Please note: we have also released a Head of Customer Success vacancy alongside this Senior Customer Success Manager role. Please apply for the role that best fits your experience and skill level.
This is an exceptional opportunity for an experienced Senior Customer Success Manager (SCSM) to take the next step in their career and join Vepple at a pivotal stage in the company’s growth journey.
Vepple is an enterprise SaaS platform operating within the Higher Education sector, helping universities to recruit students through personalised virtual experiences, guided tours, interactive maps and events. The platform plays a central role in our university partners’ recruitment strategies and is regarded by many institutions as an essential student engagement tool (see video).
With a focus on experiential storytelling and digital engagement, Vepple enables prospective students to experience the atmosphere and culture of a university from anywhere in the world and at any stage of the recruitment journey. By creating emotional connection, increasing engagement and supporting informed decision-making, Vepple helps universities strengthen recruitment performance and improve student conversion outcomes.
We are looking for a commercially minded and relationship-driven Senior Customer Success Manager (SCSM) to ensure our customers get maximum value from the platform, renew their contracts and reinforce our reputation of being the go-to provider of university online virtual experiences in the UK. We’re looking for someone who can deliver outstanding customer service, build long-lasting relationships with our university partners and help us to reach our ambitious commercial goals.
This role is heavily relationship-focused, and as such we are looking for a ‘people person’ who can engage key stakeholders at all levels. This role would suit someone who is highly energetic, organised, results-oriented and passionate about helping customers to achieve their goals.
The successful candidate will report to Tom Greveson (Co-Founder and CEO), working closely with him and other members of the CS team, as well as our sales, marketing, product and engineering teams.
We are looking for someone commercially astute, capable of running a well-maintained upgrade pipeline in HubSpot, from opportunity through to delivery, combined with the emotional intelligence to grow accounts through partnership rather than a sales-led approach. Universities respond to people who help them reach their recruitment goals, not to pressure, and we want someone who instils that approach across the team.
You will manage our Customer Success Coordinator (CSC), who handles the administrative backbone of the function, including quoting, invoicing, renewal reminders and scheduling. You will also manage our Customer Success Manager (CSM). At the point of writing, we have 38 customer accounts; you will split these accounts with the CSM, most likely with the CSM taking a higher number, allowing you time to operate strategically and build on the existing departmental systems and processes.
This role would suit an ambitious and highly organised Customer Success professional who combines commercial awareness with exceptional relationship-building skills and a passion for digital innovation, customer outcomes and Higher Education.
We are a team of 17 people operating as specialists at the top of our game. We take our work seriously, but never take ourselves too seriously. Our culture, values and focus on sustainable growth have been central to our success and to the strong relationships we build with our university customers.
Vepple is committed to providing flexible working arrangements that support a positive work-life balance, while maintaining a strong sense of team collaboration, culture and effective communication across the business. This is a hybrid role, offering the flexibility to work remotely for the majority of the working week, alongside attendance at key in-person meetings, customer engagements and company events.
The successful candidate will be expected to attend:
Meet the Vepple team: Team Gallery
See some of what we get up to: Instagram (Note: Revolution Viewing Ltd is our holding company)
See what we talk about: LinkedIn
The feedback we receive from our team suggests that this is an unusual policy for such a business, hence the mention here in the job spec. This is from Tom, our CEO: “You will get paid for any extra hours that you work, or you will be given the time back.” Quite simply, you will never be asked to work more hours than contracted, without receiving that time back in lieu or being paid overtime. We have a formalised process and each person has a Google Sheet to log extra hours worked.
This extends to attending evening events and travelling to and from meetings. If you’re doing something outside of your working hours that is to the benefit of the business, you need to take that time back.
Please note: the week described below reflects the role we are building towards, an established SCSM leading a small team and a portfolio of strategic accounts.
Monday
The week begins with an all-hands team meeting. This virtual call is a great opportunity to catch up with colleagues and get a high-level overview of everyone’s plans for the week.
Afterwards, you turn to the portfolio. You review customer health across your book, the renewal and expansion forecast, and the upgrade pipeline you manage in HubSpot, checking that every opportunity is at the right stage and that nothing is drifting. You are preparing the numbers and the narrative for Wednesday, when you present retention and expansion forecasting, and any churn risk, to the leadership team. Tomorrow you have an in-person meeting with the University of X to lead their annual strategic review, so you will spend time analysing their performance (data) dashboard, shaping the strategic recommendations you will take into the room, and identifying the module opportunities that genuinely support their recruitment goals.
