Dear customer support specialist who cares about doing meaningful work,
If your dream is to help people have a positive experience with a solution that truly makes a difference and to do it with a small team that values freedom, sustainability, and ownership, I've got good news for you... we're hiring a Customer Support Specialist at Know Your Team.
First, a quick introduction.
My name is
Claire Lew, and I'm the CEO of
Know Your Team. Our company, Know Your Team, is software that gives you the tools, training, and resources to become a better manager. Thousands of managers at companies like Airbnb and Dropbox use our software and attend our trainings every single week.
We were born from
Basecamp back in 2014, and have been profitable since Month 1. We've been a 100% remote company for the entire time, and purposefully stayed small in headcount, and avoided traditional VC funding to enable us to stay focused on serving our customers to the highest quality. You can read more about our journey so far
here. (We're a bit of weird company, admittedly!)
Above all else, what motivates us at KYT is making progress toward our vision: A world where bad bosses are the exception, not the norm. Imagine a world where leadership doesn't have such a high learning curve. A world where anyone, anywhere, can become a better leader – with a little help from us :-)
We believe if you help managers become better, everything gets better. An organization with better leadership achieves better outcomes and takes better care of its people. Helping people become better leaders might just be one of the most high-leverage ways to help the world.
For our own company, our vision is for KYT to be an independent, remote, profitable company that's small in headcount but impacting tens of thousands (if not hundreds or even millions!) of managers, for 10 years and beyond. We want KYT to be a place where people come to do the best work of their lives – and continue to do the best work of their lives. Sustainability and lasting in the long-term are key parts of success, for us.
So what's the job?
You'll be responsible for managing and replying to all incoming customer support inquiries during KYT business hours, Monday through Friday, 8AM - 5PM PT across all our channels (Help Scout, Intercom, social media) in an empathetic, friendly way. Right now, it's myself and CTO
Daniel Lopes who are running our customer support, so you'll have to opportunity to replace us as founders (and outperform us!) which we'll be genuinely grateful for.
You'll take on technical support requests, triage tasks to our Engineering Team, and dive-in to troubleshoot and do QA with the customer, as well. You'll acquire deep product knowledge about KYT and problem-solve when customers run into technical issues or confusion about using a certain part of our product.
You'll identify the customers who need our help – the ones who are stuck or don't know how to get started – and proactively reach out to them to lend a hand. You'll share best practices, offer helpful tips, and give them encouragement on their path to becoming a better manager.
You'll be the eyes, ears, and heart of the customer – sharing insights and desires gleaned from customer interactions with the rest of the KYT so our product and offerings can be better for our managers.
You'll own, write, update, and improve all our customer support documentation, including our Help Docs and internal documentation around customer support.
Over time, as you grow more comfortable with the role and the product, you'll run demo tours for prospective and current customers, improve our onboarding flow to enable greater customer success, and strategize + execute cross-functional projects that help improve the overall KYT customer experience.
High-level, here's how you can expect to spend your time in a given week:
- 60% - Responding to support inquiries, Monday through Friday, 8AM - 5PM PT.
- 20% - Proactively reaching out to customers to give tips + best practices so they are successful managers with KYT.
- 10% - Improving our support documentation + brainstorming/executing ways to improve our overall KYT customer experience.
- 10% - Working on cross-functional projects that align with your skills/interests that move KYT forward and improve the overall KYT customer experience.
The full-time salary for this role is $70,000 USD, with health benefits, and unlimited vacation. We try to do everything in our power to give you the trust, space and stability to do your best work. This is a full-time role, but we'd bring you on first as a contractor for the first month, to make sure you enjoy working with us and vice versa. And then if it was a good fit, we’d bring you on full-time.
Together, we’d grow Know Your Team to be a solution that improves the lives of hundreds of thousands (if not millions!) of managers every day.
Who I am looking for exactly
I'm looking for an impeccable, clear writer. Fluent in writing and speaking English is a must. You distill complex concepts into simple phrasing, and get-to-the-point quickly and thoughtfully. You communicate warmth and friendliness in your words. It doesn’t matter what you’ve studied (or if you graduated from school at all): You've honed your craft of writing over the years, in your own way. You believe the best writing is not what you intend to say, but in fact, how it comes across to the other person.
You're a problem-solver at heart. To you, there's no greater thrill than helping someone else make progress toward an outcome they care about. You and consider yourself tech-savvy and innately inquisitive. You relish learning new technologies and new skills, and typically you're always tinkering with something. It's highly probable that you're "that one friend" all your friends go to when they can't get their computer to reboot properly or need a recommendation on "an app for X". You are curious and persistent to find a solution and creative in how you approach a problem.
You're empathetic (perhaps to a fault, at times!). Your day is made when you can make another person smile – be the Amazon delivery guy at your doorstep or your kid's school teacher via Zoom. Even when the world feels like it's falling apart (or indeed, as we saw in 2019, when it did...!), you maintain a cheery orientation and choose to see the good in people. In previous work environments, co-workers likely have marveled and how upbeat and calm you remain when others around you feel downtrodden and overwhelmed.
Most importantly, you believe in the vision of Know Your Team. You’ve personally felt the pain of having a bad manager (or two) before. Or you’ve personally struggled to find an effective learning path to become a better leader, yourself. Either way, you’re passionate about what Know Your Team stands for, and how we can help as many managers become better leaders.
I’d love to hear from you. Here's how you can apply:
If you’re interested in working together,
send us an email to jobs@knowyourteam.com by April 2nd with the following information...
- Please introduce yourself to us as a potential fellow KYT team member. What's your story? :-) Writing is one of the top skills we prioritize as a company. Feel free to take your time, as we won't begin reviewing applications until April 2nd. Do take license to be creative, and include answers to these questions...
- Why KYT? Why not work somewhere else?
- Why customer support? What is it that you love about this industry?
- What's a memorable customer support interaction you had recently that stood out to you as positive? What made it so?
- Could you describe a time where you had to teach yourself a new skill in order to accomplish a job or project?
- What's your favorite spot (e.g., park, coffeeshop, etc.) to visit nearby? How do you get there from where you live?
- Could you then please answer the following questions, as if you were already a KYT Customer Support Specialist (and please feel free to sign for a free trial of the product, if it helps!):
- "How does your 1:1 Tool work?"
- "Our company got acquired a few months ago and so I'm no longer using the tool. Can I get a refund?"
- "It looks like there’s a bug with your billing system! Our card got charged twice... Please advise."
- "I’m trying to use a private channel with your Slack integration, but they are not showing up in the dropdown? Can you help?"
- We’re seeking fluent English speakers/writers to answer customer support requests via email Monday - Friday 8am - 5pm PT. Please include your location, and if you'd be able to fully cover those working hours. While we are a 100% remote company, we do prefer that your daytime hours overlap with Pacific Time working hours, as so to avoid any nighttime burnout.
Please email your application with all this info at jobs@knowyourteam.com before April 2nd. We'll confirm that we've received your application within 48 hours. At the conclusion of the review process, we'll respond to every applicant about the result and next steps. We appreciate your patience as we review each application carefully.
We highly value diversity, and encourage people with non-traditional and underrepresented backgrounds to apply. Even if you've never held a "Customer Support" job in the typical sense, if you believe you can make a positive contribution to KYT, we'd love to hear from you.
This is a unique opportunity to influence a company's customer experience from the first floor and up, and to help solve a significant problem. If you’re the right person for it, I’d be honored if we got to tackle it together.
Looking forward to hearing from you,