Customer Support Generalist

About Us 

Academia.edu is a venture-backed, for-profit, and profitable company based in San Francisco. We are recognized as the world’s leading platform for researchers and scholars to share work, discover research, and connect with academics globally. Our bold vision is to democratize and accelerate the world's research, enhancing the speed of scientific discovery and technological progress for the benefit of everyone. We imagine a world where accessing academic papers is effortless, keeping track of cutting-edge research is seamless and collaborating with researchers is easier than ever before. Our platform empowers millions of scholars worldwide to push the boundaries of human understanding. We believe that academic research is a lever that improves the progress of humanity, and our commitment to this mission drives everything we do.

Join us as we continue to redefine what's possible in the world of research. Discover careers that challenge, inspire and propel you toward a future where your ideas can truly change the world. At Academia.edu, we're not just shaping the future of research—we're shaping the future of possibilities.

Please note that this role is in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Our office comes alive on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays! Three times a week, our Bay Area team gathers in our office located in San Francisco's Financial District (580 California St) for All Hands meetings, collaborative sessions, innovation-driven brainstorming, and events that bring us closer together. Our space has everything we need—from cozy rooms for 1:1 mentoring and focused work to larger rooms designed for team activities.

About the team 

You will be the third person on a lean team with an extremely ambitious task: supporting Academia’s 300M+ users when they have questions about how to use our product to share their research, communicate with other scholars, and improve their academic reputation. Because the team is small, you’ll be wearing a lot of different hats. You’ll also have easy and direct access to all the team members and be able to make an immediate impact.

About you: 

We’re looking for a thoughtful, autonomous, and detail-oriented CUSTOMER SUPPORT GENERALIST to respond accurately and quickly to our customers, and to increase the team’s efficiency by improving both internal and external processes and documentation.

Not sure if you’re the right fit? We are looking for someone who is an expert in either technical customer support, process optimization, or building effective help centers, and who has the willingness to upskill in the other areas. 

How you’ll contribute: 

Day-to-day customer support

• Communicate with customers to identify their problems and find solutions in a helpful and thoughtful manner

• Identify and monitor recurring issues and customer feedback, and provide weekly updates to team leadership

Process Optimization

• Improve clarity, accuracy, and cohesiveness of our internal and external documentation 

• Solve our current inefficiencies, such as our voicemail system

Technical Improvement/Analysis

• Triage and scope bugs reported by customers

• Investigate and submit bugs, communicating effectively with engineering and product

External Documentation

• Build out a new help center for our users 

Core Competencies for the Role:

• Process Optimization: make our work easier and faster and proactively identify process inefficiencies and craft solutions 

• Communication: communicate effectively with our users, remaining kind even when they’re challenging, as well as communicate with a high degree of technical competency with our team

• Autonomy & Self-Motivation: work independently and act without direction, proactively looking for ways to improve the customer experience

• Technical competency: figure out how technical things work and troubleshoot technical issues

Qualifications: 

• GED or high school diploma required, associates or bachelor’s preferred

• Fluent in reading and writing English with excellent spelling and grammar

• Demonstrable track record of process optimization and/or technical customer support

• 2+ years of customer support experience

• Experience with CRM technology, ideally Zendesk

• Experience with automation technologies such as Zapier 

• Experience troubleshooting bugs and writing bug reports

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in academia, with the Academia.edu platform, or with educational technology

• Reading or writing Ruby on Rails and/or SQL

• Experience with REST APIs

• Experience with internal tooling software

This role is hourly, non-exempt

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