Customer Support Manager

Job Description

About ZELP

ZELP is an agricultural technology company committed to creating a sustainable future for agriculture - one that meets the needs of present and future generations, promoting human and environmental health, animal welfare, and social and economic equity.

Our first focus is to develop and scale technology that measures and mitigates methane emissions in the livestock industry. Today, 1.3 billion people rely on the industry for their livelihoods and food security. However, it is the single biggest human-driven source of methane emissions globally, emitting more than both the oil & gas industry and the coal industry.

The deployment of our technologies on a global scale has the potential to drive half the global methane reduction needed by 2030, and to transform the beef and dairy industries.

ZELP was an inaugural winner of the Terra Carta Design Lab, and has received funding and support from the European Commission, Innovate UK, The Global Methane Hub and the Gates Foundation.

Role Summary

This is a hands-on role responsible for making sure ZELP customers can successfully use ZELP Sense and get rapid, effective support when things go wrong.

You will own the customer support experience from onboarding through to ongoing use and end-of-life, including troubleshooting hardware, software, connectivity and data issues.

Initially, you will be close to the detail: answering difficult customer questions, diagnosing problems and working directly with customers and the ZELP engineering team. As our customer base grows, you will build the processes, tools, knowledge base and team needed to provide consistently excellent support at scale.

You will be the voice of the customer inside ZELP, identifying recurring issues and feeding them back into Product, Engineering, Manufacturing and Operations.

This is particularly important for ZELP because our product operates in a challenging environment: on animals, on farms, with connectivity and hardware reliability challenges that don't exist in a conventional software product.

This is unlikely to be a purely office-based role, and as the team grows it may include field support engineers, customer-facing onboarding/training, and the potential for global travel.

Main Responsibilities

Customer onboarding & deployment

• Own the customer support process from initial deployment through to successful ongoing operation.
• Help customers understand how to install, configure and use ZELP Sense and associated equipment.
• Develop onboarding materials, guides, FAQs and troubleshooting resources.
• Support customers during field deployments and initial data collection.
• Identify common onboarding problems and continuously improve the process.
• Work closely with Commercial teams to ensure customers are properly supported to achieve their goals

Day-to-day customer support

• Manage the customer support function day-to-day to ensure customers receive excellent service
• Establish and own the customer support inbox/ticketing system and ensure issues are triaged and resolved promptly.
• Provide first-line and second-line technical support for ZELP Sense.
• Diagnose issues involving:
  • device hardware
  • sensors
  • battery and charging
  • connectivity
  • software and firmware
  • data quality
  • device configuration
  • installation and use in the field.
• Decide when an issue can be resolved through customer support and when it needs to be escalated to Engineering, Manufacturing or Quality.
• Maintain clear communication with customers throughout the resolution process.
• Ensure customer issues are properly documented and tracked through to closure.

Build the support function

As ZELP scales, you will establish the systems and processes required to support hundreds and eventually thousands of deployed devices. This will include:

• Selecting and implementing appropriate customer-support/ticketing tools.
• Establishing ticket categories, priorities and escalation processes.
• Defining SLAs and customer response targets.
• Building a searchable knowledge base.
• Creating standard troubleshooting procedures.
• Developing customer-facing installation and maintenance documentation.
• Establishing processes for managing returns, replacements and repairs.
• Creating processes for handling spares, repairs, returns, recalls and takeback, working with the supply chain team
• Establishing customer-support KPIs and reporting.

Customer issue & product feedback

You will create a systematic mechanism for turning support interactions into product improvements.

• Identify recurring customer issues and failure modes.
• Analyse support data to identify trends.
• Produce regular reports on major customer problems.
• Work with Engineering to prioritise fixes.
• Provide customer feedback into product development.
• Identify opportunities to improve product usability and reliability.
• Ensure known issues have appropriate customer-facing workarounds and documentation.

Hardware returns & field failures

Because ZELP Sense is a physical product deployed in the field, you will also play an important role in managing hardware failures and the rest of the product lifecycle.

• Establish a returns and takeback process to enable recycling of consumable parts.
• Diagnose returned units and coordinated investigation with Quality and Engineering.
• Track failure rates and failure modes.
• Determine when devices should be repaired, replaced or returned to the customer.
• Establish processes for replacement devices and spare parts.
• Feed field failure data into the product quality and reliability process.

Team leadership

Initially this will be a hands-on individual contributor/manager role. As the customer base grows, you will grow and manage the customer support team.

• Recruit and train further support staff.
• Establish training and competency requirements.
• Develop support playbooks and escalation procedures.
• Monitor team performance and customer satisfaction.
• Build a culture of ownership and excellent customer service.

Requirements

Required

• Significant experience (10+ years) managing customer support for a technical product, ideally hardware, electronics, IoT, scientific equipment or industrial technology.
• Experience running a customer support team
• Experience building or scaling a customer support function.
• Experience with field-deployed products and/or field-service teams
• Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.
• The ability to explain technical problems clearly to customers who may not be technically specialised.
• Experience with CRM/customer-support platforms and ticketing systems.
• Strong organisational skills and attention to detail.
• Experience establishing SLAs, escalation processes and support KPIs.
• Experience managing customer returns, repairs or replacement processes.
• The confidence to work directly with engineers and challenge them constructively when customer problems aren't being resolved.

Nice to have / advantages

• Experience in newly developed hardware, electronics, manufacturing, or IoT products.
• Experience in the agriculture industry, or the food supply chain
• Experience in a start-up environment