Manager - Platform Support

About us

Exotel is one of Southeast Asias largest cloud telephony companies. Our aim is to change the way enterprises look at customer communication. We build the best in class communication products that power the companies of today and tomorrow. Our technology enables customer communication for our clients such as Uber, Ola, Go-Jek, Redbus, Flipkart, Quikr, Practo,Lazada, Redmart, to name a few.

We are a young company with humble beginnings in 2011 that grew from a 3 member team to 150+ employees in 2018. Our technology has connected 85 million people, powered 1.2 billion customer calls, powered 3.2 billion voice API calls, 3.2 billion business SMS powered. Read our 2018 growth story here.

Role Overview

• At Exotel, L1 Support is the frontline of technical trust.
• As Manager L1 Customer Support, you will lead a large, high-impact team responsible for first-line technical support across Exotels product portfolio, including Call Centre solutions, Platform APIs, and AI products.
• In addition to running reliable day-to-day operations, this role is expected to actively adopt and embed AI into L1 ways of working improving response quality, speed, consistency, and learning at scale.
• This is a role for a leader who combines technical credibility, operational rigor, and a practical mindset toward AI-driven productivity.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Team Leadership & Scale Operations

• Lead, coach, and manage a large L1 support team of 3040 engineers
• Build strong team leads and shift leaders
• Ensure consistent coverage, quality, and morale across shifts
• Foster a culture of ownership, calm execution, and continuous learning.

2. First-Line Technical Support Across Products

• Own L1 support delivery across:
• Call Centre and contact center products
• CPaaS / Platform APIs
• AI-driven solutions
• Ensure L1 teams perform technical triage, not just ticket intake
• Reduce avoidable escalations through accurate diagnosis and first-touch resolution.

3. AI Adoption in L1 Operations (Core Expectation)

• Drive adoption of AI-assisted tools for:
• Ticket summarization and classification
• Suggested responses and troubleshooting guidance
• Knowledge base discovery and updates
• Use AI to improve:
• Response consistency
• Debugging accuracy
• Onboarding and ramp-up time for new hires
• Encourage teams to use AI responsibly to augment judgment, not replace it
• Partner with Product and Engineering to provide feedback on AI tools used in support.

4. Technical Triage & Escalation Excellence

• Ensure L1 teams:
• Understand call flows, configurations, and system dependencies
• Analyze logs, dashboards, and metrics to isolate issues
• Differentiate between customer configuration issues, platform issues, and telco issues
• Enforce high-quality escalation to L2 / Engineering with clear technical context and evidence.

5. Operational Discipline & SLA Ownership

• Own L1 performance metrics:
• First Response Time (FRT)
• SLA adherence
• Ticket backlog and aging
• Reopen, mis-triage, and deflection rates
• Ensure SOP adherence, shift handovers, and documentation standards
• Act as an escalation point during high-severity or customer-impacting incidents

6. Customer Communication & Incident Handling

• Ensure customer communication is:
• Technically accurate
• Calm and transparent
• Clear on next steps and ownership
• Coach teams to handle critical incidents with confidence and clarity.

7. Continuous Improvement & Knowledge Building

• Identify recurring issues and trends using ticket data and AI-driven insights
• Improve runbooks, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides
• Close feedback loops with Product, Engineering, and L2 teams to improve reliability.

Core Competencies Required to Succeed:

1. People Leadership at Scale

• Proven experience managing large frontline or operations teams
• Ability to coach, motivate, and hold teams accountable with empathy
• Builds a culture of trust, learning, and execution

2. Technical Competence for Frontline Debugging (Critical)

• Strong understanding of telephony and contact center fundamentals:
• Call flows, IVR, routing, queues
• SIP basics and common failure scenarios
• Solid familiarity with SaaS / platform systems:
• APIs, webhooks, callbacks
• Configuration-driven workflows
• Ability to:
• Read and interpret logs, call records, and dashboards
• Correlate signals across systems to identify likely root causes
• Comfortable guiding structured triage without risky production changes.

3. AI Fluency & Applied Judgment (Mandatory)

• Comfortable using AI tools to:
• Analyze and summarize tickets
• Suggest troubleshooting paths
• Improve response quality and speed
• Ability to teach teams how to use AI responsibly and effectively
• Understands AI limitations and ensures human validation for customer-impacting decisions
• Curious, hands-on mindset toward new AI capabilities

4. Structured Troubleshooting & Decision-Making

• Strong diagnostic approach with repeatable problem-solving methods
• Knows when to resolve, workaround, or escalate
• Makes evidence-based decisions under pressure

5. Customer-First Communication

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to translate technical analysis into clear customer updates
• Maintains professionalism during high-pressure situations.

6. Operational Rigor & Ownership

• Strong understanding of SLAs, metrics, and 24x7 operations
• Takes ownership beyond ticket closure
• Drives predictable, high-quality execution.

Experience & Background (Indicative)

• 812+ years in Customer Support / Operations roles
• Experience managing large L1 or frontline technical support teams
• Exposure to CPaaS, telecom, SaaS platforms, or high-availability systems
• Experience working with or rolling out AI tools in support operations is a strong plus