Customer Service & Operations Assistant

About Sidekick

Sidekick helps people recover faster from persistent injuries. Trusted by Olympic champions and everyday athletes, our products are featured in Men’s Health and Running Magazine, with 94% of users finding relief. We’re a Canadian-incorporated DTC brand selling across the US, Canada, UK, and internationally.

The Role

We’re hiring a Customer Service & Operations Assistant to be the connective tissue between our supply chain, our 3PL partners, and our customers. You’ll spend roughly 60 - 70% of your time in operations (order flow, 3PL coordination, inventory, process improvement) and 30 - 40% in the customer service queue, surfacing patterns back into operational fixes.

We’re not looking for someone to just keep the lights on. We want someone who sees friction in a process and rebuilds it, kills the root cause of repeating CS tickets, and turns a return request into a saved sale when the opportunity is there.

Who You Are

The technical skills here are learnable. What matters most is how you think:

• Ownership. When something’s broken (a 5% inventory variance, a recurring CS ticket, a stuck container), you don’t just patch it. You find the root cause and fix it so it doesn’t happen again.
• Curiosity. You want to know why yourself. Why is the variance different every week? Why does this ticket keep coming back? You go look instead of waiting to be told.
• Reliable and organized. You can hold a lot of moving pieces without dropping any of them, and you follow through until something is actually resolved.

What You’ll Do

• Order flow & 3PL coordination. Monitor daily order flow across US, Canadian, and UK 3PLs; catch stuck orders and exceptions before they become customer issues. Liaise with 3PLs on damaged inbound units, fulfillment errors, returns, and special projects.
• Inbound & inventory. Coordinate inbound shipments and receiving; track containers, follow up on discrepancies, and keep inventory records clean. Maintain accurate inventory data, flag low-stock SKUs, and partner on reorder timing.
• Process improvement & reporting. Improve SOPs, automate manual work, and pull operational reports (shipping SLAs, return rates) to surface anomalies.
• Customer service tickets. Work tickets in Commslayer alongside the CS team: WISMOs, address changes, refunds, replacements, returns, warranty claims.
• Returns reduction. Offer the right solution (education, sizing, replacement part, alternative SKU) instead of defaulting to a refund.
• Operations admin. Reconcile credit notes, invoice and process sales orders, and keep accounting and inventory systems clean.
• Support automation. Improve Commslayer automation: canned responses, macros, AI agent training, KB content, routing rules.

Must-Haves

• 3+ years in operations, logistics, fulfillment, or e-commerce coordination (DTC or 3PL a strong plus)
• Hands-on Shopify or e-commerce platform experience (managing orders, products, inventory, basic store admin)
• CS queue experience with a professional tone under pressure
• Comfortable juggling an inbound container issue, a CS escalation, and an inventory reconciliation in the same hour
• Reliable and self-directed in a remote environment
• Genuine curiosity about our products: how they’re built and used
• Comfort across Shopify, a help desk platform (Gorgias, Zendesk, Commslayer, Re:amaze), spreadsheets, and 3PL portals
• Strong written communication and a bias toward documenting the work, not just doing it

Nice to Have

• Sales instincts: saving returns and moving wholesale leads forward
• Hands-on Amazon Seller Central experience
• Automation tooling experience
• Health, wellness, fitness, or recovery category background
• Basic SQL or spreadsheet formulas beyond VLOOKUP

• Real ownership at a growing DTC brand: small team, visible impact, no layers between you and decisions
• Exposure to the full operational stack: supply chain, customs, fulfillment, automation, customer experience
• Flexible, remote-first work environment
• Competitive compensation ($1300 - $1600 USD/month)
• Performance-based bonus pay