About S4labour
S4labour is the workforce management platform for hospitality. We help pubs, restaurants, and hotel groups across the UK schedule their teams, manage time & attendance, run HR processes, and pay their people accurately and on time. Our customers trade seven days a week — often through the evenings and weekends — which means the service we provide has to match the rhythm of their business.
About the role
We're investing in the maturity of our customer support function and are looking for a Technical Supportt Analyst to help shape how we deliver service at S4labour. This is a hands-on, individual contributor role sitting within Customer Success, working closely with our Product and Engineering teams.
You'll be at the centre of our first and secondd line support model — working the queue alongside the team on first line, resolving complex issues yourself, strengthening the processes and tooling that our frontline agents rely on, and owning the quality of escalation and communication between support, product, and engineering. You won't line-manage anyone, but you will be a trusted voice in the team whose input shapes how we work.
This is a genuine opportunity to help build our support function. The person in this role will have real influence over incident and problem management practices, escalation pathways, knowledge management, and service reporting.
We're a small team and that matters. There's nowhere to hide, but equally nothing sitting between you and the work that counts — your decisions land quickly, your impact is visible across the business, and the scope of the role will grow as fast as you do. For the right person this is a first step, not a destination: as the support function scales, so does the opportunity to lead it.
What you'll do
First Line Support - Work the front line alongside the support team — picking up tickets, triaging inbound contacts, and resolving customer issues directly within SLA.
- Handle inbound calls, emails, and chat from hospitality customers operating live sites, prioritising by business impact.
- Own your own ticket queue end to end, escalating to third line or Engineering, only where genuinely required.
- Use hands-on first-line experience to spot friction in workflows, macros, and knowledge content, and fix it at source.
Incident & Problem Management - Own the lifecycle of significant incidents - from triage and coordination through to customer communication, resolution, and post-incident review.
- Take responsibility for customer-facing communication during incidents, ensuring clarity on impact, progress and expected outcomes, even when information is incomplete.
- Establish and run a lightweight problem management practice: identify recurring issues, drive root-cause analysis with Engineering, and track problem records through to permanent fix.
- Surface recurring customer pain points and systemic issues, ensuring they are clearly understood and prioritised by Product and Engineering, based on real customer impact.
- Maintain clear severity definitions, SLAs, and escalation thresholds that work for a hospitality customer base trading evenings and weekends.
Escalation & Cross-Functional Communication - Act as the primary bridge between Customer Success, Product, and Engineering for support escalations - making sure the right people are engaged quickly, with the right context, and that customers are kept informed throughout.
- Translate customer-reported issues into structured, actionable insights for Product and Engineering, and translate technical updates into clear, confident, and empathetic customer-facing communication.
- Own the end-to-end communication narrative for high-impact and long-running issues, ensuring updates are proactive, consistent, and aligned across all touchpoints.
- Define and embed escalation pathways from first line through to Engineering, including the criteria, evidence, and handover standards required at each step.
- Act as the central coordination point during complex issues, maintaining a single source of truth and avoiding fragmented or conflicting internal and external communication.
- Improve the quality, consistency, and effectiveness of customer-facing communication through templates, standards, and coaching.
Service Function Development - Partner with the Head of Customer Success to shape the structure, roles and ways of working across the support team.
- Improve our service management tooling (Zendesk currently)- ticket workflows, forms, automations, macros, reporting, and integrations with engineering tooling.
- Build and maintain a knowledge base that reduces repeat contacts and accelerates first-line resolution.
- Produce meaningful service performance reporting (volume, SLA attainment, backlog, escalation rates, recurring themes) and use it to drive continuous improvement.
Team Enablement - Coach support agents on investigation technique, troubleshooting, tooling, and customer communication — raising the ceiling of what can be resolved without escalation.
- Contribute to onboarding and ongoing training for support team members.
- Champion an ITIL-aligned but pragmatic approach to service management that fits a small, fast-moving SaaS business.
What does a good candidate look like
Essential criteria - Demonstrable experience in a support, service desk, or ITSM role. We're open on sector - experience in a software or SaaS environment is useful, but not essential.
- Strong, working knowledge of ITIL practices - particularly Incident Management and Problem Management - and the judgement to apply them pragmatically rather than ceremonially.
- Direct experience in customer-facing roles, with the communication skills to handle difficult conversations with customers, engineers, and senior stakeholders.
- Proven track record of improving support processes - not just operating within them. Examples of escalation frameworks, SLA design, knowledge management, or tooling improvements you've delivered.
- Experience working closely with Product and Engineering teams on escalations, bug triage, and root-cause investigation.
- Hands-on experience with an enterprise ITSM or support platform (Zendesk, Jira Service Management, Freshservice, ServiceNow, or similar).
- Strong analytical skills - comfortable with ticket data, SLA reporting, and turning trends into action.
- Eligible to work in the UK and available to participate in a weekend support rota.
Desirable criteria - ITIL 4 Foundation certification (or higher). Strong working knowledge without certification is acceptable; we will support certification for the right candidate.
- Experience supporting a software or SaaS product.
- Experience with Zendesk administration and configuration.
- Prior experience supporting a hospitality customer base, or familiarity with the operational rhythm of multi-site hospitality businesses.
- Experience with HR, payroll, or workforce management software - or a background supporting products where data accuracy and regulatory compliance matter.
- Experience shaping a support function during a period of growth or maturation. - Familiarity with engineering collaboration tooling (Jira, Linear, GitHub, Slack) and how support should interface with it.
- Demonstrable experience using SQL tools to investigate or provide context for issues.
- Confident usage of AI tools to improve a support function or provide a better service.
What success looks like
First 3 months - Embedded within Customer Success, Product, and Engineering; trusted point of contact for escalations.
- Clear picture of current support performance, tooling, and pain points, with a prioritised improvement roadmap agreed with the Head of Customer Success.
- Escalation and major incident pathways documented and in use.
First 6 months - Incident management practice operating consistently, with measurable improvement in time-to-engage and quality of customer communication.
- Problem management practice established; first cohort of recurring issues identified and being actioned with Engineering.
- Zendesk (or equivalent) reshaped to support the new ways of working; baseline service reporting in place.
First 12 months - Demonstrable reduction in escalation volume and SLA breaches; measurable uplift in first-line resolution rate.
- Mature knowledge base in active use by customers and agents.
- Support function recognised internally as a strategic partner to Product and Engineering, not just a ticket queue.
What we offer
- Hybrid working — Banbury office with flexibility to work remotely.
- Additional compensation for weekend support rota participation.
- Salary sacrifice pension scheme.
- Life assurance scheme.
- Private healthcare.
- 25 days + bank holidays base.
- Support for ITIL certification and ongoing professional development.
- The opportunity to shape the service management function of a growing UK SaaS business from the ground up.
- A small, close-knit team where your work is seen - and real scope for the role to grow with you as the function matures.
Pay: £35,000.00-£40,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Casual dress
- Company events
- Company pension
- Enhanced maternity leave
- Enhanced paternity leave
- Free parking
- On-site parking
- Private medical insurance
- Work from home
Ability to commute/relocate:
- Banbury, Oxfordshire: reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting work (preferred)
Application question(s):
- Will you now, or at any point in the future, require S4labour to sponsor a UK work visa in order to continue working for us?
Education:
- Certificate of Higher Education (preferred)
Experience:
- Support: 2 years (required)
Work authorisation:
- United Kingdom (required)
Work Location: Hybrid remote in Banbury
