Advanced Utility Systems, a division of Harris; is seeking a Vice President of Customer Support who leads the customer support organization with full accountability for strategic direction, operational execution, service quality, customer retention, and cost-to-serve performance.
This executive owns the complete support lifecycle, from first-contact ticket resolution and after-hours incident response through quality assurance, root cause analysis, workforce planning, and the delivery of premium support services for customers who require elevated engagement.
The VP of Customer Support reports to the Senior Vice President of Operations and serves as a peer to the Executive Leadership Team. The role requires a leader who can translate company strategy into daily operating discipline, align support capacity with customer demand, and apply data, process improvement, and modern support technology to improve customer outcomes while reducing avoidable effort. The VP brings the voice of the customer into product development, advocates for software quality as a primary lever for improving customer satisfaction and reducing cost to serve, and partners with engineering to address recurring defects and systemic issues at their source.
A central expectation of the role is to lead the practical adoption of AI tools, technologies, and operating insights across Customer Support. The VP will identify high-value use cases for AI-enabled triage, knowledge retrieval, agent assistance, case summarization, deflection, quality monitoring, and workflow automation; establish the best practices required for safe and effective adoption; and measure impact through operational metrics, with particular emphasis on lowering cost to serve without compromising customer experience.
The successful candidate must bring deep knowledge of software support operations and direct experience managing cost through scalable delivery models, including nearshoring. This includes building the right mix of onshore, nearshore, and specialized technical capacity; maintaining accountability for quality and responsiveness across geographies; and using workforce design, process discipline, automation, and AI-assisted practices to improve efficiency at scale. The VP will establish a disciplined operating cadence built around service levels, response times, resolution times, backlog management, cost per ticket, and other key support performance indicators, with accountability for sustained operational improvement.
This role also carries responsibility for building a premium support service portfolio, including Customer Success Management, targeted at the portion of the customer base that requires and will invest in elevated service. Contribution to customer retention, renewal outcomes, and lead generation for the Sales organization are standing accountabilities of this team.
This remote role welcomes candidates anywhere in Canada and the US with a preference for Canada and Greater Toronto Area. Travel is required as needed, approximately 50%. Candidates must hold a current, valid passport and be legally eligible to travel internationally. This includes either passport based visa exemption or possession of any required travel visas for entry into Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean. Preference will be given to candidates who can work in EST timezone.
Salary:
150K – 185K
AI & Innovation Mindset
We are committed to leveraging emerging technologies to improve how we work, serve our customers, and drive business outcomes. The successful candidate will demonstrate curiosity and a willingness to actively adopt and leverage AI tools to improve workflows, solve problems, and increase efficiency. Candidates should be comfortable using AI enabled technologies, including copilots, chat based AI assistants, and automation tools, as part of their everyday work while maintaining appropriate judgment, security, and compliance standards.
What your impact will be:
- Oversee the full inbound support operation across all channels and customer tiers, define and enforce service level agreements, and manage escalation paths for complex or high-risk issues to ensure consistent, high-rate ticket closure.
- Lead the company’s after-hours support function and production incident response capability, including on-call coverage models, escalation runbooks, and customer communication protocols; drive post-incident reviews and ensure findings feed back into operational and product improvements in coordination with DevOpps and R&D leaders.
- Design and maintain a formal QA program for the support organization, define quality standards, implement ticket review processes, and use QA data to coach staff and identify training needs. Ensure quality and operational reviews incorporate service levels, response performance, resolution performance, ticket backlog health, and adherence to support processes.
- Analyze support data to identify recurring product defects and customer friction points, deliver structured root cause analysis to the VP of Research and Development on a regular cadence, and advocate for engineering investment in software quality improvements. Drive reduction of aged ticket backlog, ticket debt, and repeat customer incidents through formal problem management practices.
- Partner with the VP of Research and Development as a peer and standing voice of the customer in product planning, and quantify the relationship between software quality and support cost to prioritize defect resolution alongside feature development.
