Senior Manager, Community Programs

Job Description

Zendesk’s Digital CX team is on a mission to enable Zendesk customers and prospects through relevant, high-quality digital engagement, built from the deep well of knowledge our community members have. Our community programs support this effort by nurturing connections and relationships across our user base, fostering a culture of knowledge sharing, open dialogue, and mutual growth. We are seeking an action-oriented and innovative Senior Manager to manage key strategic programs and day-to-day operations for the Zendesk Community team. This agile and talented team of Community specialists and engagement managers are responsible for online forums, user groups, and community-based customer advocacy initiatives. This role will help the team achieve our goals to drive retention, growth, advocacy, and value realization across our user base. 

The most important skill for this role is the ability to understand our community members and their needs. The second most important skill is cross-functional collaboration; this role will work directly with stakeholders in Product,Marketing, and CX, as well as with external partners/customers, to ensure crucial community insights are at the forefront of business decisions. 

What you'll do

• Establish and operationalize a Super User program, in order to:

  • Recognize various levels of engagement and activation from our community members

  • Identify, recruit, enable, and nurture Super Users

  • Gain insights that deepen community influence on our business 

• Build and manage the Community team roadmap, ensuring the team’s community motions are aligned with overall business goals, priorities, and KPIs across Digital CX and the wider enterprise:

  • Share regular quarterly business reviews and readouts with key stakeholders

• Provide managerial oversight for all community programing, including, but not limited to: 

  • Content and event strategy

  • Product feedback and community ideation

  • User groups and meetups

  • Overall community customer experience and engagement across the community lifecycle

• Manage a team of Community specialists, developing and improving competency models, capacity/resource management, portfolio management, and prioritization

• Partner with teams such as Marketing, Social, Product, and CX others to amplify & promote community programs

• Continuously improve and innovate our community methodology, with consideration for the impacts of AI technologies on this discipline

• Measure and track overall impact of community programs, analyzing community metrics and KPIs to measure engagement and effectiveness

• Keep up with industry trends and bring insights into our strategic initiatives to ensure that Zendesk is delivering innovative, gold-star community experience
   

What you bring to the role

You are a great match for the team if:

• You are an experienced Community leader who is eager to develop others in this career path 

• You are a passionate advocate for our customers and enjoy the unique challenge of digital innovation

• You bring a customer-first mindset, curiously seeking ways to improve our community 

• You have experience developing and managing agile operations, programs, and initiatives
   

The ideal candidate will meet the following qualifications: 

• 5+ years experience in a strategic Community role, ideally in a B2B SaaS environment

• 3+ years managing people; experience with remote and/or distributed team leadership is a plus

• Fluency in written and spoken English

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; experience communicating across audiences and personas, from executive leaders to daily end users

• Proven ability to build program/function roadmaps, create rigor in delivery, and measure success

• Thrives in a global, cross-functional, collaborative work environment

• Self-directed, highly motivated, and 

• Enjoys receiving feedback from customers; is able to synthesize, identify trends, and develop actionable plans to serve their needs

• Ability to handle multiple projects and quickly adapt to shifting priorities, demands, and timelines

• Passionate about innovating in Customer Experience disciplines
   

Additionally, preference will be given to candidates who possess experience with any of the following:

• Experience with customer enablement, training, and certification programs

• Hands-on experience with Zendesk’s product suite

• Completion of community-specific trainings or certificates

• Experience with web development languages, including basic HTML and CSS

• Experience with basic UX design for web, including information architecture and SEO

• Experience writing content that is easily localized for a global customer base

• Business proficiency in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, or Korean

The US annualized base salary range for this position is $134,000.00-$202,000.00. This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to [email protected] with your specific accommodation request.