Customer Support Associate

ABOUT ALU

ALU is re-imagining university education for the 21st century by applying an innovative approach to tertiary education. We are leveraging modern pedagogy, advanced education technology and global partnerships with leading employers and universities to provide a deeply engaging learning experience. We are building campuses across the continent to deliver this new model of higher education. Our first two campuses —Mauritius and Rwanda— are already open, as is the ALU School of Business and five other hubs in major cities across the continent. Our ultimate objective is to develop 3 million game-changing leaders for Africa and the world by 2060.

HOW WE WORK

As a high-growth start-up, the ALU Team approaches education from first principles, empowers individuals to design, test, and implement creative new ideas, and works closely together to craft transformative learning experiences. We are deeply passionate about our students and excited by the challenge of building something entirely new.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As part of the team, you will play a vital role in establishing an efficient and sustainable Customer Support system. First of all, you will be responsible for scoping out the support of level 1, ensuring that you work with the rest of the teams on Zendesk so that you take on more and more of their queries to lessen their customer facing time. You, together with the individual teams, will collaboratively define improvement areas and clearly map out ways of working towards efficiency in those areas. 

You will be responsible for reporting the specified Customer Support data to the Data and Operations team for Exco updates. You will also track and share quantitative and qualitative KPIs to the operational agents on Zendesk. This data, feedback and observations shared with the various stakeholders will shed light on improvement needs, which you will have to initiate and drive across the organization. The goal is to obtain a high level of adherence to the agreed SLAs, and have a seamless customer support system. 

To fulfill this mission, you must be someone who has great oral and written communication skills, an analytical mindset, autonomous working style and project management techniques. You will be reporting directly to and closely working with the Data Unit Manager. Please note that this role has abundant opportunities for growth if you demonstrate the leadership abilities to handle the Customer Support function independently with minimal supervision.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Level 1 tickets management
• Identify areas for improvement, set a timeline for Customer Support efficiency, automate support where possible, scope out and execute level 1 involvement
• Keep a close communication loop with all ALU stakeholders involved in the support process
• Identify gaps and improvement opportunities, and drive those across organization starting with teams on Zendesk
• Ensure the usage and maintenance of the knowledge database across the organization.
• Set ambitious issue resolution targets and relentlessly work towards meeting them.
• Work closely with Zendesk admin, identify any knowledge gaps and organize learning sessions. We are looking for someone who can quickly learn the administrative side of Zendesk and eventually work autonomously to onboard new teams and support existing ones onto Zendesk with minimal supervision from the current Zendesk administrator.
• Generate, share, and analyze KPIs and reports with the relevant stakeholders on a regular basis
• Any other responsibilities assigned by your line manager.

REQUIREMENTS 

• Minimum qualification of a Bachelor's degree from an accredited institution.
• At least 1-2 years of experience working with Zendesk or other customer service software. Applicants with strong administrative knowledge of Zendesk would be preferred.
• Excellent people management and relationship building skills
• Strong data analysis and visualization skills.
• Demonstrated ability to use different software effectively to manage and process data, and agility to learn new software and tools fast.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Project management skills, particularly strong work planning, prioritization, time management, scheduling and organization skills.