Customer Success Specialist

RISE Customer Success Specialist, Product

Reports to: Chief of Data Strategy and Product Innovation

Location: New Haven, CT (Hybrid), with some regional travel

Overview:

The RISE Network's mission is to ensure all RISE high school students graduate with a plan and the skills and confidence to achieve college and career success. Founded in 2015, RISE partners with public high schools to lead networks where school communities work together to use data to learn and improve. Through its core and most comprehensive network, RISE partners with nine high schools and eight public school districts, serving over 13,000 students; the majority of RISE students identify as Black, Latine, and/or low-income. Through scale partnerships, RISE collaborated with 50+ additional high schools during the school year, spanning six states. RISE high schools work together to ensure all students experience success as they transition to, through, and beyond high school by using data to pinpoint needs, form hypotheses, and pursue ideas to advance student achievement.

Over the past ten years, RISE Core Network high schools have achieved double-digit gains improving Grade 9 on-track achievement, four-year-high school graduation rates, and student identification of postsecondary plans, while also decreasing subgroup gaps across all indicators. In 2021, the RISE Network was honored to receive the Carnegie Foundation's annual Spotlight on Quality in Continuous Improvement recognition. Increasingly, RISE is pursuing opportunities to scale its impact through the expansion of the RISE Data Hub and consulting partnerships with public school districts, state agencies, and non-profit organizations.

Position Summary and Essential Job Functions:

The RISE Customer Success Specialist will play an important role in promoting engagement and satisfaction with RISE data products. This is a new role on a growing team that provides a variety of data tools to our partner schools and districts across the Northeast. RISE data products, especially our flagship Data Hub, are a key part of RISE's strategy to improve student outcomes. The Data Hub has tripled its number of customers since being brought to market two years ago, and is a beloved tool by many users, maintaining ~90% satisfaction rates.

Reporting directly to the Chief of Data Strategy and Product Innovation, the Customer Success Specialist will manage relationships with customers and users while also building and maintaining systems to do so sustainably. The role sits on RISE's Data Team and bridges data strategy with educational practice, ensuring that technical solutions lead to real-world improvements for students and educators. This is an extraordinary opportunity for an individual who thrives in an entrepreneurial environment, and is passionate about closing opportunity gaps and developing the potential of all students regardless of life circumstance.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Partner Relationship Management (40%)

• Build long-term trusting relationships with key school and district leaders

• Be the primary point of contact for school/district leaders through contracting, integration, and implementation for RISE data products
• Support school/district leaders to make and execute rollout and implementation plans for RISE data products
• Collaborate with Data Engineering Manager to effectively integrate new districts
• Use data to monitor the health of customer accounts, including adoption and satisfaction
• Drive towards retention and expansion of RISE data products within districts
• Collaborate with RISE network coaches in support of district partnerships
• Collaborate with internal teams to identify and address barriers to partner engagement

• Plan and facilitate in-person trainings, especially as products launch within a district

• User Support and Research (40%)

• Develop training materials to help users effectively adopt RISE data products

• Build and maintain a help center to proactively address user needs and questions
• Monitor, triage, and respond to user questions or issues in a timely, professional manner
• Track incoming bug reports and share them with relevant team members
• Translate user feedback into actionable insights for product and engineering teams
• Organize and maintain product backlogs with user stories and feature ideas
• Work w/ Chief of Data Strategy & Product Innovation to define development priorities
• Lead on the composition and delivery of Product Newsletters sent to users

• Facilitate opportunities for user input and testing, including Hub Innovation Fellows

• Business Development and Growth (20%)

• Identify and cultivate potential new district and school partners who could benefit from RISE data products

• Pitch and demo RISE data products to prospective customers in a compelling way
• Represent RISE data products at conferences and other events
• Contribute insights from existing partnerships to inform RISE's growth strategy

Required Knowledge and Skills:

• Knowledge of and experience with the lived realities of high school educators, counselors, and administrators
• Ability to quickly build and grow relationships with diverse school and district stakeholders, including Superintendents and senior staff
• Experience setting ambitious goals and driving towards measurable results
• Ability to translate between highly technical audiences (engineers, developers, district data staff) and non-technical audiences (teachers, RISE coaches, etc) and be compelling to both
• Experience leading trainings for adult learners in a variety of formats
• Strong ability to quickly become comfortable in using new software to its fullest potential
• Outstanding interpersonal skills and teamwork
• Commitment to systems-driven solutions for scalable and sustained impact
• Strong organizational and project management skills
• Strong belief that all students can learn and achieve at high levels
• Ability to ramp up on new content and work in an independent and self-motivated manner
• Desire to work in a dynamic, entrepreneurial, and results-driven environment
• Positive attitude and willingness to work in a collaborative environment

Preferred Knowledge and Skills:

• Experience using a customer relationship management system, especially Raiser's Edge NXT
• Experience managing a help desk ticketing system such as Zendesk

Required Education and Experience:

• Professional experience as follows

• Minimum of 2 years in a customer success role OR

• Minimum of 4 years as a school or district leader

Salary Range

$70,000 - $90,000

Most new hires' salaries fall within the first half of the range, allowing team members to grow in their roles. For those who already have significant and aligned experiences at the same level as the role, placement may be at the higher end of the range.

The Connecticut RISE Network is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes candidates from diverse backgrounds.