Customer Support Manager

About us:

At Pencil, we are driving innovation in advertising technology through our state-of-the-art SaaS product, which harnesses Generative AI to redefine content creation. Our mission is to make AI the default in advertising without replacing creative people. To achieve this, we need to make sure that our technology isn’t just in the hands of big brands - we need to try to help small businesses and creative individuals too.

As a Customer Support Manager at Pencil, you will lead and scale our frontline (L1) support function, ensuring fast, high-quality, and empathetic customer experiences. You will not only drive operational excellence in support delivery but also transform support into a strategic function - turning customer interactions into actionable insights that improve product quality, reduce support volume, and accelerate customer adoption.

You will play a key role in bridging customers, product, and engineering - ensuring that recurring issues are eliminated at the source and that support becomes a growth driver, not just a reactive function.

As Pencil operates a 24-hour support model, you will also be expected to provide escalation support outside your usual working hours when critical or high-priority issues affect major clients or have a broader platform-wide impact. This will involve being available on an ad hoc basis to coordinate the response, support the frontline team, communicate with relevant stakeholders, and ensure urgent issues are driven through to resolution.

Key responsibilities:

• Lead and develop the L1 support team, including hiring, coaching, and performance management

• Own day-to-day support operations, ensuring SLA adherence, efficient ticket handling, and high-quality responses

• Drive key support metrics including CSAT, resolution time, FCR, and ticket trends

• Identify recurring issues and partner with QA, Product, and Engineering to reduce support volume

• Build and maintain a structured knowledge base and self-serve support experience

• Act as escalation point for complex or high-impact customer issues

• Analyse support data and translate insights into actionable recommendations

• Foster a strong customer-first culture and continuous improvement mindset

• Develop a strong understanding of advertising, creative workflows, and performance marketing to effectively support customers in generating high-performing ad creatives using Pencil

Your background:

• 6–10+ years in customer support, service desk, or customer success roles

• Proven experience managing frontline (L1) support teams in SaaS or tech environments

• Strong experience with support tools (e.g. Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk)

• Track record of improving support KPIs (CSAT, SLAs, resolution time, FCR)

• Experience working cross-functionally with Product and Engineering teams

• Strong analytical skills - ability to convert ticket trends into product insights

• Experience operating in fast-paced, evolving product environments

• Experience or strong familiarity with digital advertising, creative production, or performance marketing (e.g. working with ad creatives, agencies, or marketing teams)

• Ability to understand and communicate concepts related to ad creatives, campaign performance, and creative optimisation

You’ll Thrive Here If You…

• Are deeply customer-focused and care about delivering exceptional experiences

• Enjoy balancing people leadership with operational excellence

• Think in systems—solving root causes, not just symptoms

• Are proactive, data-driven, and continuously looking to improve processes

• Communicate clearly and confidently with both customers and internal stakeholders

• Take ownership and accountability for outcomes

• Are comfortable with ambiguity and rapid product evolution

• Have an interest in advertising, creatives, or marketing technology, and enjoy helping customers get better outcomes from their campaigns

KPIs & Success Measures

• CSAT ≥ 95% across enterprise customers

• Reduction in average resolution time (Target: 20–30%)

• First Contact Resolution (FCR) improvement

• Reduction in repeat / avoidable tickets

• Support-driven product insights adopted into roadmap

• SLA adherence ≥ 98%

Benefits:

• 25 days PTO plus public holidays, although we operate a Flexible Time Off scheme

• Health insurance / private medical cover

• Monthly stipend towards wellness, fitness, and learning and development

• Remote - work from anywhere in your home country

• Enhanced parental leave policies, whether you become a parent through birth, adoption or surrogacy

• Access to our Pencil office in The Shard, London for UK employees

• Flexible working hours