Customer Support Manager Team Lead

Location: Waterloo, Ontario (Hybrid – 3 days per week)

About the Company
A Waterloo-based tech company providing school bus route planning software for K–12 school districts across North America. Known for innovation, user-friendly design, and exceptional customer service, the company has become a market leader in Canada. The team values long-term client relationships and delivers dedicated, personalized support to every school district.

Position Summary
We are seeking a confident, ambitious, and highly capable Customer Support Team Lead to join our Waterloo office. This senior leadership role will manage and develop a Support team of six, strengthen the support function, and build scalable processes for long-term growth. This is the first time a dedicated leader will be brought into this role, providing the opportunity to elevate the team, mentor staff, and ensure exceptional service for school districts across North America.

Key Responsibilities

• Team Leadership & Management

  • Lead, coach, and develop a team of six Customer Support Specialists.

  • Set clear performance expectations, provide mentorship, and foster a culture of accountability and growth.

  • Create scalable processes, workflows, and best practices for a high-functioning support organization.

  • Build training and onboarding programs to ensure full team enablement on product knowledge and support procedures.

• Customer Support & Escalations

  • Serve as the primary escalation point for complex customer issues, providing hands-on technical support as needed.

  • Maintain professionalism when interacting with senior-level clients, including Directors of Transportation and district leadership.

  • Drive a customer-first mindset within the team, ensuring timely, high-quality responses and resolutions.

  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams (Product, Engineering, Consulting) to resolve issues and improve customer outcomes.

• Operational Excellence

  • Analyze support trends, ticket volumes, customer feedback, and SLA performance to enhance efficiency and quality.

  • Implement processes, documentation, and reporting to ensure sustainable support operations as the customer base grows.

  • Identify opportunities for continuous improvement across tools, workflows, and support operations.

  • Support product training efforts for clients and assist with internal enablement.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration

  • Communicate customer needs, product feedback, and system improvement suggestions to internal teams.

  • Partner with leadership on support strategy, hiring, and long-term team structure.

  • Prepare the support organization for future scale, including potential restructuring under a Director of Client Services.

Qualifications

• 3–7+ years of experience in customer support, technical support, or client services.

• Proven experience managing a team of 4–6+ support specialists.

• Strong technical aptitude and ability to quickly understand a complex, feature-rich software product.

• Experience handling escalations and navigating high-pressure or sensitive customer situations.

• Background supporting enterprise-level customers, preferably in public sector, education, government, or SaaS.

• Excellent communication and professionalism, comfortable interacting with senior leaders across North America.

• Strong organizational and problem-solving skills, with a proactive, solutions-oriented mindset.

• High ambition, growth mindset, and desire to build and improve systems.

• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment.

• Must be able to work 3+ days per week in the Waterloo office.

• Experience with support tools, CRMs, or knowledge bases is an asset but not required.