Assistant Manager, Payroll Client Services

As Associate Manager, Payroll Client Services, you will lead and develop a team supporting customers with payroll queries across an assigned country portfolio. You will help the team deliver accurate, timely and empathetic service while building the knowledge and capacity needed to support customers consistently.

You will balance day-to-day operational management with coaching, cross-functional collaboration and continuous improvement. Working with Country DRIs, specialists and partners across Remote, you will ensure priorities are clear, risks are visible and customer issues progress towards resolution.

What this job can offer you

• The opportunity to grow your people-management career in a global, remote-first environment.
• Ownership of team performance, development and day-to-day service delivery.
• The opportunity to shape how payroll support is delivered across a diverse country portfolio.
• The chance to work across Payroll Operations, Product and Customer Experience to improve outcomes for customers and employees.
• Space to build scalable processes, strengthen team capability and reduce recurring issues.

Key responsibilities

People leadership and development

• Lead, coach and support a team of Payroll Client Services specialists, creating a culture of ownership, collaboration and continuous learning.
• Hold regular one-to-ones, manage performance, provide actionable feedback and objective setting for their team along with individual career development.
• Identify capability gaps and coordinate onboarding, training, knowledge-sharing and cross-training.
• Support recruitment and onboarding as required, working with the hiring team and your manager.
• Build resilience by ensuring appropriate backup coverage and supporting succession planning.

Portfolio and service delivery

• Manage day-to-day service delivery across your assigned countries or regional portfolio.
• Set priorities and allocate capacity across dedicated and pooled coverage based on demand, customer needs and operational risk.
• Monitor service performance, including response and resolution times, backlog, reopened tickets, customer satisfaction and workload.
• Identify emerging risks, capacity constraints and trends, and put clear action plans in place.
• Partner with Country DRIs and Pooled-Country Leads to maintain country knowledge, operational readiness and effective escalation paths, with clear primary and backup coverage across the team.
• Hold Country DRIs and business stakeholders accountable for agreed actions and outcomes.
• Support the team in preparing for payroll, legislative, product, process and implementation changes.
• Ensure customers receive clear, accurate and timely communication, particularly during sensitive or high-impact issues.

Escalations and cross-functional collaboration

• Support the team with complex, sensitive or high-risk customer escalations, ensuring clear ownership and follow-through.
• Partner with Payroll Operations, Product, Engineering, Compliance and Customer Experience to resolve issues and address systemic risks.
• Communicate relevant risks, decisions and progress to stakeholders and escalate issues when additional support is needed.
• Engage directly with customers when necessary to support resolution and maintain trust.

Continuous improvement

• Use service data, customer feedback and team insight to identify recurring issues and improvement opportunities.
• Improve workflows, documentation, training and escalation processes to reduce friction and strengthen service quality.
• Lead or contribute to initiatives from problem definition through implementation and measurement.
• Share insights and effective practices across the wider PCST leadership team.

What you bring

Required

• Experience in payroll operations, payroll client services or a related customer-support environment, with a strong foundation in payroll.
• Experience leading people, or demonstrated ability to coach, develop and influence colleagues as an individual contributor.
• Ability to prioritise competing demands, manage operational risk and make sound decisions in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience using service metrics and reporting to identify trends, manage performance and guide improvements.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to coordinate complex issues across teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, including the ability to communicate clearly with customers and internal stakeholders.
• A collaborative, empathetic approach to leadership and customer service.
• Comfort working in a distributed environment and adapting to changing business needs.
• Experience using AI tools to draft responses, analyse service data or improve workflows and processes.

Preferred

• Experience managing a payroll support or customer-service team.
• Experience in German or French payroll.
• Conversational German or French
• Experience supporting payroll across multiple countries or regions.
• Familiarity with Zendesk or similar ticketing, reporting and knowledge-management tools.
• Experience developing training, coaching or onboarding programmes.
• Experience partnering with Payroll Operations, Product or other technical and operational teams.

How success is measured

Success in this role means the team delivers reliable customer support, understands its priorities and continues to develop its capability. Measures may include:

• Service performance against agreed team targets.
• Backlog health, workload balance and timely escalation follow-through.
• Team development, coaching and readiness.
• Strength of primary and backup coverage across the portfolio.
• Progress on agreed improvements and reduction of recurring issues.
• Quality of customer and cross-functional stakeholder communication.