What does a support lead do?
A support lead is typically in charge of overseeing the performance of a technical support team, ensuring efficiency and customer satisfaction. Their responsibilities revolve around assessing the performance of the workforce, resolving complex issues, identifying customer needs and sales opportunities, and training new team members. They may also perform calls and correspondence, respond to inquiries, and resolve issues promptly. Furthermore, as a support lead, it is essential to perform clerical tasks such as preparing progress reports, managing schedules, and maintaining records of transactions.
Support lead responsibilities
Here are examples of responsibilities from real support lead resumes:
- Manage chemical and gas specifications, ensuring they are in line with ISO requirements.
- Lead a team of services professionals to provide store operations and point-of-sale (POS) hardware and software solutions.
- Develop and manage a unify desktop/notebook PC image.
- Manage ticket queues and prioritize escalations base on establish SLA's and resource availability.
- Manage data mapping from legacy CRM systems, including creating data mapping documentation in preparation for migration to Salesforce.com.
- Develop and maintain UNIX / Linux shell scripts to ensure smooth system operations and to facilitate critical reporting to security teams.
- Implement POS solution at all sites to include software and hardware.
- Provide support for hardware and software changes during weekly maintenance windows.
- Document ability to read, count accurately and do simple math calculations.
- Create enriched plans using music, math, and dance to teach standards.
- Maintain and enhance the automated monitoring platform (Perl, Java, SQL).
- Create, propose, and implement project processes and guidelines aligning it with ITIL standards.
- Create a web portal for monitoring of all the web services host on different Linux servers.
- Create KPI s that drive operations using fundamentals and frameworks of ITIL, HDI, and PMI
- Design and develop a tool which will extract logs from production Linux environments and create a report.
Support lead skills and personality traits
We calculated that 12% of Support Leads are proficient in Customer Service, Cash Management, and POS. They’re also known for soft skills such as Customer-service skills, Listening skills, and Problem-solving skills.
We break down the percentage of Support Leads that have these skills listed on their resume here:
- Customer Service, 12%
Assisted Customer Service Representatives with daily activities including escalated calls, time management, quality support, and goal expectations.
- Cash Management, 12%
Cash Management System & General Ledger.
- POS, 7%
Worked as a project lead for 22-member team managing the Walmart POS L2 incident, problem, and change management support.
- Sales Floor, 7%
Assist store leadership in ensuring that the sales floor is visually appealing, effectively merchandised and easy to shop.
- Payroll, 5%
Maintained accuracy with payroll documentation.
- Infrastructure, 5%
Provided guidance and support of multiple infrastructure and database installations to external clients while providing release management oversight.
Most support leads use their skills in "customer service," "cash management," and "pos" to do their jobs. You can find more detail on essential support lead responsibilities here:
Customer-service skills. The most essential soft skill for a support lead to carry out their responsibilities is customer-service skills. This skill is important for the role because "computer support specialists must be patient and sympathetic." Additionally, a support lead resume shows how their duties depend on customer-service skills: "facilitated inter-departmental communication to effectively provide customer supports. "
Listening skills. Another soft skill that's essential for fulfilling support lead duties is listening skills. The role rewards competence in this skill because "support workers must be able to understand the problems that their customers are describing and know when to ask questions to clarify the situation." According to a support lead resume, here's how support leads can utilize listening skills in their job responsibilities: "coordinated between associates and nice listening systems administrator to troubleshoot issues and provide solutions. "
Problem-solving skills. This is an important skill for support leads to perform their duties. For an example of how support lead responsibilities depend on this skill, consider that "support workers must identify both simple and complex computer problems, analyze them, and solve them." This excerpt from a resume also shows how vital it is to everyday roles and responsibilities of a support lead: "provide support and guidance for frontline crew support agents with resolutions and decision making for customer support calls with customers. ".
Speaking skills. A big part of what support leads do relies on "speaking skills." You can see how essential it is to support lead responsibilities because "support workers must describe the solutions to computer problems in a way that a nontechnical person can understand." Here's an example of how this skill is used from a resume that represents typical support lead tasks: "analyzed customer support trends and presented findings for improvement opportunities to upper management and product developers. "
Writing skills. Another crucial skill for a support lead to carry out their responsibilities is "writing skills." A big part of what support leads relies on this skill, since "strong writing skills are useful for preparing instructions and email responses for employees and customers, as well as for real-time web chat interactions." How this skill relates to support lead duties can be seen in an example from a support lead resume snippet: "provided technical writing, project management, managing outsourced agents and training to accomplish goal of developing a support infrastructure. "
The three companies that hire the most support leads are:
- Five Below949 support leads jobs
- Kohl's40 support leads jobs
- Bank of America37 support leads jobs
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Compare different support leads
Support lead vs. Supervisor, technical support
A supervisor of technical support oversees the technical support operations in a company, ensuring efficiency and client satisfaction. It is their duty to set guidelines and timelines, monitor the daily operations of staff, coordinate with managers and engineers, delegate tasks among teams, and liaise with potential business partners. There are also instances where they assist clients through calls and correspondence, assisting them with their concerns and inquiries. Moreover, a technical support supervisor must lead teams while enforcing the company's standards and policies.
