Sunday, March 20, 2022

Customer Support Specialist

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, Netflix, Pixar, and Shopify 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 is a key part 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 the amazing Jenna Chaplin who is running Customer Support – but her exceptional talents fit better with Customer Success, and so you'll have to opportunity to replace her, which we'll be genuinely grateful for.

You'll take on technical support requests, triage tasks to our Engineering Team,  dive-in to troubleshoot and do QA with the customer, and even directly debug issues in the console. 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% - Working with our Product team to do Q/A and monitoring our errors system, raising important issues to our engineers and proactively notifying customers affected.
  • 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 support our team, 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. Eventually, we'll hire another full-time Customer Support Specialist for you to work alongside. As the company grows, we'd continue to build a team around you. And if things worked out well, you could potentially grow into a Head of Customer Support role.

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, who excels in tackling detailed + technical challenges. To you, there's no greater thrill than helping someone else make progress toward an outcome they care about. You consider yourself tech-savvy and innately inquisitive. You relish learning new technologies and new skills, and typically you're always tinkering with something. You even might know some basic HTML/CSS (or even basic Ruby) or have used console tools in the past to help run pre-written scripts – but totally fine if not, too! Either way, 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 (oof, does it feel like that more than ever!), 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, apply here by 11:59PM PT Thursday, March 24th, 2022 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 after applications have closed on Thursday, March 24th. 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 when you had to teach yourself a new skill in order to accomplish a job or project?
    • What's your favorite spot (e.g., park, coffee shop, etc.) to visit nearby? How do you get there from where you live?
  • Then, please answer the following questions, as if you were already a KYT Customer Support Specialist. To help you answer these questions, we've made available a private link for you to sign-up for a demo account of our product here to help give you context. Please note: This is NOT a public-facing domain for potential customers, but is being shared purely to help you in this application process. Here are the questions we'd love for you to answer as if you were already a KYT Customer Support Specialist...
    • "I don't see how to sign up for the free trial account. How do I do that?"
    • "How does your Heartbeat Tool work?"
    • "Do you integrate with Basecamp?"
    • "How does your pricing work?"
    • "Help! Our company changed their domain for all their email addresses and I can't log into Know Your Team anymore... What should I do?" 
    • "I used your Slack integration but I don't see all my channels, please assist." 
Please apply here by 11:59PM PT, Thursday, March 24th, 2022 We'll confirm that we've received your application within 48 hours. At the conclusion of the review process, we'll respond to every application about the result and next steps. We appreciate your patience as we review each application carefully.

This is a unique opportunity to influence a company's customer support 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,

-Claire Lew
CEO of Know Your Team

Director of Content Marketing

At Podia, we’re building the most creator-friendly platform on the planet to help people sell online courses, memberships, webinars, and digital downloads to their audience.

One of the ways we’re doing that -- besides our awesome all-in-one platform -- is delivering the best content on the planet for creators, teaching everything they need to know about creating, marketing, selling, and thriving with their digital products.

The online business content world is a noisy one, overflowing with clickbait content promising quick riches for little work…as long as you buy today.

We do things differently.


Our content team: 
  • Protects online creators from shallow, predatory content 🛡
  • Shows them what they’re actually capable of achieving 🏆
  • Helps them do the work required to move forward, whether they’re building their first product or planning their 50th launch 📈
  • Removes the obstacles standing in their way, and lead our creators to success 💰

Want to see our content in action? Check out our blog and our videos page.

We’re looking for an experienced Director of Content Marketing to help lead our content team — currently two writers and a video content marketer — in this quest.

Why this is a dream content marketing opportunity

Podia has been growing organically for the last five years, and we’ve put significant budget and bandwidth into content.

You’re not building from scratch; your strategies and campaigns will get in front of thousands of creators from day one, and you’ll be able to move fast.

At the same time, even though we’ve been around since 2014, Podia — and the creator economy — are very much just getting started, and you’ll have real flexibility and budget to create your own strategy that helps us get to the next level of scale.

You’ll be joining a team where content is far from an afterthought; it’s absolutely core to our brand. In fact, our marketing leaders come from content backgrounds; you’ll be reporting to Benyamin Elias, our Director of Growth Marketing who was previously a Director of Content Marketing at ActiveCampaign. 

Our CMO, Len Markidan — who you’ll also work closely with — was the Head of Content Marketing at Groove before joining Podia.

You’ll also start with three world-class direct reports: Rachel Burns and Nicola Wynn are experienced writers, and Ben Toalson has grown our YouTube channel to more than 20,000 subscribers.

In short: we know how important exceptional content marketing is, and you won’t be pulling teeth to get leadership to take content seriously.

Oh and by the way, you won’t be limited by the usual blockers:

If you’ve ever been asked to do marketing for a product that isn’t very good, or is in a “nice to have” market, you know how hard it is to watch customers slip away for yet another month of flat growth.

At Podia, our NPS is in the 99th percentile for internet companies. Our customers love us, we’ve helped many of them become successful, and your hard work won’t go to waste.

The creator market is on fire right now. As more and more people join the creator economy, Podia is there to tap into the demand — with a platform that creators need to run their business. This is a must-have product in a high growth market, and our growth reflects that.

If you’ve been stuck marketing a “boring” (or worse) product, you know how hard it is to wake up and fake enthusiasm about what you’re selling.

Podia gets emails from creators every day. Every single day, there's a creator using Podia to earn their first dollar online. We have customers all over the world — people who are starting side hustles or starting business or quitting jobs because of the income they make from Podia.

