Susana de Sousa

Head of Design

Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal14 yrs experience

Key Highlights

Helped launch Airbnb’s European HQ to 600+ employees
3rd employee at Loom and first customer facing hire
Mentor in the Portuguese Women In Tech community

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS Customer Experience Leader with a strong focus on operational excellence and team building.

Contact

Skills

Other Skills

Social MediaTeam LeadershipProject ManagementCustomer ServiceProject PlanningSocial Media MarketingZendeskFacebookStart-upsPhotographyE-commerceManagementLeadershipMarketingCustomer Relationship Management (CRM)

About

👋 Hi, I'm Susana. I'm Head of Community at Plain, where I help support teams build better operations. Previously spent 10+ years leading support at Airbnb, Loom, and OpenPhone – now switching sides from buying tools to building them. → signed.careers for new jobs, posted every hour A few career highlights: - Helped launch & grow Airbnb’s European HQ to 600+ employees - 3rd employee at Loom & first customer facing hire - Passionate about building teams, products & operational excellence - Mentor in the Portuguese Women In Tech community, United Nations Development Program & Startup Lisboa

Experience

Plain

Head of Community

Oct 2025 – Present · 5 mos · Remote

Building the kind of support systems I always wished existed. Why I joined Plain: www.plain.com/susana-joins-plain

Desousa

Advisor

Jul 2023 – Present · 2 yrs 8 mos · Remote

I help early-stage companies build scalable, customer-first strategies.
With a proven track record at companies like Loom and Airbnb, I've driven significant results - from reducing contact rates by 175% to supporting growth to 25M+ users.
My focus is on crafting scalable, efficient CX strategies that enable startups to deliver outstanding support while managing costs.

Unicorn factory lisboa

Startup Mentor

May 2023 – Present · 2 yrs 10 mos · Lisbon, Portugal · Remote

I collaborate with founders to help them navigate challenges in customer experience and GTM operations. I'm happy to support the next generation of Portuguese tech companies as they scale from concept to successful businesses :)

Openphone

Head of Support

Jan 2023 – Jul 2023 · 6 mos · Remote · Remote

Responsible for overseeing Customer Support, Operations, Porting and Trust & Safety.

Loom

2 roles

Director, Customer Support

Promoted

Nov 2021 – Jan 2023 · 1 yr 2 mos

We’re changing the future of communication at work. Come join us, I’m hiring! 🚀
I joined Loom as the first customer facing hire & third employee. Today, I lead the Customer Support function which includes our Advocacy team, our Technical Support team and our Support Operations team.
My focus is to create a support experience that is efficient, educational and human, both at scale with our free users and individually with our Enterprise customers. We're proud to consistently achieve satisfaction scores of above 95% across all customer tiers.
We leverage an effective self-service model that decreased contact rate by 175% in 2 years and translates into significant savings for the company.
I believe the future of customer experience will bet on video, automated interactions, convenience & accessibility.

Senior Manager, Customer Support

Mar 2017 – Nov 2021 · 4 yrs 8 mos

Wakoopa

Operations Manager

Sep 2015 – Sep 2016 · 1 yr · Amsterdam Area, Netherlands

At Wakoopa, I partnered with customers like Google, Facebook and H&M to help map their customer journey with behavioral data.
My responsibilities included setting up projects to digitise the customer journey, coaching customers and managing the relationship with the development teams to improve Wakoopa's technology.

Airbnb

2 roles

Customer Experience Lead - EU & APAC

Feb 2013 – Sep 2015 · 2 yrs 7 mos

Managed the Customer Experience EU & APAC Payments Team's day to day activities and ensured employee happiness by creating team connection, communicating direction and goals, providing regular performance feedback and coached members of the team to ensure career growth.
Allocated and set goals, evaluated workflows, and found ways for them to be more efficient, relevant and valuable both internally and externally.
Balanced and prioritized goals based on seasonality and the needs of customers, team and Airbnb.

Customer Experience Specialist - Payments

Oct 2011 – Feb 2013 · 1 yr 4 mos

While serving as a Customer Experience Specialist, I assisted the members of the Airbnb community with any issues ranging from Payments to Disputes. My main responsibilities included providing users with a resolution as fast as possible, identifying bugs and product improvement opportunities, supporting my team by answering questions and anticipating needs.