Customer Support Contractor

This role will require someone to be available somewhere between 8am UK time and midday UK time on Saturdays and Sundays, for 2-3 hours, on an ongoing basis. Other hours may be available acting as backup for colleagues in various timezones on an irregular basis when they need sick time or holiday cover, and there's a possibility for an expansion of hours to cover the same slot on Fridays. If your schedule or your time zone doesn't allow for that, keep watching our pages for future opportunities to work together!

We're looking for someone with excellent written communication skills and the ability to help with sometimes tricky problems. Some experience with customer support will be helpful but is not required for the right fit. If that sounds like you, read on!

Position requirements:

A self-employed contractor who can provide some user support on Saturday and Sunday each week, in the morning UK time, for up to 3 hours per day (depending on email volumes)
Some availability to cover colleagues on M-F and on Saturday/Sunday afternoon where needed is highly preferable
Must be willing to use Beeminder, at least for work-related goals, in order to gain familiarity with the tool (we'll give you premium credit which you can use for $0 pledges if you prefer)
For interview and training purposes, must initially be available during the UK working day (9am - 6pm) on M-F for at least a couple of hours
Facility, persistence, and patience with learning new systems
Willingness to try things out for yourself to fully understand a problem
Comfortable holding people accountable for past commitments (if you can't say "no", this role isn't for you!)
Comfortable working remotely with a fully distributed team, for which most interactions are over Slack messages, forum posts, or emails.

Optional things that are good to have:

Familiarity with the tools we use for support (particularly Slack and Help Scout) is beneficial but not required
Prior familiarity with Beeminder
Familiarity with (some of) the tools Beeminder integrates with (Trello, Todoist, GitHub, Twitter, Duolingo, etc)
Experience providing written customer service and support

Pay:

We're looking for someone who will charge about $25 (USD) per hour. They will also receive enough site credit to get our highest premium plan approximately free.

To Apply:

Email jobs@beeminder.com and let us know:

Why you think you'd be good in this role (in under 250 words)
What experience you've had with similar or related tasks (under 250 words is preferable)
Read the "Don't just offer help, ask for it" section of our "Behind the Curtain" blog post and write a short response to the user in the following fictional scenario. A good answer can be given in around 150 words.

We will review applications as they come in, and may contact you at that point to set up a time for us to chat and get to know you, or wait until we have a few to compare. If this page is still active, things are still wide open!

Fictional Scenario:

For this scenario, assume that this is the 5th or 6th time in as many weeks that the user has emailed with a request of this type, often for multiple goals at the same time. Each time, the team has explained how to fix the problem.

It's worth bearing in mind that charges can be cancelled in the first 24 hours if someone replies quickly enough with time for support to get to it, but refunds cost Beeminder money (a flat fee + a percentage of the original charge). That said, we never want to charge someone if it's unfair.

Hi! I'm really sorry, I got confused again and pressed button A instead of button B. I know there's a way to fix this myself but I don't have time and I always get confused, so can you get it all sorted out for me again, just this once? And I need the charge refunded again as well. Thanks!

The tone should be friendly and informal and not remotely LLM-ish. Fair warning, Support Czar Nicky is against LLMs. You may want to read our recent post about AI in Beeminder. The short version is that an LLM should never ever put words in your mouth.

You don't have to look anything technical up on our website in writing your response; you can invent a "button C" that fixes everything if you'd like: we just want to get a sense of what tone you're inclined to take.