Associate Portfolio Success Manager - German speaking

Role Summary

The Associate Success Manager, Onboarding Scaled — German Speaking supports new Zendesk customers through their early onboarding journey, with a focus on German-speaking customers and markets. This role helps customers understand their purchased products, clarify business goals, complete foundational setup milestones, and move toward go-live and early adoption.
This role is part of Zendesk’s Scaled Onboarding motion and is designed for customers who benefit from a structured, efficient, and digitally supported onboarding experience. The Associate Success Manager partners with customers during the first stage of their Zendesk journey, using a combination of human guidance, digital resources, Success Plans, and cross-functional coordination to help customers activate their solution and build confidence.
The ideal candidate is customer-focused, organized, curious, and comfortable supporting a high-volume book of onboarding customers. They can manage multiple priorities, communicate clearly in German and English, identify blockers early, and help customers take the right next step.
Business Justification
Zendesk’s Scaled Onboarding team supports a high volume of new customers across regions and segments. As onboarding engagement is increasingly tied to stronger go-live, adoption, and downstream customer outcomes, this role will help improve early customer activation, increase onboarding take rate, reduce no-response and stalled onboarding risk, and support a more consistent Day 1–90 customer journey.
This German-speaking role is especially important for supporting regional customer engagement, improving customer experience in German-speaking markets, and reducing friction caused by language coverage gaps across EMEA.
This role will support the team’s ability to:

• Increase early customer engagement and onboarding take rate in German-speaking markets
• Improve time to first meeting and onboarding responsiveness
• Drive customers toward 30D / 60D go-live milestones
• Support foundational product adoption
• Identify and document risks, blockers, and Services needs
• Improve Success Plan completion and Core CS handoff quality
• Scale the onboarding motion through digital and human touchpoints

Key Responsibilities
Customer Onboarding and Engagement

• Guide newly signed Zendesk customers through the early onboarding journey, with a focus on German-speaking customers.
• Conduct onboarding kickoff calls, check-ins, and progress reviews in German and English.
• Help customers understand their onboarding path, available resources, expected milestones, and next steps.
• Drive customer engagement through structured outreach, booking follow-up, and no-response recovery actions.
• Use digital onboarding resources, Journey Orchestrator touchpoints, Success Plans, and enablement content to reinforce customer progress.

Success Planning and Goal Alignment

• Capture customer goals, use cases, success criteria, key stakeholders, and implementation priorities.
• Build and maintain onboarding Success Plans that align to customer outcomes and purchased products.
• Help customers prioritize foundational workflows and activation milestones.
• Document risks, blockers, customer sentiment, and recommended next steps in Gainsight or relevant systems.

Go-Live and Adoption Support

• Support customers in moving toward go-live within target onboarding timeframes.
• Track customer progress against onboarding milestones such as kickoff, foundational setup, go-live readiness, product activation, and early adoption.
• Identify adoption gaps and recommend relevant enablement resources, product guidance, or escalation paths.
• Support foundational adoption across Zendesk products such as Support, Messaging, Knowledge, Voice, Copilot, and AI-related capabilities, as appropriate for scope.

AI and Product Readiness

• Identify customers with AI, Copilot, Messaging, or other advanced product entitlements.
• Capture first AI use case, channel readiness, knowledge readiness, and admin ownership where applicable.
• Help route customers to AI Specialists, Services, Product Support, or partner resources when needs exceed standard onboarding scope.
• Document AI readiness, blockers, and recommended handoff notes for Core CS.

Operational Excellence

• Maintain accurate and timely updates in Gainsight, Salesforce, Gong, and other systems of record.
• Track onboarding engagement, milestone completion, customer blockers, and risk status.
• Follow standard onboarding playbooks, CTA workflows, and escalation processes.
• Partner with FLMs, Ops, Digital Programs, Core CS, Sales, Services, Support, and Product Specialists to support customer outcomes.
• Contribute feedback on customer friction points, process gaps, and opportunities to improve the scaled onboarding motion.

Handoff and Lifecycle Readiness

• Prepare customers for transition into the appropriate post-onboarding CS motion.
• Ensure Core CS / Scaled / Pulse teams receive clear handoff context, including customer goals, adoption status, risks, blockers, AI readiness, and next-best actions.
• Support a clean customer transition from onboarding into long-term adoption, optimization, and renewal readiness.

Required Qualifications

• Fluency in German and English is required.
• Based in or able to work from Dublin, Ireland 2 times a week, according to Zendesk’s local working model.
• 1–3+ years of experience in Customer Success, Onboarding, Implementation, Support, Account Management, SaaS operations, or a related customer-facing role.
• Strong customer communication skills, including the ability to explain concepts clearly and guide customers through next steps.
• Ability to manage a high-volume customer portfolio with strong organization and prioritization.
• Comfort working with digital customer engagement tools, CRM systems, and customer success platforms.
• Strong follow-through and attention to detail.
• Ability to identify customer blockers, risks, and escalation needs early.
• Collaborative working style with the ability to partner across Sales, CS, Support, Services, Ops, and Product teams.
• Curiosity and willingness to learn Zendesk products, onboarding methodology, and customer success best practices.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Zendesk products or similar CX / SaaS platforms.
• Experience supporting SMB, Mid-Market, or scaled customer segments.
• Familiarity with Gainsight, Salesforce, Gong, Journey Orchestrator, Skilljar, or similar tools.
• Experience with customer onboarding, implementation coordination, or digital-first customer journeys.
• Understanding of support operations, ticketing workflows, knowledge management, messaging, voice, reporting, or AI / automation concepts.
• Experience working in a high-volume, metrics-driven environment.
• Comfort using data to prioritize customer follow-up and identify risk.
• Additional European language skills are a plus.

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