Vendor Acquisition and Customer Service Manager

Shop Zetu is driven largely from highly-engaged, high-value vendors who trust us to generate revenue for them, and a loyal cohort of customers who rely on us to provide for their every fashion need. To continue our rapid growth, we’ll need to expand both the demand and supply sides, while retaining our existing vendors and customers with best in class account management and customer service.

One one hand, you will be responsible for managing, motivating and guiding the vendor account management team to support our 100+ vendors that we have onboarded as well as to acquire new brands according to our strategy. Furthermore, you will be expected to drive new business from existing vendors by offering value-added services for example, content creation, warehousing or marketing services. 

On the other, you will be responsible for managing, motivating, and guiding the customer service team to create positive brand experiences, increase customer satisfaction and maximize customer retention. The individual is expected to create customer support policies and procedures for staff to adhere to, training and observing employees and assisting unsatisfied customers.

Key Responsibilities:

Revenue Growth and Market Share

  • Develop, implement and track strategies and plans to increase revenue generated from existing vendors
  • Develop, implement and track strategies and plans to increase revenue generated from our “VIP” and loyal high-spending customers

Vendor Acquisition and Management

  • Developing and implementing a vendor acquisition strategy
  • Developing and sustaining long-standing relationships with the platform vendors.
  • Ensuring technology tools and resources for managing vendors are fully operational and utilized, including 100% of vendors either directly integrated to platform, or using chosen vendor management app
  • Conducting research on available vendors to determine which vendors match our criteria for the platform 
  • Continually monitoring sales trends to determine which products and categories are more popular than others, and updating the vendor acquisition strategy in line with this 
  • Conducting interviews with new vendors and informing approved vendors of their responsibilities and obligations and taking them through the onboarding process efficiently
  • Define strategies to drive revenue from offering value-added services to existing vendors  
  • Work closely with Marketing to design and implement campaigns that drive incremental profitability and create brand awareness
  • Establishing, implementing and monitoring standards by which to assess the performance of vendors 
  • Evaluating current vendor management processes and policies and identifying ways to improve them
  • Merchandising/remerchandising based on current trends identified in conversations with buying and marketing teams alongside google analytics and SEO

Customer Support and Retention

  • Managing the customer support department’s day-to-day functions.
  • Responding to escalated customer support issues.
  • Implementing customer support processes to enhance customer satisfaction.
  • Implementing tools and technology solutions to streamline the customer service process.
  • Formulating and revising customer support policies and promoting their implementation.
  • Assessing support statistics and preparing detailed reports on the findings.
  • Managing the budget of the customer support department.
  • Keep ahead of industry’s developments and apply best practices to areas of improvement.
  • Contribute to customer feedback initiatives including customer surveys, focus groups, rating services.

Leadership

  • Recruit, mentor and develop customer service representatives and nurture an environment where they can excel through encouragement and empowerment
  • Overseeing and evaluating the team's ongoing training efforts.
  • Provide positive leadership by communicating the company’s vision, mission, goals, objectives and policies to the customer support and vendor account management teams, translating them into understandable performance indicators and targets for each individual team member.
  • Manage, motivate and measure the performance of the marketing team to ensure KPIs and targets are met, including through clearly assigning duties, and ensuring monthly one-on-ones and quarterly performance reviews are held with each team member, 
  • Drive succession planning, pre-empting the need for and managing change as necessary.
  • Hire and train staff within your teams. Provide individual support to new team members – ensuring a full induction is provided and adequate support given during their learning curve.
  • Develop skills of the team – identify individual training needs as well as encouraging effective teamwork, giving recognition and praise wherever possible.
  • Deal with team performance issues promptly and appropriately, partnering with HR as necessary.

Professional / Academic Background

  • At least a Bachelor’s degree in marketing, social sciences, business administration, or its equivalent from a recognized university.
  • At least 5 years’ experience in a customer support and/or vendor account management role.
  • Tech Savvy.


Essential Skills & Knowledge

  • Communication: Strong and convincing communication and presentation skills – able to get ideas across quickly and effectively and gain relevant buy-in and support. Ability to present reports and information to other executives and their team members.
  • Relationship building: The ability to develop and maintain relationships internally and with vendors/customers that results in customer loyalty and repeat business
  • Customer service: The ability to put our customers first and ensure that all customer queries/issues are resolved whilst giving the customers a positive experience throughout the resolution process
  • Business Development: Ability to sell paid services to external parties
  • Problem solving: A problem-solving mindset, together with a creative and innovative thought process in any challenging situation.
  • Accuracy: Ability to perform work accurately and thoroughly.
  • Demonstrated skills, knowledge and experience in the design and execution of marketing plans and strategies.
  • Commitment to working with shared leadership and in cross-functional teams.

The role reports to the General Manager.

Sound like you? Apply now! We’re made up of passionate, creative and strong-minded folks that love to get things done in a fast-paced environment. We are constantly seeking entrepreneurial, dynamic and collaborative individuals to join our team.

How To Apply

Kindly forward your application to recruitment@shopzetu.com indicating the job title as the subject. Please also share a cover letter and include your detailed curriculum vitae (CV).

Closing date: 28.02.2022