Customer Support Lead

NCSoft; Irvine (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

HellaGoodAudio is seeking a Customer Support Lead to own our live-service support operations across multiple titles. This senior IC will manage external CS vendor partners, enforce SLAs, and drive knowledge management and escalation handling to ensure high-quality player experiences.

Based in Irvine, CA, this on-site role requires strong data literacy, vendor relationship skills, and ability to coordinate with cross-functional teams and Korea-based development partners.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in customer support operations, with live-service gaming exposure.
• Experience managing third-party CS vendors or BPO partners and owning SLAs.
• Proven ability to manage multiple game titles or product lines simultaneously.
• Experience owning knowledge base development and agent-facing documentation.
• Strong data literacy and ability to present support metrics to leadership.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, and vendor relationship management.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end support experience across titles, ensuring quality regardless of vendor.
• Monitor ticket volume, queue health, and response times; surface trends.
• Manage player escalations, including VIP cases, with urgency and care.
• Serve as internal escalation path for complex or precedent-setting cases.
• Build and maintain a centralized knowledge base and guidelines for vendor agents.
• Collaborate with Community, Live Ops, and Product teams to align on priorities and issues.

Skills

Customer support operations

Vendor management

Cross-title support

Data literacy

Zendesk/Salesforce/Freshdesk

Tools

Zendesk

Salesforce Service Cloud

Freshdesk

Job description

Customer Support Lead

Location: Irvine, CA (On-site) | Type: Full-Time

ROLE OVERVIEW

We are seeking a Customer Support Lead to serve as our internal owner of customer support operations across multiple live-service titles.

This is a senior individual contributor role responsible for managing and holding accountable our external CS vendor partners, ensuring consistent, high-quality support experiences for players across at least three active game titles. You will own the full support operation from SLA oversight and vendor performance to escalation handling, knowledge management, and player-facing support quality.

You are a seasoned CS professional who has operated in live-service gaming environments, understands the pace and complexity of managing player support at scale, and knows how to get results through vendor partners. You are organized, data-driven, and a clear communicator who can represent support needs both internally to leadership and externally to vendor partners.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Vendor Management & Accountability

• Serve as the primary NC America point of contact for all CS vendor partners, managing relationships across multiple titles.
• Define, track, and enforce SLAs, KPIs, and quality benchmarks; hold vendors accountable to agreed performance standards.
• Conduct regular vendor reviews, provide structured feedback, and drive continuous improvement across support operations.
• Identify and elevate vendor performance risks proactively, partnering with internal stakeholders to resolve gaps.

Player Support Operations

• Own the end-to-end support experience for players across titles, ensuring quality and consistency regardless of which vendor handles the queue.
• Monitor ticket volume, queue health, and response times; surface trends and flag emerging issues before they become player-facing crises.
• Manage player escalations, including VIP and high-visibility cases, ensuring they are handled with appropriate urgency and care.
• Serve as the internal escalation path when vendor teams need guidance on complex, sensitive, or precedent-setting support cases.

Knowledge Base & Support Infrastructure

• Build and maintain a centralized knowledge base, macro library, and response guidelines used by vendor agents across all titles.
• Partner with game teams to keep support content current with patches, live events, and known issues.
• Develop onboarding and training resources for vendor agents to ensure consistent quality and brand voice across all support interactions.
• Evaluate and recommend tooling, workflows, and process improvements that scale across a multi-title operation.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with Community, Live Operations, and Product teams to align on player issues, known bugs, and support priorities.
• Translate support data and player feedback into actionable insights for internal stakeholders and leadership.
• Coordinate occasionally with NC’s development teams in Korea to share support trends, localization needs, or title-specific escalations.
• Represent the voice of the player in internal discussions, advocating for support quality as a core part of the player experience.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• 5+ years of experience in customer support operations, with a significant portion in live-service gaming environments.
• Demonstrated experience managing third-party CS vendors or BPO partners, including SLA ownership and performance accountability.
• Proven ability to operate across multiple game titles or product lines simultaneously without sacrificing quality.
• Experience owning or significantly contributing to knowledge base development, macro creation, and agent-facing documentation.
• Strong data literacy, comfortable pulling, reading, and presenting support metrics to identify trends and drive decisions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to manage vendor relationships and present to internal leadership.
• Familiarity with CS platforms such as Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud, Freshdesk, or similar tools.

Nice to Have

• Experience working at a game publisher with a developer relationship separate from the publishing entity.
• Background coordinating with international or Korean-based development teams.
• Familiarity with player support for FPS, MMO, or other online multiplayer titles.
• Experience building or scaling a CS operation.

WHO YOU ARE

• You know how to get things done through partners you don't directly manage, and you hold them to a high standard without making it adversarial.
• You can juggle multiple titles at once and still catch the details that matter: a spike in a ticket category, a macro that's sending the wrong message, a vendor agent who needs retraining.
• You think in systems and you're always looking for the process improvement, the documentation gap, or the workflow that would prevent the next escalation.
• You can translate messy support data into a clear story for leadership and a clear action plan for vendors.
• You care about the player experience, not just the metrics, and you know the difference between hitting an SLA and actually solving a player's problem.

LOCATION & WORK ENVIRONMENT

This position is based full-time at our Irvine, CA office. Candidates must be willing to work on-site. Some flexibility may be required for coordination with our development team in Seoul, South Korea (KST timezone).

Irvine, CA pay range

$100,000—$120,000 USD