At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead a global team to enhance customer support and drive commercial growth.
- Company: Join Wise, a tech company revolutionising how the world manages money.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, diverse culture, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Be part of an inclusive team that values diversity and empowers every member.
- Why this job: Make a real impact by transforming customer support into a strategic advantage.
- Qualifications: Proven leadership in customer success and a blend of commercial and technical skills.
The predicted salary is between 80000 - 100000 £ per year.
hackajob is collaborating with Wise to connect them with exceptional professionals for this role.
Wise is a global technology company, building the best way to move and manage the world's money. Min fees. Max ease. Full speed. Whether people and businesses are sending money to another country, spending abroad, or making and receiving international payments, Wise is on a mission to make their lives easier and save them money. As part of our team, you will be helping us create an entirely new network for the world's money. For everyone, everywhere.
The Head of Specialised Support is a high-impact senior leadership role responsible for the operational excellence, technical stability, and commercial growth of Wise's most critical customer segments: Enterprise Banking Partners and High-Value Business Customers. This role leads a global, three-pronged organisation - comprising Account servicing, Enterprise Support, and Technical Integration Success - to deliver a seamless, world-class experience for some of Wise's biggest clients. The successful candidate will transition the department from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive, data-driven engine, implementing professional Workforce Management (WFM) tools, industry-leading resolution times and sub-15-minute incident response protocols. Balancing sales-through-service commercial acumen with deep technical rigour, this leader ensures that our most complex global partnerships are supported by a scalable, resilient, and compliant operational framework. This is not a traditional support role; it is a hybrid of commercial strategy, technical engineering, and operational logistics. You will be responsible for providing our customers with the highest quality of dedicated support, whilst unlocking growth via product upsell and customised solutions. You will ensure that Wise's support infrastructure is a competitive, value-adding advantage for our customers rather than a cost centre for the business. You must be as comfortable discussing complex issues from a technical support perspective as you are discussing revenue retention with the Executive team.
The Three Pillars of Specialised Support
- Account Specialisation: High-touch, sales-through-service experts focused on relationship health, retention, and revenue expansion for our most valuable individual and business users.
- Enterprise Support: Dedicated operational experts ensuring consistent SLA adherence, regulatory compliance, and seamless onboarding for our large-scale Enterprise partners.
- Integration Success (IS): The technical support engine of the department, focused on integration health, proactive monitoring and alerting for technical issues, and rapid incident resolution for complex API and platform connections.
Key Responsibilities
- Account Specialisation & Commercial Acumen
- Value-Led Revenue Growth: Transform the specialist team into a commercial engine by coaching insight-led upsells and proactive expansion.
- Service Architecture: Design multi-tiered engagement models (High-Touch to Tech-Touch) that optimize the cost-to-serve while triggering customer growth milestones.
- Segment Ownership: Align best-practice sharing and capacity leverage across the global team to ensure Wise's highest-value customers are managed with consistency.
- Commercial Mindset: Move the team beyond troubleshooting to high-stakes value communication, making the Wise product indispensable to the customer's daily operations.
- Enterprise Support Operations
- Industry-leading Operational Excellence: Drive KPIs including First Contact Resolution (FCR), Quality, Speed of Reaction, and SLA adherence across globally distributed teams.
- Regulatory Governance: Ensure appropriate structures are in place for any regulatory requirements dictated by the partner's market, ensuring adherence before go-live.
- 12-Month Strategic Planning: Develop a collaborative resource strategy aligned with Enterprise long-term goals and forecasts, pulling resources into line and managing expectations along the journey.
- Financial Stewardship: Deeply understand the cost-to-serve and cost-to-scale. You will establish the cost basis necessary to support the broader Enterprise pricing strategy.
- Resource allocation: Build the hiring and headcount plans for the team, aligned with sales and delivery targets, enabling the team to maintain SLAs in line with growth of the partner portfolio.
- Integration Success & Technical Excellence
- Incident Management Mastery: Evolve incident management processes from manual environments (Slack) to unified tools (Zendesk) to consistently achieve a strict first response SLA.
- Proactive Monitoring & Alerting: Set up and oversee dashboards that enable the team to proactively identify incidents (unplanned downtime, traffic drops, error rates) before they impact the partner.
- Incident Handling & Runbooks: Define clear SOPs and partner incident runbooks for the team to follow when handling incidents; these should enable the team to assess the impact of incidents on partners, tag relevant internal teams to support find a solution, put together post-mortems and follow up on actions to be completed.
- Tooling & Data Granularity: Unify fragmented workflows (Zendesk, Service Desk, Slack) and utilise data insights to manage future demand through deflection, documentation, and training.
- Leadership & Relationship Management
- Global People Leadership: Coach and lead a globally based team of Team Leaders and Specialists across APAC, EMEA, and AMERS.
