Support Team Hiring Guide

Support Team Hiring Guide

Job Descriptions

L1 — Customer Support Representative

About the role: We're looking for a Customer Support Representative to be the first point of contact for our customers. You'll handle incoming requests via chat, email, and phone — solving problems, answering questions, and making sure every customer feels heard.

Responsibilities:

• Respond to customer inquiries across all support channels
• Troubleshoot common product issues using internal knowledge base
• Escalate complex issues to senior support with full context
• Maintain a personal CSAT score of 4.0+ / 5.0
• Contribute to knowledge base by flagging gaps and suggesting articles
• Meet or exceed response time SLAs

Requirements:

• 1+ year of customer-facing experience (support, retail, hospitality, etc.)
• Excellent written communication skills
• Comfort with technology — able to learn new tools quickly
• Empathy and patience with frustrated customers
• Availability to work [shifts/hours]

Nice to have:

• Experience with help desk software (Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, etc.)
• Experience in SaaS or B2B support
• Bilingual

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L2 — Senior Support Engineer

About the role: We're looking for a Senior Support Engineer to handle complex technical issues, mentor L1 agents, and work closely with engineering on bug resolution. You'll be the go-to person when things get tricky.

Responsibilities:

• Handle escalated technical issues from L1 support
• Investigate and document bugs for the engineering team
• Mentor and train L1 agents on troubleshooting techniques
• Build and maintain internal runbooks and troubleshooting guides
• Participate in on-call rotation for P1/P2 issues
• Identify patterns in support requests and propose product improvements
• Maintain a personal CSAT score of 4.5+ / 5.0

Requirements:

• 3+ years of customer support experience, with 1+ year in a technical role
• Ability to read logs, understand APIs, and debug integrations
• Experience with SQL (reading queries, basic data investigation)
• Strong written and verbal communication
• Demonstrated ability to mentor junior team members

Nice to have:

• Experience with REST APIs and webhooks
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, etc.)
• Previous experience writing technical documentation

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L3 — Support Team Lead / Manager

About the role: We're looking for a Support Team Lead to manage our support team, own the support metrics, and ensure every customer gets a consistently excellent experience. You'll balance people management with process improvement.

Responsibilities:

• Manage a team of [N] support agents (L1 and L2)
• Own support KPIs: CSAT, FRT, resolution time, SLA compliance
• Run weekly 1:1s and team meetings
• Handle escalations and VIP customer issues
• Build and refine support processes, macros, and workflows
• Hire, train, and onboard new team members
• Report on support metrics and trends to leadership

Requirements:

• 5+ years in customer support, with 2+ years in a leadership role
• Experience managing support KPIs and reporting
• Strong coaching and people management skills
• Experience with support tools and analytics
• Ability to balance quality and speed under pressure

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Structured Interview Questions

Cultural Fit (All Levels)

1. Tell me about a time you dealt with a very frustrated customer. What happened and what did you do?
2. How do you handle not knowing the answer to a customer's question?
3. What does great customer support look like to you?
4. Tell me about a time you went above and beyond for a customer.

Technical / Role-Specific

L1: 5. Walk me through how you'd troubleshoot a customer who says "the app isn't working." 6. A customer asks for a feature that doesn't exist. How do you respond? 7. You have 5 tickets in your queue, all marked urgent. How do you prioritize?

L2: 8. A customer reports intermittent errors. Walk me through your debugging process. 9. How would you explain a technical concept (e.g., API rate limiting) to a non-technical customer? 10. Tell me about a time you identified a bug pattern and worked with engineering to fix it.

L3: 11. How do you measure success for a support team? Which metrics matter most? 12. One of your agents has declining CSAT scores. How do you handle it? 13. How would you reduce ticket volume by 20% without hurting customer satisfaction?

Scenario-Based

14. [Give a sample ticket] — "How would you respond to this?"
15. [Give a conflicting priority scenario] — "Customer wants X, policy says Y. What do you do?"

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Evaluation Scorecard

Rate each candidate 1-5 on the following:

Criteria	1 (Poor)	3 (Adequate)	5 (Excellent)	Score
Communication clarity	Confusing, verbose	Clear but generic	Clear, concise, empathetic
Problem-solving ability	Can't troubleshoot	Follows scripts	Creative, systematic approach
Empathy & customer focus	Dismissive	Professional but distant	Genuinely cares, reads emotions
Technical aptitude	Struggles with basics	Competent with tools	Quick learner, debugs independently
Cultural fit	Misaligned values	Neutral fit	Strong alignment, adds to culture
Growth potential	No ambition	Meets expectations	Wants to grow, lead, improve

Scoring guide:

• 25-30: Strong hire
• 20-24: Hire with minor reservations
• 15-19: Consider with development plan
• Below 15: Pass

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30-Day Onboarding Checklist

Week 1: Learn

• Complete product walkthrough with mentor
• Read all L1 knowledge base articles
• Shadow 20+ live tickets (observe only)
• Complete tool training (help desk, CRM, internal tools)
• Pass product knowledge quiz (80%+ to proceed)

Week 2: Practice

• Handle tickets with mentor reviewing every response before send
• Complete 30+ tickets with mentor oversight
• Review and discuss 5 "best response" examples
• Practice escalation workflow with mock scenarios

Week 3: Assisted Solo

• Handle tickets independently with spot-check reviews
• Maintain queue independently during business hours
• First 1:1 with manager — discuss comfort level and gaps
• Contribute first knowledge base article or improvement

Week 4: Independent

• Full independent queue management
• Meet response time SLAs independently
• CSAT score tracked (target: 3.5+ in first month)
• 30-day review with manager — confirm role fit and set 60-day goals