Support Manager - Q2 2024

About Planning Center

Planning Center, established in 2006, has grown to support over 70,000 churches worldwide. As an independent company, we pride ourselves on being debt-free with no outside investors. Churches use our tools to communicate and connect with their congregations, organize information, and coordinate events. We’re committed to building great products that solve real problems using web and mobile products.

Our team enjoys the flexibility of remote work, utilizing tools like GitHub, Asana, Slack, Notion, and Zoom for collaboration. We gather quarterly at our main office in Carlsbad, CA, fostering our work relationships.

About the Work

As a Customer Support Manager, you will play a pivotal role in inspiring, motivating, and coaching our agents to do their best work, and thrive in their role. You will be responsible for managing team coverage, recruitment, productivity, and overseeing the training and professional development of team members. Your leadership will uphold the values and reputation of Planning Center among both customers and staff.

A typical week encompasses, but is not limited to these responsibilities:

• Managing 8-10 agents and specialists across multiple time zones
• Overseeing your team’s on-call rotations, hiring, and support coverage
• Developing and implementing onboarding, training, and ongoing growth programs for team members
• Fostering a positive, balanced working environment that excites team members about their work and mitigates the risk of burnout
• Addressing escalated customer tickets.
• Supervising the collection and tracking of customer feedback
• Assisting in developing resources for Planning Center’s support team and customers
• Collaborating with other teams in Planning Center as a representative of the support management team
• Optimizing agent workflows and processes

Who We Look For

We offer a culture that emphasizes continuous learning, work-life balance, and a meaningful impact on our customer community. Our Core Values shape our work:

• Engage with Humility - We actively participate with openness and receptiveness. We are ready to listen, learn, and speak thoughtfully and kindly—regardless of skill level, expertise, or place on the org chart.
• Invest in our team - We give our time and energy to our team’s success—improving collaboration with effective communication, making space for diverse perspectives, sharing knowledge, and asking questions.
• Do Our Best Work - We aspire to do our best possible work—continually looking for ways to improve the quality of our individual output and contribute to our team's overall success and growth.
• Focus on Customer Impact - We advocate for our customer’s best interests in our decision-making—we can trace the goal of every project back to creating positive value for our customers.
• Think Holistically, Work Iteratively - We focus on taking practical steps towards our goals with an awareness of the broader context—thinking big, working small.

We believe the strongest teams comprise people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, and we are committed to cultivating that diversity here at Planning Center. We're building an inclusive, supportive place for you to do your best work. You'll join a company where your contributions are valued and your well-being matters.

The Hiring Process

During the hiring process, you’ll have a chance to interact with several team members. We strongly encourage you to bring questions to each stage of the interview process. You’re interviewing us as much as we’re interviewing you.

Applications will be accepted until 9AM PST on May 6th, 2024. We aim to have a final decision between May 16th and May 20th, 2024. Our target starting date will be June 3rd, 2024.

Below is an outline of our hiring process.

• Step One: Apply with a resume and cover letter. Your cover letter should speak directly to your interest in this position. Here are a few things we’d like you to include:
  
  - Why are you interested in this role at Planning Center?
  - Describe a frustrating customer experience you've had and what you would've liked to see done differently.
  - Describe your biggest success as a leader and a time when you had to say no.
  
  (A word of caution for those using AI cover letters: When compared to the hundreds of other candidates who did the exact same thing, it becomes painfully obvious who took the AI first draft. If you're going to use these tools, we ask that you use them well. Give our recruiter something a bit more human to read.)
  
• Step Two: Homework Exercise - You’ll have a chance to share a commentary and proposed solution(s) to some support interactions.
• Step Three: Technical Interview - We'll review your submission and talk shop concerning management, getting a clear understanding of your experience
• Step Four: Culture Interview - You'll meet members of our team and possibly several from outside of the Support Department to discuss your work experience and methodologies and ask lingering questions you have about us
• Step Five: Pending all goes well, an offer will be extended.
  

* Research shows that while men apply to jobs when they meet ~60% of the criteria, women and those in underrepresented groups in tech, tend to apply only when they check every box. If you’re unsure if your experience qualifies strong competency, we’d still love to hear from you and see if you're a good fit!

Requirements

1. Reside in the United States
2. Eligible to work in the United States (we are currently unable to offer employment to those with H-1B visas)
3. Be willing to travel four times each year to connect with the rest of the team (not during a pandemic)
4. A minimum of 3 years of manager experience in the tech/software industry
5. Excellent leadership, communication, and customer service skills
6. Computer literacy and good organizational skills
7. Strong creative thinking and problem-solving skills.
8. Acute self-awareness - knowing your limitations, good stress-coping skills, and open communication about your needs.
9. Receptive to feedback with a commitment to learning and improvement

Benefits

We love our team. It’s one of the core pillars we work off of every day, which is why we take care of you as best we can. Here are a few highlights, but you can find all of our benefits here.

Get paid

We pay in the top 10% of the New York City rates (no matter where you live), contribute to your 401k, provide a charitable giving match of up to $2,000 a year, have a generous allowance for continued education, and offer a co-working stipend. The annual salary range for this position is $88,359 - 113,604.

Get out

Enjoy paid Fridays off in the summer, every other Friday off the rest of the year, a month-long sabbatical every five years, one week off between Christmas and New Years, one week off each year to serve with a non-profit, and two weeks paid vacation each year, increasing to three over time.

Be healthy

Generous paid sick time, $200 monthly for physical fitness and mental health, 95% medical and 100% dental premium health coverage.