2016Customer SupportSalary StudyBrought to you by your friends at Help Scout and Support Driven

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Thanks for checking out the second annual customer support salary study!

We’ve conducted an anonymous survey that asks support professionals

around the world what they earn in regard to their gender, local cost of living,

company size, seniority, skills and experience.

In 2016, 203 people responded to the survey — more than three times the

participation from the previous year’s survey. Of those, 109 were men, 91

were women, and 3 declined to identify as male or female. You can see the

raw data here.*

The average salary for a support

professional in 2016 is $68,540,

up $2,666 (4%) from last

year’s average of $65,874.**

Women’s median pay was

$65,000; men’s median pay was

$68,800. This discouraging link

between salary and gender is

present throughout the results,

regardless of other factors such

as company size or location.

Annual Salary DataWhat are customer support pros making in 2016?

The best ways to maximize your spending power as a support professional:

Work remotely where there is a lower cost of living.

Have some technical skills under your belt.

Think of support as an experience that pays more over time.

*Data is free for individual use; please contact Support Driven for corporate use.

** All monetary amounts throughout are USD.

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$68,540

$65,874

THE AVERAGE SALARY FOR A SUPPORT PROFESSIONAL IN 2016:

$68,540UP $2,666 (4%) FROM 2015

THE AVERAGE SALARY FOR A SUPPORTPROFESSIONAL IN 2015:

$65,874

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Based on this year’s survey results, the best ways to maximize your spending power as a support professional are:

• Work remotely in an inexpensive city

• Have some technical skills

• Stick with it — it pays more over time.

We should note that a sample size of 203 is problematically small, and that

we refrained from making too many comparisons between this year and

last year’s data due to 2015’s even more problematic sample size of 60. This

resource, therefore, should be referenced in conjunction with other sources —

in other words, don’t base your support team’s salaries or compare your own

salary apples-to-apples using this information alone!

We’d also like to acknowledge that this survey is a work in progress

— some questions are added and removed each year, based on what’s

interesting and relevant to participants. Future surveys may give people

options to self-identify in these ways so the data will reflect the rich

diversity of our support community.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the majority of responses came from a

community that cares deeply about customer support. These are customer

care people who excel at what they do and view support as a career.

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More and more companies are embracing the

science that shows “customer experience is

a major driver of future revenue,” and support

professionals have ever-greater choices when it

comes to employers who will value their talents and

compensate accordingly.

If you’re staffing a call center for companies who

view customer service as a necessary evil, this

is not the resource for you. If, on the other hand,

you’re curious how salaries compare among support

professionals working for companies that view high-

quality support as essential to their success, read on!

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The results of this year’s survey unfortunately corroborate what women

around the world and across other industries experience. While it doesn’t

exactly qualify as good news, we can at least say that the gender wage gap in

support is not quite as wide as it is across other industries.

Men Make More...but the wage gap isn’t as wide in support.

$160k

$120k

$40k

$80k

Minimum 25th Percentile Median Mean 75th percentile Maximum

Male Female

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THE MEDIAN SALARY IS SOMEWHAT ENCOURAGING:

Women make 94.4% of what men makein support.

Among lower-paid support professionals(the 25th percentile), women earn more than men.

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Looking at the mean, 75th percentile, and max salaries, however, men tend

to earn significantly more. At the 75th percentile, women make 90% of what

men do, and at the max, it’s down to 81.25% of men’s salaries. The mean is

prone to being skewed by “outliers” — in this case, men’s salaries at the top

ranges are pulling that mean up.

There’s still work to be done equalizing pay in support as in other professions,

and we can and absolutely should do better.

That work includes real-world applications such as:

• Acknowledging that gender and race wage gaps still exist

• Offering benefits packages that support all parents with paid leave

• Encouraging women to negotiate salaries while working to end the

structural sexism inherent in the perception of women’s negotiation efforts

• Sharing salary and diversity data publicly (Buffer handles this

extraordinarily well)

• Removing bias from hiring processes, and using tools like Textio to

address unconscious bias in job postings

These practical applications are in everyone’s best interest, since we know

diverse teams perform better.

THE MAIN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GENDERS WHEN IT COMES TO SALARY OCCUR AT THE HIGHER LEVELS.

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PEOPLE INTERESTED IN SUPPORT, AND SUPPORT PROFESSIONALS LOOKING FOR THEIR NEXT OPPORTUNITY, SHOULD CONTINUE TO SEE BETTER OPTIONS WHERE THESE THINGS ARE CONCERNED, AND CAN SEEK EMPLOYMENT AT DIVERSITY-CONSCIOUS ORGANIZATIONS.

Other axes of diversity (such as race/ethnicity and LGBTQ identity) impact how people are perceived and paid.

• People of color (especially women of color) earn less.

• People perceived as LGBTQ (especially transgender women of color) earn less.

In future surveys we’d like to give people theoption to self-identify in these ways, so the datareflects the rich diversity of our support community.

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The chart below is fairly obvious — the longer you work in support the

more you’re likely to make!

Experience Pays...especially for men.

YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

$90k

1-2 3-5 6+

$50k

$60k

$70k

$80k

$10k

$20k

$30k

$40k

Male Female

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Another non-surprise: the top earners are mostly men. More men than

women responded to this year’s survey — we do see a number of entry-level

women coming into support, but the number of women decrease as years

of experience increase. Likewise, women’s salaries outperform men’s at the

entry level, but fall behind with more years of experience.

We do know, however, that women are more widely represented in support

than in other fields related to SaaS and ecommerce, such as engineering.

Help Scout’s support team, for example, is 80% female (the only man

serves as the team lead) but as of this writing, women make up only 27% of

everyone at the company. These statistics seems fairly consistent, at least

anecdotally, across the field.

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This shows pay by gender and self-identified technical abilities. Those

who self-identify as “technical” are overwhelmingly male.

Men are technical; women are ‘kinda’ technical...or at least identify that way.

$160k

No

$120k

$40k

$80k

Kinda Yes

TECHNICAL?

Male Female Declined

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The ambiguity of the self-reporting is a little tricky — what does “technical”

mean? How technical is “kinda” technical? At least in the U.S., few truly

“technical” workers (engineers, data scientists, etc.) make less than $80,000

per year. Does this data show that these responses overwhelmingly came

from outside the U.S., or that respondents interpreted “technical” as “I do

some coding in my support job”?

Our hunch is the latter, accompanied by the research that shows women

tend to downplay their technical abilities, while men exaggerate theirs. It’s

true you’ll find more men than women in technical fields, but between a man

and a woman doing the same work, would a man identify as technical while a

woman identifies as kinda technical?

WHAT’S FANTASTIC AND HEARTENING ABOUT THIS FINDING IS HOW ACTIONABLE IT IS:

Technical skillspay, even fornon-engineers doing support. So take the initiative to learn something!IN ADDITION TO HELPING YOU EARN MORE, IT ALSO MEANS YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE TO WAIT ON SOMEONE ELSE TO GET YOUR WORK DONE.

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The below graph suggests the highest- and lowest-paid workers

are in-office.

Remote workersThe middle of the pack

$160k

$120k

$40k

$80k

In-Office Remote

WORK LOCATION

Male Female Declined

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Remote workers dominate the middle salary range, but low-paid workers

(at call centers, perhaps?) and high-paid workers (at well-funded startups in

high-cost-of-living areas, maybe?) are expected to show up at the office.

While remote work isn’t for everyone, its increasing popularity and decent

support salaries are great news for any support professionals who enjoy the

freedom of working from wherever they choose.

2016

66.6%

2015

203RESPONDENTS

60RESPONDENTS

81REMOTE WORKERS

20REMOTE WORKERS

122CO-LOCATED

40CO-LOCATED

33.3%

40% 60%

Of the 2016 survey’s 203 respondents 81 are remote workers, and 122 are co-located — about a 40/60 split.

While last year’s sample size was quite a bit smaller (20 remote workers and 40 co-located workers responded to the survey), the split in 2015 was 33.3% remote to 66.6% co-located. Remote work appears to be on the rise in support, as it is across other industries in the U.S. and around the world.

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This section will answer questions about how much companies should pay

their support teams, as well as the percentile in which your salary falls.

Salaries appear to be more varied at co-located companies, but on average,

workers who show up at the office tend to earn a little more. The median

salary for co-located workers is $65,220 and $65,000 for remote workers.

While it’s true co-located workers earn slightly higher salaries, it’s also true

there are more lower-paid workers at co-located companies than there are

at remote companies. At the 25th percentile remote workers earn more:

$55,000 per year, compared to $50,000 per year for co-located workers.

At the 75th percentile it reverses: co-located workers earn $85,000 while

remote workers earn $77,000.

Salary DistributionWhere does your salary fall?

$160k

$120k

$40k

$80k

Minimum 25th Percentile Median Mean 75th percentile Maximum

Remote In-Office

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The pie charts represent salary distribution in each cost of living category.

When compared to cost of living, the study appears to show that remote

employees who live in mid-range cost of living areas and work for companies

based in high-cost, high-salary areas end up making quite a bit more.

What are the salary ranges for people living in low,medium, and high cost of living areas?

Cost of Living

Low

(e.g. Tallinn, Warsaw, Bucharest, Santiago)

(e.g. Nashville, Vienna, Austin, Tel Aviv)

(e.g. Hong Kong, Paris, Sydney, New York)

Medium High

< $50k 50k - 100k 100k+

SALARY

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WHAT THIS DATA CAN TELL US FOR SURE IS THAT IT’S POSSIBLE TO LIVE WHERE THE COST OF LIVING IS LOW WHILE DRAWING A BIG-CITY SALARY.

Gettingpaid like aNew Yorker, whereveryou live inthe world?

Yes please!

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On behalf of Support Driven and Help Scout, thanks for checking out this

resource. We hope you found it useful!

Thank you to the members of the Support Driven community who took the

time to participate in the survey, and especially to Sahra Santosha, Brian

Kerr, Simon Ouderkirk, and Romain Lapeyre, who contributed to a thorough

analysis of the results.

Thank you!

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