You also have your weekly 30-minute catch-up with your CSM; you both have various customer-related items to discuss, including very specific points about 5 customers but also general product impact discussions involving some data points that were discussed the week before.
Tuesday
Today is all about the University of X meeting. It is a two-hour journey, so you take the train and meet your CSM on campus. It is an important strategic relationship and you lead the review, presenting the data, demonstrating the ROI Vepple has delivered, and steering the conversation towards their goals for the next recruitment cycle. One opportunity is ripe, so you open and lead the expansion conversation directly, positioning the upgrade around the outcomes they care about rather than as a sell. A deeply technical question comes up that is better answered precisely than off the cuff, so you note it and commit to a fast follow-up via our Solutions Engineer.
After the meeting, you take everyone who attended the meeting out for lunch. This is something we do with nearly every customer and is a great way to get a little more face time. We tend to find useful things are always raised in this informal setting.
Once home, you review an email from your CSM. The email confirms that HubSpot has been updated with the meeting notes, the upgrade opportunity has been moved to the right stage, and you confirm the copy of the drafted meeting follow-up email. Your CSM sends the email to the customer.
Wednesday
The day starts with an internal meeting with the wider Vepple team. You then present the CS forecast to the leadership team: retention, Net Revenue Retention, the expansion pipeline and any accounts at risk, along with the actions you are taking. This is the picture the CEO used to have to assemble, and it now sits with you.
You also have a 30-minute weekly catch-up with your CSC to run through the week’s quoting, invoicing and renewal reminders, making sure the administrative backend is on track and that the CSC has what they need from you.
You spend part of the day embedding the pipeline discipline you want across the function, making sure every upgrade opportunity is tracked in HubSpot from first identification through to delivery, and coaching the CSM and CSC on the parts of that process they each own. You also celebrate wins, such as a customer thrilled with Vepple’s impact on their lead capture who has agreed to a testimonial, and you introduce them to the Product Marketing Manager to follow up.
Thursday
Exciting news. The Chief Commercial Officer has won a new Vepple customer. You meet with her and the onboarding team to understand the chosen module combination and strategic aims, and you plan the transition from New Business through Onboarding into Customer Success.
You also spend time leading the team. You catch up with your CSM, reviewing their accounts, coaching them through a tricky renewal and agreeing how you will jointly approach the upcoming strategic review for one of their universities, where they will run the relationship, and you will lead the commercial conversation. Then you review the wider portfolio, identify an account approaching renewal that may be at risk, and schedule a call to address concerns and lead the renewal conversation yourself.
In the afternoon, you have two 30-minute monthly review video calls with two different university customers. You help ensure they are on track with their Vepple development, prioritise their Vepple tasks, and discuss last month’s performance. On one of the calls, you identify an opportunity for an upgrade and agree on a separate call to demo Vepple’s Virtual Event Module.
Friday
You review an email from the Solutions Engineer with detailed answers to the University of X’s technical questions, schedule a quick call to make sure you fully understand the detail, and draft a clear, friendly follow-up to the customer.
To close out the week, you analyse progress against your retention and expansion targets, the numbers you are accountable for. You identify the accounts that need focus next week and plan accordingly. You decide to finish the week by reviewing the slides our Event Marketing Manager has prepared for next week’s Vepple In Person (VIP) event in Leeds, feeding back your input on the parts you’ll be presenting (video of last year’s event is here).
To achieve the upper level of the salary range, you must provide evidence that you have substantial experience across the remits below. If you don’t yet have depth in a particular area, this will be reflected in the salary offered and the support given throughout your onboarding and future development.
