Customer Operations Associate at SparkMeter

Come join SparkMeter’s Customer Operations team and help increase electricity access in developing countries. As a Customer Operations Associate, you will work directly with our utility customers around the world as they set up and operate our smart metering systems. You’ll engage with our customers over the phone, on video calls, and over email, build out new tools and resources, and help us make sure that our customers are getting everything they need from us as they build and expand their grid projects using our products.

• Customer Engagement & Support. We provide remote and on-site support for our customers around the world, while also designing systems and processes to help our customers better support themselves. You’ll engage directly with our customers, supporting them as they set up our products for the first time and answering any questions that come up.
• Improving the Customer Onboarding Experience. We work closely with our customers to give them a strong start with new systems, and to make sure they have all the information and support needed to keep their systems working well. You’ll take ownership of the various onboarding stages with our customers and ensure that their experience is positive and efficient.
• Managing the Customer Lifecycle. You’ll help manage customer data through Salesforce and Zendesk and help track customer stages, build out drip campaigns, and automate engagement and support to drive self-service.
• Process improvement. You’ll identify inefficiencies and figure out ways to help your team (and yourself) be more efficient with new tools or processes.
• Customer advocacy & collaborating with product. We are significant contributors to the product development process, advocating for our customers with our colleagues on other teams to make sure our products work well and meet the needs of the people using them. You’ll help the product team spec, design, implement, and test features by informing their decision-making process with your direct contact with our customers.

In your first few months you'll:

• Respond to Support Tickets. You’ll respond to customer support tickets in order to keep customer satisfaction high.
• Develop Training Materials. You’ll create articles and other training materials to help our customers learn how to use our products. You will think from their perspective to help define what tools and resources would be most useful as they implement our metering system.
• Create Support Documentation. You’ll write articles in our customer-facing knowledge base and update existing documentation.

Where You'll Work

SparkMeter is based in Washington D.C., but our people are all over the world. You'll be an early member of our Nairobi, Kenya office located in Westlands. You’ll be joining colleagues from Customer Operations and Commercial Operations.

Expected Travel

You can expect occasional travel to meet with customers, likely no more than twice a month, as needed. Travel will typically be to visit customer offices, with less frequent travel out to remote sites.

Type of Role

This is a full-time role with benefits.

Requirements & Skills

You will be a good fit for this role if you have:

• Experience working with customers. You should have experience working with customers using a ticketing system and be comfortable engaging with customers via email and over the phone.
• Empathy. Our customers and partners are all over the world and come from many different backgrounds. You should be comfortable and enjoy talking with people different from yourself and able to imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes in order to understand the problems and challenges they experience in their day-to-day.
• Fluency in English. Our work is conducted in English, ­but we work with customers all over the world. Fluency in Swahili, Hindi, French, Spanish, and other languages is useful as well!
• Strong writing skills. In order to create great documentation, you should have excellent writing skills and experience with training and customer-facing documentation.
• Comfort with technology. While you don’t need to be an engineer, you should be interested in how things work and be comfortable learning about and talking about computers, science and engineering concepts, and electricity.
• Interest in energy or energy access. We work in a fascinating, high-impact space. Many of our customers are mini-grid developers who are at the forefront of leveraging renewable energy to increase access to electricity. Whether you are interested in renewable energy, sustainable development, or energy access, having some exposure or interest in the field in which we work will help you better understand our customers, where they are coming from, and their needs.