Here at Front, we’re already witnessing AI’s impact on support jobs. Our AI-driven self-service support handles 58% of our customer inquiries. But we couldn’t have gotten there without building a robust knowledge base and optimizing our operations — all of which required investing in new staff roles.
Here are three roles I created on my team to support AI implementation. Spoiler alert: they’re all in support operations 👀
Want to add similar roles to your team? Download the job description bundle.
1. Support Program Specialist: The brains behind knowledge management
The lifeblood of any support function is in its knowledge content. Your knowledge base is the number-one source of truth that your customers and staff rely on. Turns out, it’s also what AI depends on, too! An up-to-date knowledge base is the primary driver for accurate AI-powered responses in your self-service channels.
Knowledge management is often neglected in support orgs, but I promise you that this is one of the best long-term investments you could make for your team. Karen Nguyen, our Senior Support Program Specialist, is responsible for maintaining our knowledge base and ensuring our customer-facing and internal teams have access to accurate information about our product and processes.
Fronteer spotlight: Karen Nguyen, Senior Support Program Specialist
Q&A
How did your support career evolve to where it is today?
I had a lot of prior knowledge base experience from previous jobs so I started working on Front’s Help Center pretty soon after I started. Following 10 months of supporting the queue as a customer service rep, I officially transitioned into my support program specialist role to be fully dedicated to maintaining our Help Center and internal documentation.
What’s your favorite thing about your current role?
Being a voracious note-taker, I love the documentation process end-to-end. I love seeing how just writing something down helps others save time and understand things better. I also love collaborating with other teams whenever we launch new products.
Any advice to frontline support agents on taking the next steps in their careers?
Volunteer for projects: This is a great mentorship opportunity to gain new skills or sharpen existing ones. It’s a great way to get exposed to the work and confirm if it’s something you want to continue in the future!
Be proactive: If you have an idea for a project, don’t be afraid to start it! For example, if you notice gaps in knowledge content or think the team would benefit from a tutorial, draft it yourself and share it as an internal resource.
Talk to your team: If knowledge management interests you, tell your manager or teammates! They can always pass along opportunities that align with your interests and vouch for you.
2. Support Operations Analyst: The investigative trendsetter
Next, I needed a role that analyzed the customer experience and reported on support’s business impact. Enter Lemuel Chan, our support operations analyst. Lemuel helps us:
Surface customer trends to inform our support strategy
Formalize and improve our feedback loop with engineering, product, and design
Understand where we could streamline processes and reduce costs
For example, with AI handling more of the simple, transactional customer inquiries, Lemuel digs into what AI couldn’t answer, troubleshoots root causes, and tests solutions for refining the AI-powered experience.
Fronteer spotlight: Lemuel Chan, Support Operations Analyst
Q&A
How did you get into support operations?
After four years of troubleshooting experience in customer support, I became adept at triaging issues, identifying customer trends, and improving internal operational processes. I observed workflow inefficiencies and areas of friction with our customers, which required that I spend more time outside the queue to address these problems.
What’s your favorite thing about your new role?
The most exhilarating part of my role is analyzing support data to uncover customer trends and provide actionable insights to our Engineering, Product, and Design leaders. Understanding why customers reach out to Support is a continuous learning process, offering ample opportunities to enhance the customer experience through quantitative and qualitative data analysis.
Any advice to frontline support agents on taking the next steps in their careers?
The time spent in the support queue builds a foundation of essential skills — from clear communication and problem-solving to customer empathy and technical translation — all highly valuable across various career paths.
Volunteer for projects outside your core responsibilities, document patterns and trends you discover, and proactively share insights with other departments. View each support interaction as an opportunity to build expertise to fuel your professional journey and increase your business impact.
3. Support Operations Developer: The efficiency builder
As our team’s support workflows became more complex with AI, our technical infrastructure and automated workflows needed to evolve. Hiring a support operations developer meant we could futureproof for customer service enhancements and team efficiency as we scaled.
For example, as AI-powered customer support shifts escalation workflows, our support operations developer, Jason Dugdale, builds internal tools to cut down manual steps and helps the support team deliver better, faster customer service.
Fronteer spotlight: Jason Dugdale, Support Operations Developer
Q&A
How did your support career evolve to where it is today?
Throughout my time as a support engineer, I’ve always focused on getting to the root of why a customer had to get in touch with support. Sometimes part of the solution is to build internal tools and workflows that allow faster and more effective data lookups of mutations — which is what my role as a support operations developer is wholly focused on.
What’s your favorite thing about your role?
I love seeing the impact of my work on my team. It’s pretty rewarding to see the team celebrate when a new tool or workflow cuts a complex, hour-long process down to one click.
Any advice to frontline support agents on taking the next steps in their careers?
You can become an invaluable team member by constantly pushing for optimization and automation. AI tools are here, and you should explore them. Look for opportunities to automate repetitive tasks. For example, is there something ten customers ask for every day? Maybe it’s time to build a tool to help them. Lastly, figure out what direction you want to grow in and choose the one that excites you most.
Humans are here to stay
Support jobs are far from disappearing; rather, they’re entering their most fulfilling era yet. The reality is that humans are indispensable. There will always be customers who prefer to be helped by a human, and humans still need to bridge the service gaps AI can’t yet fill. Customer support is in a unique period of time when humans and AI can work closer together to create exceptional customer experiences.
Thinking of growing your team? I’m giving away the job descriptions (JD) for the support operation roles mentioned above. Feel free to use them as a template and tailor them to your business needs. Download the JD bundle.
Written by Kenji Hayward