Technical Support Manager - Mississauga, Canada

Job Description

Guidewire's Customer & Cloud Operations team is a pivotal part of Guidewire's success, has a start-up culture within a global public company, and is growing fast. We use our immense knowledge of Guidewire products (gained through company sponsored training), and our ability to read and write Java and SQL, to delight customers with our problem-solving skills and customer service approach.

At Guidewire, we make software that offers Property and Casualty (P&C) Insurance companies the tools to take care of their customers when they need it the most, whether that’s a time of crisis, a natural disaster, an accident, or exposure to cyber risks. We build the core applications that insurance companies use to sell and underwrite policies, settle claims, and bill their customers. We also have a portfolio of innovate products serving the needs of P&C insurance companies in areas such as data management, digital online portals, and predictive analytics. We serve hundreds of insurance providers all over the world, helping them handle billions of dollars of business.

We are proud to be voted a Top Cloud Employer on Glassdoor by our own employees and positioned as a market leader by industry experts like Gartner. We have a fun work environment and a culture that lives by our core values of integrity, rationality, and collegiality.

We’re searching for people who are as passionate about working together to deliver quality products and support as we are. Join us and enjoy a career where you can make an impact. You’ll be inspired by those around you, and you’ll be trusted and empowered to go further.

Guidewire’s Customer & Cloud Operations (CCO) organization delivers 24x7 service to customers who are using Guidewire software both on-premise and in the Guidewire Cloud.

As a Technical Support Manager on the First Responders team, you will be responsible for hiring, leading, managing and developing a team of 8-12 Technical Support Engineers and 3-5 contractors as they research and resolve all incoming support cases from Guidewire’s customer base. This position requires strong managerial skills, a deep commitment to customer satisfaction, and experience in driving process improvement.

Reporting to the Director of Global Customer Support, your role will be operational execution. You will be managing daily support operations, playing a supervisory role to Technical Support Engineers and acting as an escalation point for Guidewire’s customers in critically severe or sensitive situations. Examples of responsibilities include assigning support cases, ensuring even distribution of case workload, setting on-call schedules for the team and running daily shift handover meetings. The Technical Support Manager is ultimately responsible for ensuring the team meets all customer initial response SLAs and internal resolution SLAs.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Team Management

• Manage a team of Technical Support Engineers known as “First Responders”, who field all incoming support cases from Guidewire’s customers
• Take full management responsibility for your team, including motivating them, hiring/mentoring/coaching, writing performance reviews, and preparing overall performance evaluations
• Create/execute a talent pipeline from the First Responders team into other groups within the company (targeting 1-3 transfers per year)
• Manage, measure, and report on key service level metrics including response rate, closure rate, average turnaround time, and customer satisfaction
• Build and maintain relationships with other Technical Support Managers to ensure that services are consistent across regions, and that productivity goals are understood and exceeded
• Develop action plans to address areas of concern identified in customer satisfaction surveys
• Leverage customer support best practices and process frameworks to drive continual process improvement
• Promote self-service tools and the knowledge repository as mechanisms to improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs
• Maintain frequent communication with peers and other Customer and Cloud Operations (CCO) teams to maintain awareness of issues or changing processes/standards
• Assist with the definition, documentation, communication and training of case management SOPs inspired by ITIL best practices
• Drive continuous maintenance and contributions to the Technical Support Engineer knowledgebase
• Play a lead role in the continued improvement of the First Responders’ operational processes

Day-to-Day Operations

• Provide daily coordination and guidance of the First Responders team to process all incoming support cases to ensure courteous, timely and effective response to customer issues
• Assign cases to team employees, and monitor each employee’s caseload to ensure even workload distribution and rapid resolution
• Escalate and reprioritize aging support cases as needed
• Manage the assignment of after-hours on-call responsibility and arrange for team members to be available outside of normal business hours when needed to help with urgent customer issues
• Ensure that all support cases are documented in accordance with CCO quality standards
• Periodically review support case metrics and dashboards to track employee performance and identify trends, anomalies, and opportunities for improvement
• Assist in the QA process of new iterations of the software
• Identify incoming cases which are out of scope and redirect them to the appropriate team

Case Resolution

• Ensure that your team researches, responds to and accurately resolves cases of moderate complexity, in a timely manner and in accordance with CCO standards
• Function as the first escalation point for customers who have concerns about a particular case
• Proactively take ownership and responsibility for support cases where and when required
• Escalate customer issues to the Director of Global Support as appropriate
• Participate in team projects that enhance the quality or efficiency of support

Knowledge Management

• Develop a broad knowledge of Guidewire’s software products
• Advance the use of a knowledge repository to share information among all support groups
• Contribute to an environment that encourages information sharing, team-based resolution activity, cross training and an absolute focus on doing what is best for the customer
• Play a lead role in the continued improvement of Guidewire’s operational processes

REQUIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

Education and Work Experience

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field
• Experience with Incident Management methodologies, systems and tools
• 3+ years supervisory or leadership experience of a customer-facing IT/Technical team
• Experience with a commercial customer incident tracking or CRM system such as Salesforce.com
• Experience using a software defect tracking system such as JIRA
• Experience working with outside Service Providers and Partner organizations
• Experience managing geographically distributed and culturally diverse employees

Personal Qualities

• Relentless dedication to customer service in both words and actions
• Team orientation – Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to establish strong relationships with all levels of management
• Excellent communication skills both verbal and written, with the ability to lead/manage large conference calls
• Ability to handle multiple tasks with changing priorities and capable of handling frequent interruptions positively
• Demonstrated collaborative skills and ability influence peers and senior management
• Self-motivated with critical attention to detail, deadlines and reporting
• Must have a thorough knowledge, understanding of, and appreciation for record keeping principals and systems
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team
• Employ sound business judgment when making business decisions
• Use creative and innovative ways to solve problems
• Display a strong work ethic and do whatever it takes to get the job done
• Demonstrate strong follow-through and consistently keep commitments to customers and employees
• Display an understanding of the customer’s needs and a strong commitment to customer satisfaction
• Ensure that each and every customer is handled with a consummately professional attitude and the highest possible level of service

Other Requirements

• Ability to read, write, and speak fluent English
• You will score bonus points if you can also read, write, and speak another language such as French or German
• You will be part of a team that works together at one of our company offices (working remotely is not an option)
• Your standard working hours will be 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday through Friday (except in Dublin or Madrid, where your standard working hours will be 7:00am to 4:00pm Monday through Friday)
• We provide 24x7 support to our customers, so we expect you to be available as needed for after-hours production emergencies
• Travel – Expect occasional travel (less than 10%) to other Guidewire offices for training and meetings