Customer Support Specialist (Seasonal)

Role: Customer Support Specialist (Seasonal)

Location: Panama City, Panama

Start Date: January 5, 2027

Join us at EF Tours, a division of EF Education First, as we revolutionize the educational travel industry and transform students into the next generation of global citizens.

The Role:

As an Emergency Response Customer Support Specialist, you will play a unique dual role within Educational Tours, combining on-tour issue resolution with outbound customer engagement and lead development activities.

This seasonal position follows the rhythm of our business. During peak travel periods, you will focus primarily on supporting travelers, families, and group leaders through urgent and complex on-tour situations. During periods of lower travel volume, you will shift your fucus to customer engagement efforts, reaching out to prospective educators and helping identify future group leaders interested in educational travel opportunities for their students.

In the emergency response portion of the role, you will manage serious traveler cases, support colleagues handling routine issues, and coordinate with internal and external partners to help resolve complex situations. In the customer engagement portion of the role, you will build relationships with prospective customers through phone, email and text outreach, and will nurture these leads for our sales team.

The ideal candidate thrives in a fast-paced environment, communicates effectively with a wide range of audiences, remains calm under pressure, enjoys balancing both customer support and customer acquisition responsibilities, and shows flexibility within an evolving model.

This is a full-time, temporary position with a start date of, January 5th and an end date of July 31st, 2026. While in the role, you may apply for permanent jobs within EF that have start dates in August or later.

Key Responsibilities:

- Manage high-priority traveler support cases including medical emergencies, mental health concerns, travel disruptions, traveler safety incidents, and sensitive conflicts requiring urgent coordination and decision-making.
- Facilitate communication between travelers, their families, and external parties involved in resolving serious cases. These may include embassies, law enforcement, clinicians and Assist-based insurance organizations.
- Support US-based sales staff with routine on-tour issues, such as flight delays and cancelations, global travel regulations, on-the-ground logistical challenges and minor medical concerns.
- Serve as a weekend shift lead for the US On Tour Support team, assisting with case prioritization and review to ensure all cases are moving to resolution with appropriate attention.
- Be available for inbound customer calls related to both high severity ongoing cases and routine cases as business volume requires.
- Conduct outbound outreach to prospective educator customers through phone, text and email completing approximately 50-100 outbound attempts per day during customer engagement periods.
- Utilize consultative selling and relationship-building techniques to qualify leads.
- Collaborate regularly with colleagues across sales and operations teams to improve the customer experience from the point of sale, to on tour.

Who you are:

- You pay close attention to details, make good decisions, and communicate clearly, even in challenging situations
- Detail-oriented – Attention-to-detail doesn’t fully caputre how keen your eye for detail is. Because you know all the ins-and-outs, you’re the go-to resource in your department for your peers and colleagues.
- Proactive – You see beyond the surface and are always asking the right questions in anticipation of what could come next.
- Adaptable Communicator– You’re an incredible communicator who understands the importance of clear, concise, and factual written communication and you can easily adapt your style to your audience.
- Calm under pressure – You keep your emotions out of the situation and maintain a clear head when working under pressure. This job isn’t for the faint of heart, but it doesn’t require an adrenaline junkie either, so long as you remain calm, cool, and collected.
- Prepared for the unexpected: You thrive in the unknown but have a plan in place for anything that might come up.
- Independent – You can identify a need, determine the best course of action and take initiative to get things done.

Requirements:

- 2+ years of experience in a customer-facing role
- 1+ years of sales, customer engagement, business development, lead generation or a similar outreach-focused role
- Professional experience or educational background in emergency response or escalated customer service issues is a plus.
- Fluent in English and Spanish, both written and spoken
- Proven track record of owning a project or initiative from start to finish and handling sensitive customer communication
- Creative problem-solving skills and organizational skills.
- Be able to work one of the below schedules: Tuesday – Saturday
- Sunday – Thursday
- Monday – Friday work hours will be 8:30am-5:30pm MST
- Saturday and Sunday work hours will be 7am-3pm MST

Why you'll love working here:

People at EF make things happen. We encourage you to take full ownership of your work, regardless of your level or experience. EF team members often say we operate like the world’s largest startup because this boundless entrepreneurial spirit is built into our organization’s DNA.

Our Panama office is in Costa del Este, offers a variety of benefits:

Benefits and staff perks

- Hybrid Model - one days working from home per week.
- Fitness Center accessible only for EF staff
- Networking and professional growth opportunities
- Parking facilities prior request
- Discounts to on a wide range of local restaurants, cafes, hotels and other hot spots in Panama.
- Seasonal and monthly office events including Holiday parties, Summer Party and Happy hours.