Customer Success Lead
Description
What Does AllWage Do?
AllWage builds time-and-attendance and payroll software that helps 400+ businesses in construction, agriculture and manufacturing manage, pay and grow their waged teams with confidence.
With waged work, pay depends on what actually happened: the hours worked, the agreed rates and other rules that apply. As teams grow across sites and shifts, getting that right becomes more complex. AllWage connects the work done to correct, explainable pay, giving employers a system they can rely on and employees pay they can easily view, understand and trust.
South Africa needs more people employed. We want to make it easier for businesses to take on their next worker, their next team and their next site, with confidence that they can manage and pay people properly as they grow.
Why should you apply?
You’ll be the second dedicated Customer Success hire at AllWage, working alongside the Head of Customer Success to shape how we retain and delight our customers as we scale. This is a hands-on role today, with the opportunity to build and lead a customer success team over time.
AI adoption is driving change on multiple fronts: how we build software, what customers want and expect from SaaS products, and how we divide up customer-facing work between technology and humans. That makes this a fascinating space to work in. You’ll need to regularly reassess where your attention is best spent, automating as much as possible and adapting as customer needs change.
You’ll have real freedom to decide how we set up tooling, portfolios and playbooks for customer success. You’ll also work alongside a strong team of AI-native engineers and a rapidly evolving product.
We’re a fully remote, profitable team of 18, and we discuss company finances and strategy openly with everyone. You’ll get a front-row seat to what it takes to build a software business, and you’ll work closely with people across the company.
What does our ideal candidate look like?
Our ideal candidate is as comfortable setting strategy as they are getting their hands dirty and talking to customers every day. They can look across a customer base and decide where attention matters most, and they can pick up the phone and help someone get unstuck.
They don’t just fix the immediate issue; they work out why it happened and change how we do things so it doesn’t happen again. They have real empathy for the small business owner or HR manager often juggling multiple priorities, and make the next step easy.
They use AI to work faster and think more clearly, and they stay focused on the customer’s needs and ideal outcomes. They are happy to build structure rather than inherit it, and they take ownership of problems without being chased.
What will you actually do?
In your first few months, most of your time will be spent working directly with customers: a hand-picked set of at-risk and high-value accounts. That’s how you’ll learn what’s really going wrong and what works. On your accounts you decide what to do next, without waiting for instructions.
Alongside that, we expect you to have opinions on how we operate, from how we prioritise accounts to the playbooks and tools we use. You’ll bring recommendations to the Head of Customer Success and we’ll decide together, quickly.
A typical week: about four days with customers and accounts, and one day improving how we work. Over time, as the portfolio stabilises, more of your time shifts to building the system and, eventually, the team.
Background
4+ years in customer success, account management, implementation or onboarding, ideally for a SaaS or software product.
Demonstrated, hands-on experience using AI tools to drive operational efficiency, automate workflows, or solve business problems.
Experience shaping how customer success is run. Segmenting a customer base, prioritising accounts by value and risk, and deciding where the team's time goes.
Experience mentoring others or leading projects, or a clear appetite to.
Ability to understand and speak Afrikaans in a business context preferred.
Responsibilities
Portfolio Strategy: Help decide how we segment customers and build portfolios, which customers to focus on, and what level of attention each one gets.
Onboarding to Value: Work with new customers from signup to a working daily habit, keeping every onboarding process moving and unblocking those that stall.
Account Health: Track health signals such as usage, open issues and time since last contact, and step in early, before an account becomes a risk.
Retention Conversations: Talk with customers who are thinking of leaving, understand the real reason, offer a save where it makes sense and record what you learn.
Tooling, Playbooks and AI: Decide how we set up tooling, playbooks and processes for customer success so the whole team can pick up and work with any customer.
Training and Knowledge Sharing: Run check-ins, Q&As and training so customers adopt what they pay for, and turn recurring questions into guides and best practices.
Voice of the Customer: Pass clear patterns (repeat setup problems, common cancellation reasons) to Product, Sales and Support, and help turn them into changes.
Critical Competencies
Analytical Depth: Reads customer usage and account data, spots what’s off and works out why. Turns patterns into decisions rather than reports.
AI Fluency and Application: Uses AI every day to analyse data, automate routine work and improve the quality of customer conversations. Knows when AI is the right tool and when a person is.
Effective Communication: Explains complex ideas simply, in writing and on calls, for audiences from business owners and farm managers to data-minded customers who want raw access. Adapts tone and detail to the person.
Ownership and Initiative: A self-starter who follows a problem through to the end, tells us early when something is going wrong, and acts without waiting to be asked.
Building and Adaptability: Happy to build structure rather than inherit it. Embraces change, learns quickly and incorporates feedback in a product and team that keep evolving.
Collaboration and Resilience: Works well with Product, Sales, Support and engineers in a remote team, and stays focused and effective under pressure.
Client-Centric Approach: Puts clients first; seeks to understand and meet their unique needs with empathy and a strong commitment to customer service.
Interview process
Submit CV + Questionnaire
Initial phone call with Annelie (Head of Customer Success)
Homework assignment
Formal interview (Annelie + Co-Founder)
Sim day
Offer & welcome to the team
Skills
As published by ashby · 9 questions · 5 written answers
Basics
Name, Email, Resume
Short answers (3)
- Where are you currently based? We are fully remote, from anywhere in South Africa.
- Notice period / earliest start date?
- What are your salary expectations?
Pick from a list (1)
- How would you rate your business-level Afrikaans?
Written answers (5)
- Why are you applying for this role, and why AllWage? (max 150 words)
- Which parts of your past experience make you a strong fit for this role? Pick the one or two that matter most and be specific. (max 150 words)
- Imagine you take over our full customer base of 400+ clients tomorrow. How would you decide in your first month who gets your attention? Tell us what you’d look at, and what you’d deliberately ignore.
- Tell us about a customer you thought was about to leave. What were the signals, what did you do, and what happened? If you lost them, say so and tell us what you’d do differently.
- Describe one workflow in your customer-facing work that you’ve changed with AI in the last six months: what it looked like before, what it looks like now, and which tools you used.