Summary of Job:

The Support Lead is responsible for overseeing a team of Support Advisors, who are directly responsible for providing prompt, high-quality, and personalised support solutions to families for escalated queries that the AI agent cannot fully resolve. The Support Lead is paramount to the mission of ensuring an exceptional learner and guardian experience. A core focus of this role is on people management and performance, with a keen emphasis on monitoring service level agreements (SLAs) and the overall quality of support provided by the team. The Support Lead is the ultimate point of reference for their team, providing expert input on learner and guardian cases, and managing and deescalating escalations. This leadership role is essential in driving outstanding customer service and family retention, enabling the Support Advisors to be the reliable, problem-solving point of contact that makes all the difference for families.

Key Responsibilities:

Team Management and Leadership:

• Champion a culture of excellent customer service, collaboration, and innovation, partnering with LearnerExperience Leadership to drive continuous improvement and team development.
• Lead and empower a team of Support Advisors, providing clear direction and supportive leadership to ensure the team's daily operations run smoothly and they consistently meet performance objectives.
• Champion operational efficiency, continuously analysing team workflows and processes to identify opportunities for improvement and equip the team to resolve queries more efficiently and at scale.
• Serve as the primary escalation point, offering expert guidance and hands-on support to the team for the timely and effective resolution of complex learner and guardian queries, including technical troubleshooting.
• Serve as the ultimate point of resolution for escalated complaints, expertly de-escalating issues and providing the guidance needed to resolve them definitively.
• Monitor team performance using data and metrics to drive efficiency and meet defined KPIs.
• Mentor, coach, and motivate team members through regular one-on-one meetings, performance reviews, and quality assurance, ensuring continuous professional growth.
• Foster a collaborative environment that encourages the sharing of best practices and constructive peer feedback.
• Strategically manage team resources through effective workforce and capacity planning, ensuring optimal redundancy and resource allocation to meet both daily and long-term objectives.

Learner and Guardian Experience:

• Proactively identify areas for improvement in internal as well as learner- and guardian-facing procedures, and provide improvement suggestions and solutions.
• Work with the LearnerExperience Leadership to implement new and improved processes and strategies to enhance the support the team provides to learners and guardians.

Operational Excellence & AI Collaboration:

• Collaborate with the team to continuously optimise the AI assistant's effectiveness by identifying areas for improvement and contributing to its knowledge base.
• Review a sample of AI-only interactions to ensure consistency, accuracy, and adherence to quality standards.
• Analyse trends in learner and guardian queries to provide insights for improving overall service delivery for both AI and human support.
• Drive process improvement initiatives to simplify tasks and achieve business outcomes within the AI-human support model.

Stakeholder Communication & Advocacy:

• Act as a point of escalation for the Support Advisors when they need to liaise with other teams, such as the Finance Team for billing issues or internal teams for unresolved complaints.
• Serve as an internal advocate for learners and guardians, communicating their needs and concerns to relevant departments to drive systemic improvements.

Education and experience:

• A bachelor's degree in Education, Communication, Counseling or Psychology.
• A minimum of two years of experience in a customer service role.
• Demonstrated management and leadership experience, with at least one year of experience in mentoring and leading a team.
• A strong interest in the AI-human support model, with a focus on driving process improvements and enhancing service delivery through innovative collaboration.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
• A deep-seated customer support mindset with a proactive approach to problem-solving and de-escalating customer complaints.
• Operationally savvy.
• Experience in a fast-paced environment where continuous change and iterative feedback loops are common.

Realities of the role:

• Valenture Institute is a fast-paced startup. We are not a traditional school! We are reimagining schooling
  and precedent needs to be adopted only where it has proven to have great results. If you think that
  traditional schools have it all figured out, this is probably not the right role for you.
• Collaboration is the name of the game. We operate in highly specialised teams, and our ability to deliver
  an excellent student experience is premised on our team’s ability to collaborate, value the contributions
  of their teammates (including those in other teams) and see the value in the “rubbing of minds”. If you
  do not find value in having your ideas interrogated or others weighing in on how things could
  foreseeably be done, you are unlikely to enjoy the role. Similarly, if you are not comfortable with other
  teams being accountable for different parts of the learning experience, you are unlikely to find this
  environment to be a good fit for you.
• The LearnerExperience team are master multitaskers. They enjoy the pace and variety of parent and
  student engagements, coaching groups, monitoring multiple data points, updating student progress
  monitoring resources, collaborating with teams, dealing with special cases, and working on multiple
  systems — all in a day’s work! If you prefer long periods of deep, uninterrupted time, you are unlikely to
  enjoy this role.
• Providing a seamless learning experience for students and parents often involves a lot of backend
  admin. The ideal candidate would have a pragmatic understanding of the value that administrative tasks
  bring to bear on the experience of an end user.
• As a new brand of schooling operating at the forefront of digital disruption, technical challenges do
  arise. The ideal candidate will have an appreciation for how necessary it is to fail fast and fail forward,
  learn through iterative feedback loops, and embrace the process of continuous learning.
• Change is constant as a result of rapid learning cycles. If consistent change gives you energy rather
  than drains your energy, you are likely to thrive in this environment. Similarly, if you are adept at managing yourself in a demanding environment and understand the importance of self awareness and
  boundaries in your work, you are likely to do very well.

Requirements:

● Police clearance required

● Sexual offenders affidavit

Benefits:

• Family member discount to Valenture Institute
• Remote working
• Voluntary savings programme
• Half-day birthday leave

Equal opportunity employer:

Valenture Institute is committed to transformation and the company's Employment Equity plan will be considered during the selection process. Valenture Institute considers itself an Equal Opportunity Employer and thus aims to eliminate all forms of unfair discrimination in the recruitment and selection of staff.