Customer Operations Partner, Chicago (Software Startup)

Opply•Chicago, IL

6d•$60,000 - $70,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Opply is modernising how scaling food and consumer goods brands buy ingredients, solving a £1 trillion market inefficiency that's been overlooked for decades. Right now, SMB brands waste 70% of stock and pay 40% above market rate because they lack access to enterprise-level supplier networks and smart automation. We've built an AI-powered platform that changes this entirely: automated ordering, predictive forecasting, supplier matching, and embedded credit that lets brands sell before they pay. We're a scaling, VC-backed company with unicorn angels. This is category-defining work in a massive, underserved market. As a Customer Operations Partner, you'll be the person a set of Opply's customers know as an extension of their own team. From the day we onboard their first supplier through to running their account day to day. Supply chain operations are changing fast, and this role is built for where it's going, not where it's been: you'll spend as much time prompting and improving AI agents as you will speaking directly with customers and suppliers, and you'll be trusted with real commercial and financial decisions, not just admin. This isn't a queue-clearing job. It's a relationship, a fleet of agents, and a genuine say in what we build next.

Requirements

1-3 years in a role that required you to manage multiple stakeholders and processes at once: Customer Success, Operations, Account Management, Purchasing, Logistics etc
Comfortable using AI tools like Claude or ChatGPT in your day-to-day work
Comfortable having real commercial conversations: negotiating a price, holding a line on a credit decision, not just administering someone else's

Nice To Haves

Point to a time you built or configured something (a workflow, a prompt, a script, an automation) that made your own job easier
Exposure to food, consumer goods, or supply chain/logistics industries

Responsibilities

Be the named point of contact for a portfolio of customer accounts, carrying them from onboarding through to steady-state operation
Understand each account's nuances: their suppliers, their credit position, their quirks, well enough to anticipate problems before they land in your inbox
Act as first point of contact for inbound queries relating to orders, deliveries, payments, and the platform itself, including flagging and helping resolve bugs
Speak directly with suppliers to finalise orders, pricing, and terms
Manage customer credit limits and clearance decisions, balancing risk against keeping orders moving
Book and negotiate freight where needed, coordinating carriers and brokers directly
Own and maintain compliance and certification documents for your accounts, keeping them current and audit-ready
Investigate the root cause of delivery and quality exceptions, not just resolve the ticket in front of you, understand why it happened and whether it will happen again
Prompt, configure, and maintain the AI agents that run your accounts' routine workflows, chasing suppliers for documents, monitoring deliveries, reconciling invoices, and know when to let the agent run versus step in yourself
Continuously look for the next piece of your own workload worth handing to an agent, and build it
Monitor and report on key operational metrics including OTIF, invoice accuracy, payment turnaround time, and supplier onboarding cycle time, using AI wherever possible.
Identify and implement process improvements, working closely with product and tech