We are looking for someone who will be responsible (unless accountability and responsibility are stated) for the following core remits. Please note that for any remits you are not asked to be accountable for, the accountability will sit with the CEO:
| Remit | Detail |
|---|---|
| Account Management | Manage the end-to-end university customer lifecycle, including post-onboarding, adoption, retention, renewal, advocacy and account growth. Demonstrate measurable customer ROI through analytics, reporting, insight and customer performance reviews |
| Build & scale the function | Lead and evolve the Customer Success function, shaping account management and customer support processes, and scaling the team in line with portfolio growth |
| External company representation | Represent the business externally through sector engagement, thought leadership, conferences and university partnership development |
| Forecasting & commercial insight | Maintain accurate renewal, churn risk and expansion forecasting, presenting regular commercial insight to the senior leadership team |
| Internal collaboration to deliver commercial goals | Collaborate closely with Product, Sales and Marketing teams to align customer strategy with commercial and platform objectives |
| Maintain strategic relationships | Develop and maintain strategic relationships with university marketing and recruitment stakeholders, building genuine trust and partnership rather than a sales-led dynamic |
| Manage the CS backend | Accountable – Oversee the delivery of the administrative backend, including quoting, invoicing, renewal reminders and scheduling, ensuring it runs accurately and on time |
| Meetings – Annual Strategic Review (Customer) | Accountable and responsible – Attend and lead (or provide commercial support) on all meetings for all customers |
| Meetings – Monthly (Customer) | Accountable – Ensuring consistent quality across all meetings Responsible – Lead meetings for your customers |
| Meetings – Weekly Internal (CS) | Accountable – Oversee the agendas and delivery of all CS specific internal meetings |
| Onboarding – Delivery of KickStarts | Accountable – Oversee the delivery of onboarding (Kickstart) sessions Responsible – Attend sessions when required |
| Onboarding – Mid & Post Kickstart Communication | Accountable – Oversee the transition of customers from onboarding to an onboarded customer |
| Pipeline Management – Upgrades | Accountable and responsible – Run the upgrade pipeline in HubSpot, from identifying an upgrade opportunity through to upgrade delivered, with disciplined stage management, forecasting and CRM hygiene |
| Product Requirements | Accountable and responsible – Act as the voice of the customer within the business, influencing product roadmap, UX improvements and platform innovation |
| Quality customer experience with commercial focus | Accountable and responsible – Ensure a consistently high-quality and commercially effective customer experience across all university touchpoints |
| Quoting, Invoicing & Admin (CS) | Accountable and responsible – Oversee end-to-end admin for in-contract upgrades, bolt-ons, and renewals (quotes, addendums/contracts via DocuSign, PO/contract chasing, GDrive archiving, and flagging POs for invoicing) |
| Renewal insight | Accountable and responsible – Accurate renewal, churn risk and expansion forecasting for your accounts, providing regular commercial insight to the Head of Customer Success and leadership |
| Renewals & negotiations | Renewal and expansion (at point of renewal) negotiations across the portfolio, end to end, carrying the commercial conversation through to close |
| Renewals and upgrades – Contract Issuance & Amendments (CS) | Oversee these items |
| Retention of Customers | Drive customer retention and contribute to Net Revenue Retention (NRR) across your portfolio of university accounts |
| Strategic planning | Contribute to the creation and delivery of quarterly OKRs |
| Success Metrics & Reporting | Accountable and responsible – Report on Customer Success KPIs, including retention, NRR, customer health, platform adoption and engagement |
| Support of Customers & Issue Resolution | Accountable and responsible – Resolution of issues raised outside of the Customer Support Desk |
| Team leadership & line management | Line manage the Customer Success Manager and Customer Success Coordinator |
| Training – Delivery of Refresh Training | Accountable for the delivery of this training |
| Upsell & Cross-Sell – Bolt-ons | Oversee the selling of this product to existing customers |
| Upsell & Cross-Sell – Modules | Oversee the selling of this product to existing customers |
| Upsell & Cross-Sell – Vepple 360s | Oversee the selling of this product to existing customers |
What success looks like in this role:
To be considered for this role, you will need to meet all of the “Essential” items listed. To achieve the upper level of the salary range, you must provide evidence that you exceed all of the “Essential” items and meet or exceed a number of the ”Desirable” items listed below.
These values are a key consideration when hiring a new team member; we need to feel each team member shares these values:
See the top of this job spec for the application deadline.
Send your email to: working@vepple.com
Your application must include the following information:
Please note: the successful candidate must, by the start of their employment, have permission to work in the UK.
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We will use your data to process your application, including complying with any legal obligations, to enable us to manage the recruitment process. We will only share your data with relevant parties as part of our recruitment process, and we will not share your data for marketing or employment purposes outside of Vepple. For more information on Vepple (Revolution Viewing LTD) job applicant privacy notice, please follow this link.
No recruitment agencies – thank you.
Leeds (Hybrid). Our office address is: Consort House, 12 South Parade, Leeds, LS1 5QS.
We offer a flexible hybrid working approach, allowing a balance between home and office-based work. For this role, you’ll be required to attend the Leeds office approximately 1 day per month (more during the first few weeks for onboarding and so you can get to know the team!)
This role requires regular in-person meetings and event attendance. Broadly speaking, we would suggest the requirement will be to have in the region of 3 to 4 nights away per month.
