Customer Experience Manager - Ecommerce - Remote

Customer Service Manager — Canton Aquatics Location: Remote (US-based preferred; international considered for qualified candidates) Type: Full-Time Reports to: CEO / Owner About Canton Aquatics Canton Aquatics is a leading US-based e-commerce company specializing in live aquarium plants for freshwater aquariums and ponds. Based in Terrell, Texas, we operate across five major marketplaces — Shopify, Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and Walmart — and manage two brands: Canton Aquatics and Divine Roots Botanicals (houseplants). We ship thousands of live plants weekly with a Live Arrival Guarantee, and our customers are passionate hobbyists who expect fast, knowledgeable, and empathetic support. We're a fast-growing, family-run business that values initiative, process thinking, and ownership. Our team is lean and our expectations are high — every role here matters. The Role We're hiring a Customer Service Manager who can do the work and build the systems that make the work better. This is not a "manage from the dashboard" role — you'll be in the tickets daily, talking to customers, resolving issues, and handling escalations while simultaneously designing and improving the processes, playbooks, and automations that make our CS operation run tighter every week. You'll manage our current CS agent, coordinate with our Brand & Marketplace Manager, and work alongside an AI-powered operations assistant that handles auto-responses, SLA enforcement, spam filtering, and reporting. Your job is to own everything that happens between a customer reaching out and that customer being satisfied — across every marketplace, every channel, and every brand. [1:23 PM]Key Responsibilities Ticket Operations (Hands-On — approximately 50% of Time) Work the Gorgias helpdesk daily — respond to customer inquiries, resolve issues, and close tickets across all five marketplaces and both brands Handle DOA (Dead on Arrival) claims under our Live Arrival Guarantee: verify photos, cross-reference packing videos, issue replacements or refunds per policy Process returns, refunds, exchanges, and replacement orders through marketplace portals and ShipStation Manage mispick investigations, missing item claims, shipping delays, and order modifications Handle escalated and complex tickets — chargebacks, A-to-Z claims (Amazon), eBay cases, Etsy cases, and Walmart disputes Respond within marketplace-mandated SLAs: Amazon (under 24h), eBay (under 24h), Etsy (under 24h), Walmart (under 48h, we target under 2h), Shopify (under 4h) Maintain brand voice for each brand: friendly/knowledgeable for Canton Aquatics, warm/faith-centered for Divine Roots Botanicals Process Design and Improvement (approximately 25% of Time) Create, document, and continuously improve standard operating procedures (SOPs) for every recurring CS scenario Build and refine response macros and templates for common customer issues Design escalation protocols with clear thresholds, routing rules, and resolution paths Develop and maintain a tag taxonomy (marketplace, customer reason, product, resolution) for ticket classification and reporting Identify patterns in customer complaints and translate them into process changes, product feedback, or listing improvements Run weekly QA reviews: sample resolved tickets, score for accuracy, tone, tag compliance, and resolution appropriateness Establish and track CSAT baseline and improvement targets Document all processes so they survive personnel changes — nothing lives only in someone’s head Team Management (approximately 15% of Time) Manage and coach the current CS agent (Philippines-based): schedule adherence, quality, macro usage, escalation compliance, and professional development Monitor agent utilization and coverage gaps, especially during US business hours Conduct weekly 1-on-1s and provide actionable feedback tied to specific ticket examples Own hiring recommendations for additional CS agents as volume grows Create onboarding and training materials for new CS team members Reporting and Analytics (approximately 10% of Time) Produce daily, weekly, and monthly CS performance reports: ticket volume, auto-close rate, SLA compliance, CSAT, agent performance, and cost of service Track Cost of Service: replacements ($11.59 each), refunds issued, and chargebacks lost — with week-over-week trends Identify fraud signals: repeat DOA claimants, suspicious return patterns, photo mismatches, out-of-window claims Report product quality insights (DOA rates by product/batch) to production team Surface revenue protection opportunities: chargeback prevention, return rate reduction, repeat buyer conversion