2014-10-27

Calling all friendly, technically-savvy, caring individuals interested in a part-time (20 hours), remote position as a full-fledged member of the YNAB team!  One of the things we do best is take care of our customers–and that is no accident. We love our YNAB customers. If you are somewhat of a self-proclaimed YNAB wizard and people are always commenting on how helpful and patient you are this could be a perfect fit. Read on.

The Position

We need you to help us take care of our favorite person: the YNAB Customer.

We love the YNAB customer. (Yes, we already said this, but there is just so much love!) Sometimes he knows YNAB backward and forward, and just needs to find out how to retrieve his license key. Other times the YNAB customer is a bit confused, because he’s used to Quicken, and we think about money differently around here.

Sometimes she’s got a question about her budget and why she thinks it isn’t balancing. Or she’s wondering how to get started (importing two years of historical data). Other times she maybe accidentally purchased twice, and needs us to refund one of the purchases.

Sometimes the YNAB customer is a little miffed, because we screwed up somewhere (we are truly sorry!). Other times the YNAB customer is extremely happy, and writes in just to say thanks (you’re welcome!).

We love the YNAB customer. If you’d love interacting with the him or her on a regular basis, please do continue reading.

Working at YNAB

We protect our culture. We’re proud of it. We even went so far as to write it down as a manifesto. (That manifesto is a cover letter cheat sheet.)

If that manifesto resonates with you, then you’ll probably fit right in, here at YNAB (there’s actually no “here” here. We work remotely all over the world, but we think we have a pretty tight-knit group. We’re quite proud of that).

Here are a few more details on how we work at YNAB. Imagine working in this environment, and see if you don’t get some warm fuzzies. That means you should apply ;)

We all work from home. It’s awesome for so many reasons.

We meet each other in person sometimes to work on big tasks or get started on large projects (we like each other, so this part is fun). We’d do that with you too, to get you up to speed quickly.

We’re profitable, and in this for the long haul. We haven’t taken any outside investor money, and we haven’t borrowed any money.

We budget for the business with YNAB’s Four Rules.

We make a huge, positive difference in people’s lives.

When you do amazing things, we give you a bonus. We don’t have a document describing this “bonus system.”

We give birthday and Christmas gifts.

Once you start, we demand (in a friendly way) that you fill out your “Bucket List” spreadsheet, where the entire team stores their bucket list. Good things then follow.

We all chip in each week to do five support cases. It’s a way for the entire team to stay in touch with the customer, and always have front-of-mind what it’s like to be on the front line.

Now, let’s talk about you.

Our Ideal YNAB Support Rep—You?

You’ll have the impossible task of seeing the forest and the trees. You’ll be able to dig far into the depths of a customer case, infer from their (sometimes extremely vague) descriptions exactly what’s going on, anticipate where they’ll trip up next, and clearly explain exactly what they need to do in order to continue having success with YNAB.

You don’t mind answering the same question multiple times in the same day, because its a different customer each time–another chance to make someone’s day.

Your role is supremely important. You will be the face of YNAB. You will see an email from a customer as an opportunity to delight, surprise, and exceed expectations. You manage to do that even when you deliver a different answer than the customer was hoping for.

You’re also technically quite savvy. You know your way around the Mac and Windows operating systems, you’re very comfortable with smartphones, and you’re always looking for new ways to make your job more efficient and effective. Having to figure out why a customer’s budget isn’t syncing correctly doesn’t scare you. And maybe the thought of digging into software log files is a little exciting.

You’re really good at switching gears. You’ll answer three emails in a row–one about how to get a reluctant spouse to budget, the next about how to sync multiple budgets on the same android device, and another from a college student who has lost their key (twice now)–and not miss a beat.

You know that speed of response is extremely important, but you can walk that fine line between speed and accuracy. You are a master of being direct and friendly with the same sentence.

You play really nicely with others. You’re flexible. You adapt and adjust. You love to learn. You love constructive feedback because it helps you improve. You pick up cases mid-stream, from a colleague who is off for the weekend and offer a virtual high-five when the case is closed, customer satisfied.

You love taking that one little extra step beyond what’s expected. You love putting a cherry on top of a customer’s experience. You’re creative in that way. You consistently force us to ask you questions like:

“Wow. How did you think of that?”

“How did you know the customer meant ‘x’, when he was saying ‘y’ the whole time?”

“Where did you learn to type so fast?”

“Have you written a book on customer service? Why NOT?!”

A Day in the Life…

You’re scheduled for specific days, and specific windows of time. We’ve worked with you and the other reps to make sure the schedule is maintainable and fits with your life.

As an example, let’s say your target window is 20 hours each week, from 6-10PM Mountain on MTuWF, and 9AM-1PM on Sundays. It’s Tuesday evening about 6PM and you jump into the queue. Your support teammate finished up around 1PM that same day, so there’s a bit of a backlog in the queue. You knock through those 20 cases in about an hour. It’s now 7PM and the queue is clear. What does this mean for you? It means you wait for the next support cases to arrive, and absolutely delight the customer by responding within three minutes of them writing in!

If no cases are rolling in, you may work on a few things that will improve your workflow, practice uncovering errors in log files, shoot an email to your teammates with a question about a difficult case, or check in our #general Slack channel and see what the entire team is up to. What we’re shooting for is a queue that is empty more than it’s full, and response times that average less than an hour. If that’s happening, you and your teammates are hitting it out of the park.

Nitty-Gritty Details

I love that you’ve stayed with me. Here are the nitty-gritty details:

We’ll need you committed to 20 hours per week.

Four of those hours will likely be on a Saturday or Sunday.

This will depend on how it all shakes out with the hiring (since there are several openings), but we’ll need you to be able to commit to a set schedule. That schedule will depend a lot on who is hired.

All else equal between two fantastic candidates, we’ll go with the combination that gets us the best coverage of our support queue across time zones.

If English isn’t your first language, you need to be absolutely, completely fluent in it. We also accept British and Australian English.

If you’re in the US, you’ll be a W2 employee. If you’re international, you’ll be a contractor. Either way, to us, you’re just a critical part of the team.

You need to know YNAB backward and forward.

Prior customer service experience is a plus, but is not required.

Pay will be in the $13 to $20 per hour range, depending on experience.

How to Become one of YNAB’s Next Support Reps

Send an email as your cover letter to YNAB-YNAB0007@applications.recruiterbox.com. No need to attach it as a PDF or anything like that. Just make the email your cover letter.

Include “a TAD Friendly” in the subject line. Please include that, or we won’t read it.

You can send a resume, but spend a lot of time on your cover letter :)

In your cover include the following:

How to purchase one of your favorite things online.

A riveting description of your grandest computer-related technical achievement.

The deadline for applications is quite scary. October 31st, as the clock strikes twelve!!

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