How To Become A Customer Support Manager: What It Is and Career Path

What is a customer support manager and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted Expert

Andrew Gilliam

A Customer Support Manager, also known as a customer care manager, is in charge of supervising and improving the customer support department's day-to-day activities and work. They are also meant to create relationships with clients, create organic growth, document conversations, and hire and train new customer support agents.

This is quite a diverse role, as the Manager often works under and reports to the head of Customer Support and various Sales department employees. An expert in this position has a good understanding of many skills, including, but not limited to social media, digital marketing, analytics, sales, and organizational and communication skills. This is also an industry in which one must continue to learn about the job on the job through workshops and new research.

Typically, a potential candidate for this position will need to have at least a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Public Relations, or a similar field, or its equivalent in terms of customer care and retail experience.

What general advice would you give to a Customer Support Manager?

Andrew Gilliam

Customer Experience innovator and change agent,, Informa Tech

Searching for jobs is always intimidating, and this year provides many new reasons to be discouraged. However, based on research HDI conducted in July, 57% of support organizations are creating new positions or continuing to fill vacancies. Furthermore, 82% of organizations say it is likely they will continue working from home long-term. Many companies are opening their minds to hiring candidates who don't live near their offices. That's great news for anyone entering the job market!
When looking for work, the best thing an applicant can do is to think like a hiring manager. They're filling a position to meet their needs, not yours, so consider the context in which they're hiring. Right now, businesses are searching for applicants who can contribute to remote teams and support customers remotely. Experience with unified communications, mobile, cloud, and remote support technologies are in high demand. Additionally, organizations are changing how they work at a rapid pace. Understanding the fundamentals of knowledge management, enterprise service management, incident and problem management, and organizational communications will help candidates speak directly to prospective employers' challenges. Having a dedicated space and internet connectivity to enable working from home and a proven ability to work independently or remotely helps dissuade managers' fears of hiring remote candidates.
There are plenty of ways to build these skills and competencies, even without direct work experience. HDI offers numerous resources, many of them free, to expand your knowledge, including articles, webinars, toolkits, research, and virtual classroom training. Dedicating yourself to independent learning, experimenting in a home-lab, and networking at virtual industry events are fantastic ways to demonstrate your job-readiness.

ScoreCustomer Support ManagerUS Average

Salary

7.2

Avg. Salary $91,598

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

8.0

Growth Rate 10%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

4.3

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.67%

Asian 6.13%

Black or African American 9.59%

Hispanic or Latino 17.01%

Unknown 4.87%

White 61.74%

Gender

female 43.14%

male 56.86%

Age - 48

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 48

Stress Level

8.0

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

8.7

Complexity Level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

6.2

Work Life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a customer support manager

Explore customer support manager education requirements

Most common customer support manager degrees

Bachelor's

64.6 %

Associate

15.6 %

Master's

10.6 %

Start to develop specific customer support manager skills

Skills	Percentages
Project Management	9.23%
CRM	5.11%
Technical Support	5.08%
Salesforce	4.00%
Account Management	3.75%

Complete relevant customer support manager training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New customer support managers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a customer support manager based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real customer support manager resumes.

Research customer support manager duties and responsibilities

Manage global on-boarding program for new and existing SaaS customers.
Design, develop and implement internal applications to manage the SaaS and CDN platforms.
Manage one-on-one relationship with larger customers and sales reps. set up and test EDI transactions for new customers.
Lead the companywide roll-out of a new ticketing system, Zendesk, from evaluation and purchase through implementation.

Prepare your customer support manager resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your customer support manager resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a customer support manager resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Customer Support Manager Resume templates

Build a professional Customer Support Manager resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your Customer Support Manager resume.