Customer Reference Manager Jobs in Wheaton, IL (NOW HIRING)

Zipliens is a leading lien resolution company specializing in streamlining the lien process for personal injury law firms. The company works closely with law firms and has built deep expertise in the personal injury ecosystem.

We are seeking a founding Customer Success Manager to build and lead the Customer Success function for a new business line at Zipliens. We are looking for a builder who is excited to shape the function from the ground up while simultaneously serving our earliest customers.

This is not a traditional Customer Success Manager, Account Manager, Support, or Implementation role. Reporting directly to the Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, you will own the full customer lifecycle, from sales handoff through kickoff, implementation, configuration, training, adoption, customer health, business reviews, renewals, expansion, and advocacy, while building the systems and processes behind it.

You should be comfortable with ambiguity, energized by startup environments, and ready to build scalable systems from scratch rather than step into a mature book of business.

Year 1, you will focus on:

• Document the customer journey and launch standardized onboarding.
• Stand up a customer health framework and reporting cadence.
• Build the initial playbooks: onboarding, renewal, expansion, and business reviews.
• Launch a Voice of Customer process that feeds Product roadmap decisions.
• Configure HubSpot to run and report on the full customer lifecycle.
• Document a foundation ready to support the next Customer Success hire.

Requirements

Responsibilities:

Customer Lifecycle Ownership

• Full Lifecycle Management: Own the customer relationship from sales handoff through kickoff, implementation, configuration, training, and ongoing adoption.
• Data Onboarding: Run the hands-on data cleanup that seeds a new customer’s system of record, ingesting scattered spreadsheets, financials, and legacy systems into structured, trustworthy data from day one.
• Business Reviews & Renewals: Run business reviews, own the renewal process, and support expansion within existing accounts. 
• Escalation Ownership: Serve as the primary point of contact and escalation owner (operational, technical, or general CX) for customers, ensuring timely resolution.

Function & Systems Building

• Journey Design: Design and document Kandula's customer journey, lifecycle stages, and Customer Success methodology.
• Playbook Creation: Build a customer health framework, onboarding program, and playbooks for kickoff, renewal, expansion, and business reviews from the ground up.
• CRM Configuration: Configure HubSpot to support and report on the customer lifecycle.
• Documentation: Create the knowledge base, internal documentation, and operational reporting that let the function run without depending on one person's memory.
• KPI Ownership: Define Customer Success KPIs and build the reporting cadence that connects customer health to renewal and expansion outcomes.

Voice of Customer & Product Partnership

• VoC Program: Launch and own a Voice of Customer program that captures customer feedback systematically, not anecdotally.
• Roadmap Input: Partner with Product on adoption blockers, feature prioritization, and roadmap input grounded in real usage.
• Insight Translation: Translate customer sentiment into clear, prioritized recommendations for Product and leadership.
• Model Legibility: Translate what the AI-driven underwriting model is doing into plain language firm leadership can act on, reinforcing trust in the intelligence layer.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Sales: Improve handoff quality, identify expansion signals, and share customer intelligence.
• Marketing: Source customer stories, references, testimonials, and educational content.
• Operations: Improve customer-facing workflows and build for scalability.
• Finance: Support renewal forecasting and commercial planning.
• Leadership: Report customer health and bring strategic recommendations on growth and org design.

Foundation for Future Hiring

• Hiring Input: Document what a second Customer Success hire needs to know, and recommend when and how to bring them on.
• Scalable Foundation: Build the playbooks, systems, and documentation the future Customer Success organization will be built on top of.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience in Customer Success, account management, or a related client-facing role, with meaningful time at an early-stage SaaS company (seed through Series B), ideally where you helped build the Customer Success function rather than inherit one.
• Demonstrated experience building onboarding programs, customer playbooks, and a customer health framework from scratch, not just executing against someone else's.
• Strong technical aptitude and AI fluency, with the ability to effectively leverage AI tools, understand AI-driven models and outputs, and work hands-on with complex, disparate data.
• Comfortable owning renewals and driving expansion as an individual contributor.
• Strong CRM administration experience (HubSpot or similar).
• High ownership, builder mindset, and genuine comfort with ambiguity; you would rather stand something up imperfectly and improve it than wait for a perfect brief.
• Commercially minded and customer-obsessed in equal measure.
• Excellent written and verbal communicator with executive presence; you will represent Customer Success in front of Kandula and Zipliens leadership, as well as interface with law firm leadership.
• Bachelor's degree preferred, not required, given the emphasis on demonstrated operator experience.
• Willingness to travel as needed for customer and team engagement.

Benefits

• Private Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Company HSA contributions for HDHP participants
• Flexible Spending Accounts (Health & Dependent Care)
• Company-Paid Short-Term Disability Coverage
• Voluntary Long-Term Disability, Life, AD&D, and Supplemental Coverage Options
• 401(k) Plan with Company Match
• Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick Time & Select Holidays)
• Paid Parental Leave

Pay Disclosure: The total base salary range for this role is $100,000 - $136,000 annually, with an opportunity for a discretionary bonus. Final compensation will be determined based on skills and experience.

Work Authorization: Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for employer-sponsored visa support now or in the future.