Job Description: Support Lead
Title: Support Lead
Reports to: Operations Manager
Direct reports: Solutions Expert Team
Function: Production Operations
Works with: Imaging Lead, Solution Experts Team, and other departments as needed
Experience requirement: Prior experience in a dental or dental imaging environment, with a track record of leading other people's work.
1. Purpose of the Role
The Support Lead owns the day. Coverage, service assignment distribution, real-time quality, improving team's capabilities and the first point of internal handoff for every member of it. The Operations Manager owns the systems and standards the team works to; the Support Lead makes sure the day runs to them, and steps in early when it is at risk.
This is a working lead. The Support Lead carries a reduced individual caseload and takes live work every day, so that coaching and quality review come from someone who is visibly capable of the work themselves.
2. Core Accountabilities
TEAM LEADERSHIP
- Leads, coaches, and develops the team through a daily lineup, weekly one to ones, and same-day coaching tied to specific work, keeping dated observations that support grade and performance decisions.
- Owns the team's capacity, and develops a named stand-in able to run the day.
ACTIVITY DISTRIBUTION
- Distributes and rebalances daily volume across the team against eligibility, current load, and development need, so no member sits idle while a queue ages.
CALENDAR AND COVERAGE
- Owns the coverage calendar so every operating hour has a named owner, planning around time off, holidays, and volume peaks rather than improvising.
- Escalates a genuine coverage gap to the Operations Manager as soon as it is known.
FIRST POINT OF INTERNAL HANDOFF
- Is the first person a Solutions Expert goes to when stuck, and answers, redirects to the right specialist, or takes the case.
- Enforces the handoff standard every time and owns any handoff that stalls until pickup is confirmed.
REAL TIME QUALITY
- Reviews live work during the shift rather than reconstructing it afterward, and holds the service commitments without exception.
- Supplies the Operations Manager with dated, evidenced observations on individual performance.
SHIFT ACCOUNTABILITY
- Opens and closes the day, and ensures no case crosses a day boundary without a named owner and a documented next step.
3. Scope and Authority
The Support Lead reports to the Operations Manager and runs the day-to-day operation of the support team. The boundaries below define what the Lead decides independently and what the Operations Manager owns.
The Support Lead decides:
- Daily assignment of work and real-time rebalancing across the team.
- Coverage within the existing roster, including planned time off and holiday cover.
- Whether to answer a question, redirect it to a specialist, or take the case personally.
- Routine client goodwill exceptions, escalating material ones to the Operations Manager.
The Support Lead recommends, and the Operations Manager decides:
- Advancement and performance outcomes, supported by documented observations from the Lead.
- Hiring into the team, following interviews and a recommendation from the Lead.
- Standard operating procedure content, with the Lead flagging gaps and drafting from live cases.
- Formal performance action, which the Lead supports and attends but does not lead.
This role does not:
- Set clinical policy, pricing, or service level commitments.
- Carry a full individual caseload.
- Serve as the escalation destination of last resort; the Lead builds team capability rather than absorbing every difficult case.
4. What Success Looks Like
A formal scorecard will be defined jointly with the Operations Manager in the first sixty days rather than imposed in advance. Directionally, success looks like:
- A day that runs to standard whether or not this person is in it, because a stand-in was developed on purpose.
- Members advancing grades under this Lead, with recommendations that hold up because the evidence was already there.
- Service commitments met without exception. Callbacks inside twenty four hours, acknowledgments inside four business hours, no client repeating themselves.
- Handoffs that close. Pickup confirmed, nothing sitting unowned.
- Upward feedback scores from the team that move over consecutive quarters.
- No case crossing a day boundary without a named owner and a next step.
5. QualificationsREQUIRED
- Understands the world of dental imaging, with prior experience working in a dental or imaging environment.
- Demonstrated ability to produce solutions, create policies and procedures, and drive production outcomes.
- Two or more years in a support or service role with evidence of coordinating other people's work.
- Judgment about when to answer, when to hand off, and when to take a case personally.
- Shares what they know without being asked.
PREFERRED
- Prior experience in customer service and solutions.
- Experience training or onboarding a new team member.
