the beginning with an excellent job description.
In this post, we'll provide detailed information about what to include in a customer service manager job description to ensure potential candidates get the most transparent picture of what the role will entail.
Key Responsibilities
This section of the job listing is a summary of what the person should expect to do when coming into the role. It should give a description of the anticipated scope of work and allow anyone reading the listing to imagine themselves in the role.
Here are some of the typical critical responsibilities for candidates in customer service manager roles:
Lead and direct front-line customer support teams.
Organize and motivate team members in their day-to-day work.
Manage and understand data around incoming case volume.
Communicate any trends in customer communication or behavior to other departments.
Hire and train incoming support team members.
Ensure that team staffing levels are balanced.
Handle incoming escalations.
Work directly with leadership to define and enforce strategies and team goals.
Conduct one-on-ones with direct reports.
Set and enforce team policies and procedures.
Create budgets in collaboration with higher leadership.
By the end of this section, a potential candidate should be able to envision what an average day in the role entails. If there are aspects of the role a candidate will grow into over time, make that clear in the posting. For example, you may say, “At the six-month mark you’ll be….” Otherwise, you may run the risk of overwhelming or intimidating potential candidates.
Skills and qualifications
This section is the part of the job description where you designate the skills or qualifications that someone should have before coming to the position. Be sure to only list what is crucial for the ideal candidate to have, as many candidates will self-select out of a role based on what you include here.
For instance, if a candidate doesn’t need to have a Bachelor’s degree, don't include that in this list. Only include the qualifications and skills that someone has to have for you to consider them for the role. If there are extra skills or qualifications that are nice but not necessary, you can create a second section under this one that mentions those.
Here are a few points that companies typically choose to include in this section of their customer service manager job descriptions:
Desired years of experience in a customer support management role.
Ability to provide and receive constructive performance insights.
Product- or industry-specific knowledge.
Excellent written and oral communication skills.
Proven ability to manage a team, including conflict resolution.
Alignment with company values and mission.
Strength in data-driven communication and decision-making.
Experience aligning metrics cross-functionally and telling compelling data stories.
Extra information
While the two sections above are the meat-and-potatoes of any job description, many companies also include a few extra pieces. Consider including this information in your next listing:
Benefits that are included with the position.
Salary details.
Information about the company and the team itself, such as the company culture or mission statement.
Any unique perks about the role.
Glassdoor ratings.
Equal opportunity employment statement.
Extra details like these help give the candidate a better picture of what they can expect from the role.
Recommended Reading
10 examples of great customer support manager job descriptions
There are tons of great examples of customer support manager job descriptions out on the internet. Some use the same specific title, while others may refer to the role slightly differently. For instance, some of the job descriptions that we include here refer to this role as a "Customer Service Supervisor" while others refer to it as "Team Leader, Customer Support."
Review the following examples, and see if any resonate with the type of job description you want to create for your own business.
1. Manager, Customer Support; Procore Technologies
Procore begins the job description with an overarching view of where the role will fit within the larger company and the customer support team. Otherwise, something they do slightly differently is include the specific software that team members can expect to use. This detail gives an even better picture of the role to potential candidates.
2. Manager, Customer Support; Agfa HeathCare
Agfa takes an interesting approach in that this job description breaks down the Skills and Qualifications section into a few separate, easy-to-read segments:
Education
Experience
Specific Skills
If you have a ton of information to include, breaking it into more manageable sections can make it even easier to read and digest for your potential candidates.
3. Manager, Customer Support; Relativity
This job listing emphasizes the fit of the position within the company and details the benefits that the person hired would receive. One of the best things about this job posting is the “Your role in action” section. This allows potential candidates to easily put themselves in this role and get a picture of what kind of work they’d be doing. This is crucial for potential candidates to understand whether the work would be fulfilling and aligned with what they’re looking for in a customer support management position.
4. Technical Customer Support Manager; F45 Training HQ
F45 Training seems committed to transparency. This description lists the salary expectations for this role as well as a long list of responsibilities. These are both good avenues to allow candidates to self-select in or out. The job description also includes the expected schedule for the position before it even gets into the responsibilities and requirements for an ideal candidate.
5. Customer Service Supervisor; Doc Martens
Doc Martens does a great job representing the company's vibe in this customer service manager listing. For instance, instead of saying "Roles and Responsibilities," the listing says "The Gig," and the benefits section is titled "What's in it for you?" The description does a great job emphasizing the type of work and culture that a potential candidate can expect at the company.
6. Support Manager; CoinTracker
CoinTracker's listing for this support manager role is super casual and friendly. It uses emojis to keep things easy to read and to break up the large chunks of expectations into readable lists. Beyond the stylistic choices, though, a notable aspect of this job listing is the inclusion of 100-day and 1-year expected outcomes, which is a great way to help candidates see how they will grow within the role.
7. Customer Success Lead; GlossGenius
This job listing is for a customer success team lead rather than one on a customer support team, but they cover similar responsibilities. This job description goes into great detail about one of the main responsibilities, further breaking down a key bullet point. It’s a good example that the more detail you can provide, the better for your potential candidates.
8. Team Lead, Customer Support (Americas, West); Zapier
Zapier's website has a few listings for similar roles, and this one is differentiated by the additional description of "Americas, West." If you have a specific location or time zone for the position you are hiring for, be sure to include that information in a prominent place in your job description.
The other impactful thing Zapier does is start the listing with extra resources that interested candidates can read to learn about the culture, benefits, and mission at Zapier.
9. Manager, Customer Support; Calendly
Calendly's job description sets itself apart by changing the language that the company uses for the headers. Much like Doc Martens above, the reader instantly feels the culture and vibe that Calendly is looking to create and fulfill when hiring.
For instance, instead of "Skills and Qualifications," Calendly uses "This opportunity is for you if you have/are:" and in place of "Roles and Responsibilities," the job description reads, "What are some of the high impact opportunities you'll tackle?" This would likely feel extremely exciting and compelling to read to an ideal candidate for this role.
10. Customer Service Lead; OptioPay Group
OptioPay infuses its job description with extra information about which stage the company is currently in. It ensures that potential candidates know exactly what to expect, which is especially important for those who may be turned off by hyper-growth.
This job description's other interesting tactic is the use of "you." This strategy makes it easy for any candidate reading the job description to put themselves in the role and envision what it might be like to have this position.
Attract your ideal candidate
In summary, here are our top suggestions for writing an effective job description:
Make it easy for candidates reading your job descriptions to understand precisely what you are looking for.
Use language that reflects your culture and the type of attitude you want your team members to embody.
Keep the descriptions concise and easy to read so you don't lose potential candidates before they even get a chance to get excited.
Cut out any extraneous information that could turn off a candidate or make them unnecessarily feel like they aren't good enough for the role.
The best job descriptions allow their readers to get right into the heart of the role and start to get excited within the first few sentences. Use these guidelines and the examples above to write the very best customer support manager job descriptions.
Mercer Smith
Mercer is the VP of CX Insights & Community at PartnerHero, a yoga fanatic, and strives to make the world a little bit happier one customer at a time. You can find her at mercenator.com and on Twitter.