While similarities exist, there are also some differences between support leads and supervisor, technical support. For instance, support lead responsibilities require skills such as "cash management," "sales floor," "payroll," and "infrastructure." Whereas a supervisor, technical support is skilled in "direct reports," "performance reviews," "pcs," and "performance appraisals." This is part of what separates the two careers.
Supervisors, technical support tend to reach similar levels of education than support leads. In fact, supervisors, technical support are 3.9% less likely to graduate with a Master's Degree and 0.4% less likely to have a Doctoral Degree.Support lead vs. Technical support senior engineer
A technical support senior engineer is primarily in charge of resolving complicated issues and concerns through calls and correspondence, ensuring efficiency and client satisfaction. Their responsibilities include coordinating with customer support staff to gather data, studying records of initial assessments, liaising with clients to identify their needs, utilizing their expertise to develop solutions, and maintaining records of all transactions. Furthermore, as a technical support senior engineer, it is essential to lead and serve as a mentor to others, all while implementing the company's policies and regulations.
In addition to the difference in salary, there are some other key differences worth noting. For example, support lead responsibilities are more likely to require skills like "cash management," "pos," "sales floor," and "payroll." Meanwhile, a technical support senior engineer has duties that require skills in areas such as "azure," "tcp ip," "ruby," and "vmware." These differences highlight just how different the day-to-day in each role looks.
In general, technical support senior engineers achieve similar levels of education than support leads. They're 0.2% less likely to obtain a Master's Degree while being 0.4% less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.What technology do you think will become more important and prevalent for support leads in the next 3-5 years?
Babak Beheshti Ph.D.
Dean, Professor, New York Institute of Technology
-We will be witnessing a more widespread commercial deployment of 5G in 2020. With the implementation of the Standalone 5G devices based on the 3gpp release 16, we should be seeing the more robust mobile broadband deployment of 5G, wider availability of 5G smartphones, and a push towards an all 5G Network in select urban areas around the world.
-Significant growth in AI-based technologies, from face recognition and voice recognition to business intelligence and market predictions. As machines and deep learning algorithms get integrated into many applications, many industries will undergo substantial changes. AI systems will continue to interact with our phones; cars will interpret and analyze their surroundings and intelligently drive themselves. Online vendors will monitor our browsing habits, and Google decides what kind of search results to give us, based on who it thinks we are.
Support lead vs. Application support analyst
An application support analyst is responsible for responding to and resolving customer issues about smartphone or computer applications. They do a variety of applications ranging from banking software and mobile games, and they usually deal with a great number of clients daily. It is also their task to report to a next level member of staff, such as an information technology (IT) manager or a senior systems analyst. Moreover, they spend their time working in an office setting and can be employed by software companies, game developers, technology creators, and other types of organizations.
Some important key differences between the two careers include a few of the skills necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of each. Some examples from support lead resumes include skills like "cash management," "pos," "sales floor," and "math," whereas an application support analyst is more likely to list skills in "data analysis," "project management," "business processes," and "training materials. "
When it comes to education, application support analysts tend to earn similar degree levels compared to support leads. In fact, they're 0.6% more likely to earn a Master's Degree, and 0.5% more likely to graduate with a Doctoral Degree.Support lead vs. Technical support engineer
A technical support engineer is responsible for responding to customer issues, providing immediate resolutions to their system issues through remote assistance. Technical support engineers must have strong knowledge of software and hardware applications to diagnose system defects and process troubleshooting. They also assist customers with the installation of programs and updates to improve system performance, escalating high-level concerns to appropriate internal technology teams. A technical support engineer must have strong command with technical systems, as well as excellent communication and time-management skills to understand clients' issues while documenting procedures.
Even though a few skill sets overlap between support leads and technical support engineers, there are some differences that are important to note. For one, a support lead might have more use for skills like "cash management," "pos," "sales floor," and "payroll." Meanwhile, some responsibilities of technical support engineers require skills like "database," "tcp ip," "crm," and "post sales. "
Technical support engineers reach similar levels of education compared to support leads, in general. The difference is that they're 1.2% more likely to earn a Master's Degree, and 0.4% less likely to graduate with a Doctoral Degree.Types of support lead
Updated January 8, 2025
