[Hiring] Customer Escalations Lead @Reserv

Role Description

The Customer Escalations Lead is a player/coach role. The Lead carries a caseload of high-priority and complex escalations, manages the Customer Escalations Advisors on the team, and owns how the team works: its processes, tools, reporting and feedback to Claims. This is not a pure people management role. The Lead is a contributor on the team, with management experience, and stays close to the work.

The role is mid-level and highly visible. It suits someone with a claims adjusting background, similar to our current Advisors, a background in project management, process improvement, and someone who has already led or coached others and is ready to take on formal responsibility for a team. The Lead works across various internal teams and helps shape the playbook for a highly-impactful customer facing team.

What you'll do

• Escalation Triage & Resolution
  • Carry a caseload of in-flight escalations raised by customers, Customer Success, or other internal teams, acting as a service recovery advisor.
  • Investigate escalations with Claims Adjusters and Claims leadership to assess severity, assign ownership and make sure each issue is resolved.
  • Serve as a direct point of contact for client stakeholders during escalations, setting expectations and communicating status.
  • Apply claims domain expertise and root cause analysis to find out whether an issue stemmed from people, process, technology, or misaligned expectations.
  • Provide regular updates to Account Managers and/or customers for customer-facing communication.
  • Act as the first point of escalation for the Advisors, and take on the most sensitive or complex issues when needed.
• Team Leadership & Coaching
  • Manage and coach the Customer Escalations Advisors through regular one-on-ones, feedback, goal setting, and development planning.
  • Drive performance reviews and performance management, in partnership with the Global VP of Customer Success.
  • Assign escalations and balance workload across the team, including the Lead's own caseload.
  • Set and reinforce a consistent standard for triage, client communication, documentation and follow-through.
  • Provide coverage when an Advisor is out, and contribute to hiring and onboarding as the team grows.
• Process Improvement & Prevention
  • Design and implement streamlined processes within the team and across teams, including intake, triage, handoffs, and ownership of open issues.
  • Lead the weekly escalation review to identify patterns, systemic issues and improvement opportunities.
  • Recommend and help implement changes to workflows and claims handling based on escalation data.
  • Create and maintain playbooks, escalation criteria, SOPs and internal documentation that reduce future escalations.
  • Document issue types, frequency, and resolution paths to support learning across the team.
• Tools & Efficiency
  • Evaluate and implement tools that drive efficiency for the team, such as issue tracking, dashboards, templates, and automation.
  • Develop deep expertise on internal tools and drive adoption amongst key stakeholders.
  • Keep escalation data complete and consistent so it can be used for reporting and analysis.
  • Partner with internal teams to surface recurring system issues, misconfigurations, and automation problems.
• Reporting & Visibility
  • Implement regular internal reporting on escalations.
  • Support external reporting to clients in partnership with Account Managers.
  • Report on escalation trends and metrics to Claims Leadership, Account Management, Executive Leadership, and other internal stakeholders to give the organization clear visibility into issues and potential solutions.
  • Brief senior leadership on escalation drivers, trends and the status of fixes.
• Feedback Cycle to Claims
  • Facilitate a regular feedback cycle to Claims based on escalation patterns.
  • Collaborate with Claims teams to improve workflows and claims handling hygiene, and to surface coaching opportunities.
  • Initiate and lead internal projects to drive solution options to execution.
  • Track follow-through on the feedback shared, and confirm that changes reduce repeat escalations.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Build working relationships with Claims, Account Management, Claims Ops, Data, Product, and other internal teams, as necessary.
  • Operate within a line-of-business-aligned team structure and leverage domain knowledge on the team to assess issue context quickly and suggest relevant resolution paths.
• Success Metrics
  • Time to Acknowledge and Time to Resolve escalations.
  • Volume and frequency of escalations per account or adjuster team.
  • Escalation reopen and repeat rate.
  • Number of systemic issues identified and resolved.
  • Satisfaction of internal stakeholders (Customer Success, Claims Ops, Product).
  • Internal and external reports delivered on schedule.
  • Adoption of new processes and tools by the team.
  • Feedback items shared with Claims, and the share of them resolved.
  • Development progress and engagement of the Advisors.

Qualifications

• Have claims adjusting experience in Auto, Property, Liability LOBs, or a comparable escalations background, similar to our current Advisors (5+ years is typical for the Advisor role).
• Have some experience managing or leading others, such as a team lead, supervisor or formal mentor role, and want to grow as a people leader.
• Have worked directly with clients and are comfortable managing difficult conversations with client stakeholders.
• Are comfortable digging deep into customer escalations and can carry your own caseload while leading a team.
• Have significant experience with root cause analysis, identifying issue patterns and developing practical solutions that were put into practice.
• Have implemented process improvements or tools that made a team more efficient.
• Can build clear, regular reporting for internal teams and clients, and can brief senior leaders concisely.
• Have strong verbal and written communication skills and a calm, methodical approach to complex problems.
• Work well across Claims, Operations, Product and Customer teams.
• Are comfortable in a fast-growing startup environment where roles evolve and you help shape the playbook.

Benefits

• Generous health-insurance package with nationwide coverage, vision, & dental.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer matching.
• Competitive PTO policy – we want our employees fresh, healthy, happy, and energized!
• Generous family leave policy after 8 months of continuous work.
• Work from anywhere to facilitate your work life balance.
• Apple laptop, large second monitor, and other quality-of-life equipment you may want. Technology is something that should make your life easier, not harder!