Senior Manager, Customer Support

Dockwa; Newport (RI); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Dockwa in Newport, RI is seeking a senior Head of Customer Operations to lead and scale our support function as we add customers and new products. You will own response times, build deflection systems, and manage a seven-day-a-week seasonal cycle, coordinating with Product and Implementation to drive action from insights.

The role requires 6+ years in customer support and 3+ years leading teams, with hands-on experience in HubSpot, Intercom, Jira, and AI-driven deflection.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in customer support, with 3+ years leading teams
• Experience with seasonal or high-velocity environments
• Experience deploying AI deflection in support

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a five-person support team and scheduling.
• Own SLA, routing, knowledge base, and AI deflection layer.
• Manage high-severity incidents and coordinate customer communications.
• Design staffing for May–September season across seven days.
• Partner with Product and Implementation to convert repeat tickets into product improvements.

Skills

Customer support leadership

People management

SLA management

Incident management

Tools

HubSpot Service Hub

Intercom

Jira

Job description

About Dockwa

Dockwa is reshaping the $230+ billion marine industry. After 12 years of building trust with marina operators and boaters, we have achieved something rare: category-defining position in a fragmented industry ready for transformation.

About Dockwa

Dockwa is reshaping the $230+ billion marine industry. After 12 years of building trust with marina operators and boaters, we have achieved something rare: category-defining position in a fragmented industry ready for transformation.

The marina industry is experiencing a generational shift. Private equity consolidation is accelerating. Operators face pressure to run marinas like real businesses, not lifestyle assets. This creates the opportunity to become the default operating layer for an industry that has never had one.

About The Role

We need a strong leader, doer and systems thinker to run Dockwa's customer support function, one of the most highly cited aspects of Dockwa that keep our customers thriving on the platform. This is not a pure management role - we are on track to add 40% more customers and several complex new products on a staffing plan that does not grow at the same rate. As such, we need the leader of this team to shore up our Support people, processes, and product to absorb customer and complexity growth while delivering the same excellent customer experience the boating community has come to expect.

This role reports to the VP of Customer Operations and will manage a team of five reps covering our diverse customer base SMB marina operators, enterprise-level corporations, and on-the-go boaters.

• 45% Team leadership. Manage, coach, and develop the support team. Own the weekly cadence, the quality bar, coverage and scheduling through a season that runs seven days a week from May to September, hiring, and performance.
• 35% Operating systems and deflection. Own tiering, routing, SLAs, the knowledge base, the AI answer layer, macros, and reporting. Your job is to make the next 500 marinas cost less to support than the last 500.
• 20% Incidents, escalations, and the seams. Run critical incidents end to end. Own the escalation path so it does not land on the VP. Carry what tickets are telling us into Product and Implementation with enough specificity that they act on it.

You will be in the queue, but you will not be in the queue most of the time. Any manager at Dockwa spending more than 60% of their week on individual contributor work has a system problem to fix, and we hold this seat to that.

Core Responsibilities

• Own response and resolution time against SLA across email, phone, and chat, in season and out, including a paid premium tier with a tighter commitment.
• Build the deflection system: knowledge base, self-serve, macros, and the AI answer layer that already handles first-line chat. Move the ratio of tickets to marinas, and be able to say which piece of the work moved it.
• Run critical incidents as the incident owner. Make the severity call, own customer comms and timing, and run the follow-up that stops the repeat.
• Design coverage and staffing through a May-to-September season that runs seven days a week, without carrying peak cost through the winter.
• Build Tier 2 SME coverage across ten product modules, including the areas that have no owner today: Telescope and Insights, Service, and payment disputes.
• Stand up boater support as a real function rather than overflow, ahead of Dockwa+ growth and Trip Insurance claims volume.
• Build your own reporting. There is no support ops analyst and there will not be one in 2027.
• Partner with Product and Implementation on the patterns underneath repeat tickets, and make the case with evidence rather than complaint volume.
• Absorb support for customers arriving through acquisitions, including the call on whether an inherited queue consolidates into ours.
• Partner with customer success and customer marketing in managing self-serve customers using 1 to many engagement tactics

Required

What we're looking for

• 6+ years in customer support, with 3+ years managing support teams of five or more, including hiring, scheduling, performance, and comp conversations.
• You have moved a ticket-per-customer or deflection number and can give the before, the after, and the mechanism.
• Hands-on with a modern support stack: HubSpot Service Hub, Intercom, Jira, (or similar stack) and an AI answer layer. Experience deploying AI deflection.
• You have owned an SLA in a seasonal or spiky business and staffed for the peak without carrying peak cost all year.
• You have run critical incidents as the person in charge of the room, not the person reporting into it.
• You build your own reporting.

Preferred

• Vertical SaaS with embedded payments and a fragmented SMB operator base.
• You have run support for two different audiences at once. A business operator who loses money when the product is down, and a consumer with a booking problem; we need different things from the same team.
• You have folded another company's support queue and customers into yours after an acquisition.
• Marketplace or two-sided support, operator plus consumer, with the mess that sits between them.

We will teach you marinas, boating, and our product. We are not going to teach you how to run a team or how to build a support system.