The opportunity
At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers.
What you'll do
Lead the specialists who run Escalation Services, running a structured: cadence — weekly 1:1s, team forums, monthly business reviews.
Serve as point of contact for Gusto's highest-visibility escalations: coordinating cross-functionally to drive resolution and providing clear, confident status updates to customer executives and internal stakeholders alike.
Step into the most sensitive and highest-risk cases yourself: executive-visible, compliance-related, or reputationally significant — working them alongside your team, not just above it.
Coach your team to operate as drivers, not passengers: owning the case end-to-end, communicating proactively, and holding the bar on white-glove service without waiting to be told what “good” looks like.
Own the rationale before you deliver any meaningful change: running a clear playbook every time: what's changing, why, what it means for the team, what resources are in place, how it gets owned.
Run a calibrated, evidence-based performance cycle that holds a high bar: across your team, with AI fluency treated as a non-negotiable expectation.
What they're looking for
- Develop high-potential specialists through structured stretch work and direct: sponsorship. Address underperformance early and directly, with the same care and clarity you bring to recognition.
- Redesign the end-to-end escalation operating model: intake, triage, severity tiering, and routing — so the system scales with volume and complexity instead of depending on individual heroics.
- Build and own root-cause analysis practices: turning individual escalations into trend data that identifies top drivers, systemic gaps, and opportunities to prevent recurrence upstream.
- Manage dependencies across cross-functional partners, leveraged teams, and: carrier partners — persuading and aligning to drive fixes at the source, not just the symptom.
