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FEATURED PROJECT: Customer Support Specialist

SALARY RANGE: $ 15.00 Entry Level

OPENINGS: Multiple 15

HOURS: Part time, and F/T hours

JOB DUTIES:

We make it easy for anyone to help a classroom in need, moving us closer to a nation where students in every community have the tools and experiences they need for a great education.

Since our launch in 2000, more than 3 million “citizen philanthropists” have donated to classroom projects on our platform, channeling books, field trips, technology, and other resources to more than 28 million students in public schools, overwhelmingly from low-income households. Along the way, the organization helped to pioneer the field of crowdfunding and is now making an impact beyond school supplies.

About the Customer Support Team:

As a branch of the Operations team, Customer Support is responsible for all one-to-one touchpoints — reactive and proactive — and self-service tools that help teachers, donors, administrators, or any member of the general public successfully use our website.

As a small and mighty remote team, autonomy and ownership are of the highest value. The quality of our support is a shared responsibility across the team and we all bring ideas to the table to improve our work. We appreciate and take advantage of the time we have to get in sync — one weekly team touchpoint, monthly check-ins with managers, and a vibrant Slack community — but we also deeply value and prioritize our ability to focus on solving customer inquiries.

Finally, we are passionate about serving our customer base — we get to help people bring classroom projects to life and enrich learning experiences! — and believe in support that is kind, personalized, and simple. We go the extra mile when we need to, give people the benefit of the doubt, and take pride in providing engaged and complete support. We get that providing exceptional support to teachers and donors adds value to the mission. We are pretty darn awesome!

About the role:

As a Customer Support Specialist, you’ll answer between 50 – 120 emails a day (depending on the day). These inquiries will span a variety of different topics across the entire teacher and donor lifecycles.

You may help a donor navigate our marketplace to support a school in their hometown. Or you may help a teacher get donations multiplied by qualifying for a partner-backed offer. You may walk a mother through surprising her daughter (a first-year teacher!) by fully funding her classroom project. Or you may spend some time tracking down a shipment of live crickets (yikes!) for a sixth-grade science class. And sometimes you’ll have to do things like explain policies that won’t make the customer super happy, deliver difficult news about eligibility, or simply help a customer reset a password. It’s not all glamor and live insects, but at the end of every day, you’ll have helped a bunch of people bring joy to a bunch of students!

In addition to this core work, sometimes you’ll —

Hop on the phone to resolve particularly gnarly issues. (We work primarily in email right now, but sometimes it’s just easier to get on the phone and hash it out!)

Attend and participate in trainings as scheduled by your team leaders.

Provide feedback to your peers on their tickets and coach newer teammates.

Build documentation to support our work.

Write up bug reports for our Product and Engineering team.

Update or write public-facing help content.

Answer support questions for colleagues across the organization.

Lead mini-projects or fact-finding missions — and present ideas or findings to teammates, managers, or others across the organization.

As a successful Customer Support Specialist, you are:

Professional. You are the face to many customers. As such, you hold yourself to a high standard. You are task-driven, attentive, collaborative, and accountable. Particularly as a remote professional, you can work autonomously and don’t require a ton of supervision.

A solid communicator. It is your job to be clear and concise, to gain agreement on issues, to match tone and be understood by customers who have varied technical experiences and diverse backgrounds. You are a great writer and are not afraid of the phone.

Thoughtful. You take pride in your work and care about outcomes. You think “What if I were in this position? What would I want to hear right now?” You foster positive experiences even when it means saying no or sharing difficult or highly-technical information.

Tech comfy. You’ll use Zendesk (a ticket management platform), the administrative site, and other third-party applications (Slack, GSuite, and more) in your daily work. You are supporting the use of a two-sided marketplace and want to learn the ins and outs of how it all works. You know basic troubleshooting techniques.

A learner. You recognize that you are always in a position to learn and that you can learn from anyone at any time, including customers. This makes you flexible to change and open to feedback on your work.

Decisive. You’ll make judgment calls and decisions based on your knowledge of our policies and processes. You have a bias toward action. You recognize you might make mistakes or occasionally say the wrong thing to a customer, but are confident in your ability to own mistakes and learn from them.

Resourceful. Not every question has an easy answer, but you’re totally into figuring things out. You’ve maybe used Nancy Drew as a verb (i.e., “I’m gonna Nancy Drew this.”) and successfully discovered the answer to something tricky. (And you’ll be able to tell us about this in an interview!)

Generous. Once you figure something out, you’re excited to share the new information. You want to lend your ideas to the team and make everyone around you stronger.

You might also be (not required, but let us know if this is you!):

A customer support pro. You already have experience providing customer support and genuinely enjoy working with people to solve problems. You’re interested in building a career in customer support and contributing to projects that directly impact the culture and effectiveness of Customer Support at DonorsChoose.org.

Interested in crowdfunding platforms, two-sided marketplaces, or K-12 Education.

A seasoned work-from-home pro. Or, in the least, committed to and eager to try it out.

The details:

Location: Remote (we’re currently only accepting applicants whose primary residence is in CA, CO, GA, NJ, NY, or TX).

Schedule: 40 hours per week (schedules can be flexible Mon – Sun)

Compensation: Commensurate with experience

Benefits: This role is eligible for a competitive salary and benefits package, which includes health, dental, and vision coverage; a matching 401k plan (up to 5% of base salary); an annual professional development stipend, and three weeks paid vacation plus national holidays.

Education: A bachelor’s degree is not required, but is preferred
Job-ID-VOTcommdon43

JOB REQUIREMENTS:

DO NOT CALL, Resume Portfolio / VA Websites will be reviewed online and applicants will be contacted directly. Must have VOT resume profile and website available for review

TO APPLY:

Submit the form below. Provide your email address and link to your VA website. Company will contact you through VOT or contact information on profile to arrange your telephone interview. Interviews are being scheduled now – apply now!

Tell us about your relevant skills, certifications or licenses, languages spoken, etc. Share any additional information the hiring manager should consider.
Desired start date, availability for work (full-time, part-time, etc.)
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