Client Success and Support Specialist

Remote · Des Moines, IA area

About VolunteerLocal

VolunteerLocal is a volunteer management platform used by nonprofits and event organizers around the world.

Our clients are nonprofits like food banks, community organizations, and animal shelters, where volunteers are the backbone of operations. Others are festivals, races, and other episodic events with thousands of participants and concrete dates. Our clients span the full spectrum of technical ability, but the stakes of their work are always real.

We're a team of three. Everyone's work is visible, and what you do affects clients running events that matter. We value open-mindedness, intellectual honesty, and a willingness to see things from someone else's perspective.

The role

This is a remote role based in the Des Moines, Iowa area, with occasional in-person team meetings. A coworking space allowance is available at any time during employment if you'd prefer to work outside your home.

Standard hours are 8:30 AM–5:30 PM CST, Monday through Friday, full-time. Beyond time spent directly supporting clients, you'll need to protect focused time for project work such as onboarding prep, documentation updates, testing, and QA.

What you'll do

You'll be the person new clients work with to set up their VolunteerLocal account, as well as the person current clients reach out to for support. Retention and satisfaction are the outcomes that matter most — your work directly affects whether clients stay with us year over year and send new customers our way.

Onboarding

• Train new clients on account setup. The goal is a confident go-live, usually completed over Zoom.
• Import client volunteer data into their accounts. This is hands-on technical work: CSV files need to be formatted correctly and imported into the appropriate areas of the account.
• Notice where clients get stuck during setup, and feed that back to product and the help center.

Support

• Handle inbound support across email and voicemail. Aim to respond within 3 hours during working hours.
• Use judgment about communication methods. If email isn't resolving the issue, consider a return phone call or a scheduled Zoom to help move things along.
• Keep ticket and customer data accurate across Zendesk and the CRM, so the team has a reliable record of every interaction.

Product testing and QA

• Reproduce reported issues in the platform before forwarding to development or product, so escalations arrive with a confirmed problem and clear steps to reproduce, not a guess.
• Assist with testing new feature releases across the key account scenarios to confirm they work in real client conditions before clients see them.

Product knowledge and insights

• Maintain and improve the self-service knowledge base as the product changes.
• Distribute end-of-ticket satisfaction surveys (a light NPS-style signal) and flag both standout positive feedback and recurring concerns for the team.
• Summarize what you're seeing across onboarding and support into themes that leadership can act on.

What we're looking for

• You figure things out. You exhaust what's available (documentation, account history, the product itself) before bringing it to the team.
• You think on your feet. When a client describes a problem in real time, you can break it apart and land on a workable answer before the call ends. You stay sharp when a curveball lands mid-conversation.
• You own your work. You don't disappear when something goes wrong. You name it, address it, and move on.
• You're steady under pressure. The race is in four days. The client is panicking. You are not. Calm is contagious in both directions.
• You want to make things better. The product is always evolving, and clients bring us new scenarios and questions. You notice the patterns and feel pulled to improve the processes and documentation.

What you'll bring

• A reliable workspace with stable internet.
• Experience in a customer-facing role. The work draws on real-time problem-solving and adapting quickly to new tools, so a wide range of customer-facing backgrounds can transfer well.
• Strong written communication. You'll be writing email tickets, help center articles, surveys, and client emails daily.
• Comfort with technical workflows. Data imports (CSV), account configuration, and learning new platforms quickly are part of the job.
• Comfort with AI tools, or willingness to learn. We use AI for tasks like research, first-draft writing, and pattern analysis. We also know when AI is the wrong tool and human judgment is required, and we expect the same instinct from you. Familiarity helps; openness is required.

Compensation and benefits

Application

1. Resume
2. LinkedIn URL
3. A short video introduction (60–90 seconds). Introduce yourself in a video, ideally at the location where you would work remotely. Tell us about yourself, and why this role interests you!
4. A writing exercise to help us see how you think and write.
5. A short follow-up question about how you think about AI: a time you used it well, and a time you decided not to.

Writing exercise