- Stakeholder Alignment: Operate independently while knowing when to cut across Operations, Product, WFM, Engineering, and QA to influence and align with stakeholders.
- Advanced Capacity Management: Collaborate with CS Operations to implement professional Workforce Management (WFM) methodologies, moving away from manual scheduling to ensure consistent delivery.
- Resilience: Maintain the emotional and operational resilience to return to the 'drawing board' repeatedly in the pursuit of delivery excellence.
- Influence: Negotiate and influence internal and external stakeholders, knowing how to build and manage relationships with senior leaders across Wise and Enterprise Partners.
Qualifications Requirements
- Proven Leadership: Experience leading leaders on a global scale within Customer Success, Technical Support, Account Management.
- Three-Pronged Expertise: A rare blend of commercial mindset (sales-through-service), operational rigour (SLA/WFM), and technical aptitude (Incident management/APIs).
- Data Fluency: Deeply comfortable with data; using CRM health signals and technical metrics to guide a team under pressure is second nature.
- Communication: Outstanding skills to explain complex technical or commercial concepts to both customers and internal leadership.
- Global Mobility: Prepared to travel for extended periods and adapt to global time zones to support a 24/7 operation.
For everyone, everywhere. We're people building money without borders — without judgement or prejudice, too. We believe teams are strongest when they are diverse, equitable and inclusive. We're proud to have a truly international team, and we celebrate our differences. Inclusive teams help us live our values and make sure every Wiser feels respected, empowered to contribute towards our mission and able to progress in their careers.
If you want to find out more about what it's like to work at Wise visit Wise.Jobs.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Head of Specialised Support in Bristol
✨Get to Know the Company Culture
Before jumping into applications, it’s super helpful to understand the vibe at Wise. Check out their social media, read reviews on sites like Glassdoor, and see how they engage with customers. It'll give you clues on their values and help tailor your conversation during interviews.
✨Join Customer Support Communities
Dive into online communities like those on Reddit or LinkedIn where customer support pros hang out. Participating in discussions or asking questions can make you more visible to potential recruiters and help you learn about job openings at companies like Wise before they even post them.
✨Attend Job Fairs or Networking Events
Look out for local job fairs or events specifically for customer support roles. This is your chance to meet hiring managers face-to-face, and you might even get the opportunity to interview on the spot!
✨Show Off Your Skills with Customer Interactions
In the customer support world, showcasing your communication skills is key. Consider creating a short video introducing yourself or even doing a mock call to showcase your abilities. It's a memorable way to stand out, especially if you can share this during your interview process!
We think you need these skills to ace Head of Specialised Support in Bristol
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show Off Your Communication Skills:In customer support, clear communication is key. Make sure your CV highlights any experience you've had in customer-facing roles and your ability to resolve issues. Don't shy away from including specific examples of how you've gone above and beyond to help customers – this really shows your potential in the role.
Tailor Your Cover Letter to Wise:Your cover letter is your chance to shine! Tell us why you want to work at Wise specifically. Mention any unique aspects of our company that resonate with you and how your skills can enhance our customer support. This personal touch will set your application apart from the rest!
Highlight Any Relevant Tools or Tech Skills:If you've used customer support software like Zendesk or Freshdesk or have experience with CRM systems, make sure to mention these in your application. Being familiar with industry-standard tools can be a big plus for us when we’re reviewing applications, as it shows you can hit the ground running!
Demonstrate Your Problem-Solving Skills:Customer support roles often require a knack for problem-solving. In your application, share examples of past experiences where you've tackled tough situations or resolved conflicts effectively. This will give us a good sense of how you handle challenges—an essential skill for success at Wise!
How to prepare for a job interview at Wise
✨Show Off Your People Skills
In customer support, it's all about communicating effectively. Prepare to share instances from your past experiences where you handled difficult customers or resolved conflicts. We want to hear how you empathised and found the best solutions, so think of specific examples to back up your stories!
✨Know the Tools of the Trade
Familiarise yourself with common customer support tools like Zendesk or Freshdesk, and make sure to review how you’ve used any similar systems in the past. During the interview, being able to discuss your hands-on experience with software or ticketing systems can really set you apart from the competition, so don’t skip this prep!
✨Show Genuine Enthusiasm
As this is a full-time role, employers want someone who isn’t just looking for any job, but wants to grow within customer support. Make sure to express your enthusiasm for helping customers and your desire to develop your skills. Show them why you're passionate about this field!
✨Practice Common Scenarios
Be prepared for role-playing scenarios where you might have to reassess a solution with a frustrated customer or explain a complex process in simple terms. Practising these common scenarios can help us feel more confident and demonstrate our practical skills effectively during the interview.
