Operations & Customer Experience Associate
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AI Summary
The associate will handle escalated customer resolutions and complex operational issues that fall outside standard procedures. They are also responsible for managing supplier relationships, purchase orders, and documenting new processes to improve team efficiency.
Operations & Customer Experience Associate
Part-time, remote (South Africa) · UK working hours ·
Reports directly to the Founder
About us
We run two direct-to-consumer brands from London. We are a jewellery brand scaling on Shopify, with a hero product sold internationally and a growing paid media operation behind it. Yasu Health is a natural supplement brand preparing for launch. Both are small, fast-moving teams. There is no corporate layer here. Decisions get made in hours, not weeks, and the people who do well with us are the ones who like that.
What this role actually is
This is not a VA role and it is not a script-following support role. We already have someone handling routine customer enquiries. This role exists to be the person who deals with everything that does not fit a template. The escalated complaint. The order that vanished somewhere between our 3PL and the customer. The supplier who has gone quiet three days before a purchase order needs confirming. The situation nobody wrote an SOP for, because nobody knew it was going to happen. We are hiring for judgement. The measure of success is simple: over time, the founder should stop being pulled into operational problems, because you are already resolving them, and resolving them the way he would have. If you like clean, predictable work with clear instructions for every task, this will frustrate you. If you like being the person things get handed to because you sort them out, read on.
Core responsibilities
1. Escalated customer resolution
● Own every ticket the first-line agent cannot resolve: complex refunds, damaged or faulty items, delivery failures, customs and duties disputes, chargebacks and payment provider claims, unhappy repeat customers.
● Investigate properly before responding. Pull the order, the tracking, the fulfilment record and the previous conversation history so your reply addresses the actual problem rather than the surface complaint.
● Make the call on goodwill: refund, replacement, partial credit or hold the line. You will have defined authority to decide most of these without asking.
● Write in our brand voice. Warm, direct, human. Never templated, never defensive.
● Flag patterns. If four people report the same fault in a week, we need to know before it becomes forty.
2. Operations problem-solving
● Act as our point of contact with our 3PL (ShipBob) and carriers. Chase stuck shipments, fulfilment errors, inventory discrepancies and mis-picks through to resolution.
● Investigate order issues end to end without needing to be told what to check.
● Keep a running record of recurring failures so we can fix causes instead of symptoms.
● Own the returns and warranty process day to day.
3. Supplier and purchase order management
● Take a produced purchase order and drive it to delivery: confirm it with the supplier, agree timings, chase updates, track production and shipping, escalate delays early.
● Manage ongoing communication with overseas suppliers, mostly in China, including managing across time zones.
● Keep stock levels and incoming inventory visible so nobody discovers a stockout by selling out.
4. Building the system as you go
● Document what you resolve. Every recurring situation you handle should end up as a repeatable process the first-line agent can own next time.
● Improve the first-line agent's playbooks so that fewer tickets need escalating over time.
● Take on standing projects as capacity allows, for example launch operations for the second brand.
Decision rights
You will be given clear authority so that you are not blocked waiting on approval. Exact limits are agreed in week one, but the shape is:
You decide alone
Refunds, replacements and goodwill up to an agreed value
Day to day carrier and 3PL escalations
Tone and wording of all customer replies
You decide and tell us
Anything above that value, or a decision that sets a precedent
Recurring faults or supplier quality issues
Process changes affecting the first-line agent
You ask first
Changes to policy, pricing or supplier terms
Anything involving legal, regulatory or safety questions
Public responses, reviews or anything that goes on social
"Use your judgement" without limits produces either paralysis or chaos. This table is how we avoid both.
What good looks like at 90 days
● Escalated tickets are being resolved without the founder seeing them.
● Response times on complex cases are inside 24 hours.
● Supplier purchase orders are progressing without anyone chasing you for updates.
● At least five recurring situations have been turned into documented processes.
● You have told us at least one thing about our operation that we did not know and should have.
Who we are looking for
Essential
● Two or more years in customer experience, operations or account management, ideally inside an ecommerce or DTC brand rather than a general call centre.
● Excellent written English. Tone matters more than grammar here, though we want both.
● Genuinely comfortable making decisions with incomplete information, and equally comfortable saying "I decided X, here is why."
● Organised enough to hold twenty open threads without dropping any.
● Available during UK working hours.
● Reliable internet and a proper working setup.
Strong advantage
● Hands-on experience with Shopify.
● Experience with a 3PL, ideally ShipBob, or with fulfilment operations generally.
● Experience dealing with overseas suppliers or freight.
● Familiarity with a helpdesk platform such as Gorgias, Zendesk or Reamaze.
● Experience handling chargebacks or PayPal disputes.
This is probably not for you if
● You want a fully defined role with no ambiguity.
● You need approval before acting on most things.
● Your experience is exclusively phone-based support to a script.
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