If you’ve ever been frustrated by following the “playbook” or trying to hit …questionable… KPIs, you know how it feels to have your creativity limited.

We’re not interested in a cobbled-together playbook of “best practices” or arbitrary goals. Everything we do at Podia starts with the creator and continues to the business — we want to do what works, and that means looking past playbooks to find the real levers for growth.

In this role, you’ll work with the Director of Growth Marketing to write a new content playbook, and you’ll lead our amazing content team in running with it.

If you’ve had to share results with other departments (or get sucked into enablement, or deal with fire drills when other teams don’t hit their goals), you know what it’s like to do everything right and still feel like things went wrong.

Podia is 100% self-serve. There is no sales team. Marketing finds and converts the entire pipeline.

If you’re still excited after reading that, let’s get into the details.

Here’s what you’ll do
  • Build and execute a content marketing strategy to help Podia grow — across our website, blog, and social channels, but also within our product and community. We see content as a way to help Podia grow by making our creators more successful.
  • Understand how content can impact creators at every stage of their relationship with Podia.
  • Manage end-to-end development of content across our content team, currently consisting of three people, in pursuit of our marketing team goals. 
  • Identify and capitalize on SEO opportunities. You should have a strong understanding of SEO, but you’ll also have access to our SEO advisor, who’s among the best in the business.
  • Hold a high standard for excellence for all of our content.
  • Write content for our portfolio of channels. This is a player-coach role where you’ll be both managing and creating content.
  • Ensure that our content efforts are aligned with our broader company goals, and work closely with both your reports and the growth marketing team to push projects forward.

We’re looking for someone with:
  • At least 5+ years of experience in content marketing, and at least 2 years of experience managing a content team.
  • A broad perspective on content marketing. Content marketing includes blog posts and SEO, but you’re also interested in the big picture — how content (across mediums and channels) helps create growth for both Podia and our customers.
  • A track record of producing the best content of its kind on the internet, and the portfolio to prove it.
  • Proven ability to grow a content operation against measurable goals.
  • Excitement about the role content plays in moving our business — and our customers — forward. I.e., you put as much emphasis on the “marketing” part as the “content” part.
  • Editing chopz. You can make any piece of content, and any writer, better when you work with them.
  • At least 4 hours overlap with US Eastern Time

We get hundreds of job applications for every open role. If you’d like some tips on how to stand out, read this thread by our CMO, Len Markidan.

It’d be REALLY great if you also:
  • Have created and/or sold an online course, community, webinar, coaching service, or download
  • Have worked with digital creators
  • These are nice-to-haves, but not requirements. Don’t be discouraged if they don’t apply to you. If you’re confident you’re otherwise perfect for this role, please apply!

Benefits

Here’s what you’ll get if you join Podia:
  • Competitive compensation. We want to hire the best people, and we’re ready to pay for them. We use a standardized salary scale set at the 90th percentile of US salaries for each role—regardless of where you are in the world. 💰
  • Ultimate flexibility. We try to have some overlap time every day, but outside of that, work whenever and wherever you work best. 🗺️
  • Extreme autonomy. No micro-managing here. After onboarding, you’ll be given high-level direction and then left to solve it the way you feel is best. 📚
  • That said, the rest of the team is always ready to lend a hand—or even an ear if you just need to bounce some ideas. 💡
  • You’ll be working with a diverse team from a range of countries and backgrounds. We work hard to make Podia an inclusive workplace for everyone. 🌈
  • We have a rapidly growing base of passionate customers. Your work will be seen and appreciated by many people. ❤️
  • Great benefits including three weeks paid vacation (plus another week during the December holidays), sabbaticals every three years, professional development credit, paid family leave, a new laptop every three years, and more. ☺️
  • (Paid for) annual retreats to spend time with the team and have fun together (or a still-pretty-great virtual retreat when there’s a global pandemic). ✈️

Sound like you? Want to be part of a smart, nimble, motivated team working hard to build something big?

We’ve been around since 2014, have the greatest customers in the world, and a team that will stop at nothing to help our creators win. 

If that sounds like something you want to be part of, we want to hear from you 📣

About the hiring process:

Interested in joining our team? Great!

We’ll begin reviewing applications immediately and continue to review them for a minimum of two weeks or until the job posting is closed. There's no benefit to applying in the first five minutes, and we'd rather you take your time. We heavily weigh the answers to our application form rather than data from LinkedIn or resumes. We typically reduce the candidate pool down to a small handful who move on to a small test project.

The project phase is a paid article, run very much like an in-house piece of content at Podia. We’ll contact you to reserve a three-day slot in the upcoming week to complete your test article, and once that slot begins, we’ll send you your assignment. 

After that, we’ll review the test projects, provide feedback in a single revision round for promising projects, and then based on the results of the revision round, select candidates to interview.

You’ll have four total interviews over Zoom, including:
  • The CMO
  • The Director of Growth Marketing (Hiring manager)
  • The three members of the content team (roundtable)
  • The CEO

The last interview will be with Spencer, our CEO, who can answer any questions you have about the broader goals and workings of the company.

After that, we'll decide on our final candidates and ask for professional references from both a previous co-worker and a manager. We'll reach out to those references to set up a brief 10 minute call or email.

Finally, all going well, we'll make a written offer to the successful candidate which can be signed electronically 

We’re looking forward to chatting!