Associate Director of Support

Position: Associate Director of Support

Company/Division: Goose — Customer Success

Location: Chicago, IL (Hybrid, 3 days onsite/week - T/W/Th - Relatively Flexible with Approval)

Base Salary: 120-150KWhat Goose Offers

About the Role: We’re looking for an experienced Customer Operations leader to scale and strengthen our support organization. In this role, you’ll set the strategy for support quality, manage and develop a growing team, and build the systems that make excellent support repeatable at scale. You’ll report to the Head of Customer Operations and work closely with cross‑functional leaders across Implementation, Customer Success, and Product. This role is ideal for someone energized by building teams, improving processes, and shaping how support operates — not just solving individual tickets. Because of the close collaboration with the founding team, we prefer candidates based in the greater Chicago area with a hybrid schedule (3 days onsite).Team & Management ScopeYou will initially manage one offshore team member (supported by Support Ninja’s Resource/Account Manager). Offshore support hours run 9am–6pm CT.Once the Support Specialist role is filled, you will also oversee that team member.

What You’ll Do: Own support quality end‑to‑end — SLAs, queue health, escalation frameworks, and service consistency. Act as the escalation point for high‑stakes customer issues. Hire, coach, and develop Team Leads and Support Specialists, including performance management and career pathing. Manage the partnership with the offshore support team, ensuring coverage, quality, and smooth handoffs across time zones. Analyze support volume and customer friction trends; present structured recommendations and business cases to leadership. Partner with Implementation, Customer Success, and Product to close knowledge gaps, influence roadmap decisions, and elevate customer insights. Design and maintain team coverage models, including weekend and after‑hours rotations. Build and maintain documentation, playbooks, and training infrastructure to support scalable growth. Own key support metrics (CSAT, SLA adherence, resolution time, escalation rate) and report on performance to leadership. Necessary Skills/Experience Needed7–10 years in customer support or customer success, including 3+ years managing leads or people managers. Exceptional communication skills — able to de-escalate tough situations, coach leaders, and translate customer issues into actionable recommendations. Strong operational and strategic instincts; you identify systemic issues early and bring solutions, not just diagnoses. Proven experience managing distributed or offshore teams and building coverage/quality models from scratch. Ability to hold teams accountable with a balance of directness and empathy. Deep familiarity with support tooling (Intercom, HubSpot, Zendesk, or similar) and using them to drive process design. Bonus points if you have…Experience in pet services, hospitality, or other service‑based industries. Background in SaaS support at an early‑stage startup. Experience building knowledge bases or support documentation programs.