Ethos Life—Customer Operations - Lead

Job description

Description: About Ethos Ethos is a leading life insurance technology company on a mission to protect families by democratizing access to life insurance and empowering agents at scale. With its robust three-sided technology platform, Ethos is transforming the life insurance experience for consumers, agents, and carriers alike. Ethos offers instant, accessible products and a seamless online process that requires no medical exams and just a few health questions; it eliminates traditional barriers, making it easier than ever for everyone to protect their families. Ethos is redefining how life insurance is bought, sold, and underwritten. About the Role: As the Customer Operations Lead at Ethos, you will lead a team of up to 10 -12 Associates, ensuring they deliver an exceptional experience to new and existing customers and the insurance agents who refer business to Ethos. You will combine hands-on customer support leadership with team management, coaching, and process improvement to drive team performance and customer satisfaction.This role requires strong people-leadership skills alongside the deep product, systems, and communication expertise expected of frontline associates.Creating a positive customer and agent experience is critical to Ethos's success in the life insurance industry, and this role is central to scaling that experience through a high-performing team. Duties and Responsibilities: Team Leadership & People Management - Directly manage, coach, and develop a team of up to 10 Customer Operations Associates - Conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development conversations - Set individual and team goals aligned with broader Customer Operations objectives, and track progress against defined service levels (SLAs) - Manage team scheduling, staffing coverage, and workload distribution across email, live chat, SMS, and phone channels - Recruit, onboard, and train new team members; build and maintain onboarding/training materials - Foster a positive, accountable, and high-performance team culture Operational Excellence - Ensure the team maintains accuracy in all communications with customers/agents on policy /agent comp related queries - Own team-level quality assurance — audit interactions, provide feedback, and drive continuous improvement in service quality - Monitor team metrics (response times, resolution rates, CSAT/agent satisfaction, SLA adherence) and report performance to management Process & Cross-Functional Collaboration - Identify opportunities for process improvements across the team's functions and lead implementation of agreed-upon solutions - Partner with other cross-functional teams to resolve systemic issues and represent the voice of the customer/agent - Develop and maintain team knowledge base, playbooks, and SOPs to ensure consistency and scalability - Support hiring, capacity planning, and resource forecasting as the team grows Subject Matter Expertise - Maintain and deepen expert-level understanding of Ethos products, consumer policy systems, and partner agent systems - Serve as the team's go-to resource for complex queries/scenarios Qualifications and Skills: - 3-5+ years of experience in customer support, customer success, or operations, including at least 1-2 years in a team lead, supervisor, or people management role - Proven experience managing and developing a team of 5+ direct reports - Experience in life insurance or a related industry strongly preferred - Bachelor's degree preferred - Proficiency with Salesforce or equivalent support/help desk software; experience with reporting/dashboarding tools a plus - Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret team performance data and translate it into action - Excellent coaching, feedback delivery, and conflict-resolution skills - Adaptable and resilient, able to lead a team through change while maintaining quality and morale - Excellent phone presence, written communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills #LI-Onsite #LI-MS1 Don’t meet every single requirement? If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. At Ethos we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace. We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Pursuant to the SF Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider employment for qualified applicants with arrests and conviction records. To learn more about what information we collect and how it may be used, please refer to our California Candidate Privacy Notice. Recruitment Notice: Please be aware of recruitment scams. All legitimate communication from our team will only come from email addresses ending in @ethos.com or @getethos.com. We will never ask for payment, banking details, or sensitive personal information during the hiring process. If you are contacted by someone claiming to represent us from a different email address, please treat it as fraudulent.