- Design, deliver, and continuously improve a premium support service portfolio for the segment of the customer base that requires elevated service, including Customer Success Management and dedicated technical account management programs with defined outcomes and measurable margin contribution.
- Monitor customer health signals across the support organization, identify at-risk accounts, coordinate retention efforts, and route customers showing expansion interest to the Sales team as qualified leads.
- Develop business cases for new premium service offerings and bring viable concepts to the leadership team with a proposed delivery model, pricing rationale, and go-to-market approach.
- Drive the adoption and maturation of AI-enabled support tools across the organization, including automated triage, intelligent deflection, agent co-pilot tools, and knowledge retrieval, with a focus on production deployment at scale and measurable reduction in cost per ticket. Establish expectations, reporting, and operational metrics that demonstrate utilization and business impact of AI-enabled support capabilities.
- Recruit, develop, and retain a high-performing team of support managers, technical support engineers, quality analysts, and customer success managers, and build a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.
- Report on support performance, service portfolio health, and retention outcomes to the SVP of Operations and senior leadership team, and contribute to operational strategy as a member of the leadership team. Maintain executive visibility into key support indicators including service levels, first response performance, resolution times, backlog trends, customer satisfaction, productivity, and cost-to-serve performance.
- Represent Advanced Utility Systems’ support capabilities externally with customers, at industry events, and in relevant utility sector and technology community conversations.
What we are looking for:
- 5 or more years of experience in customer support, customer operations, or technical services, with at least 3 years in a senior leadership role at a software company.
- Demonstrated track record of measurable operational improvement, including reductions in cost per ticket, improvements in CSAT or first contact resolution rate, or successful deployment of AI and automation tools in a production support environment.
- Experience leading operational transformation within a software support organization, including implementation of performance metrics, accountability frameworks, service level management, and continuous improvement programs.
- Experience building or scaling a paid premium support or Customer Success Management program, including service design, pricing, and delivery model development.
- Proven ability to partner with engineering or product organizations and drive software quality improvements through structured root cause analysis and cross-functional advocacy.
- Working knowledge of incident management and after-hours support operations, including on-call program design and post-incident review processes.
- Familiarity with modern AI support tooling and the operational requirements for deploying it effectively at scale.
- Analytical rigor with the ability to set targets grounded in data, diagnose issues at root cause, and communicate findings clearly to executive audiences.
- Experience managing teams in high-volume support environments with accountability for both operational metrics and customer retention outcomes.
- Executive presence with the ability to represent the support function credibly to customers and senior leadership.
What would make you stand out:
- Experience supporting software deployed in municipal utility, public sector, or other regulated infrastructure environments
- Familiarity with ITIL, HDI, or comparable service management frameworks
- Experience launching a net-new support service from concept to commercial delivery
- Background working in a company that has undergone AI-enabled support transformation
What we can offer:
- 3 weeks’ vacation and 5 personal days
- Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits starting from your first day of employment
- Employee stock ownership and RRSP/401k matching programs
- Lifestyle rewards
- Remote work and more!
About Advanced Utility Systems:
Advanced Utility Systems was established in 1997 to provide Customer Information and Billing solutions exclusively to municipal, investor owned and cooperative utilities. With more than 150 successful customer deployments across North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean, Advanced has the experience required to deliver a successful implementation of your mission critical CIS.
About Harris:
Harris is a leading provider of mission critical software to the public sector in North America. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Constellation Software Inc. (“CSI”, symbol CSU on the TSX), Harris has become the cornerstone for CSI’s investment in utility, local government, school districts, public safety, and healthcare software verticals. Our success has been realized through investments in our proprietary software and market expertise. This focus, combined with acquiring businesses that build upon or complement our offerings, has helped drive our success. Harris will continue to growth through reinvestment – both in the people and products that we offer and making investments in acquiring new businesses.
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