Customer Support VA - Shopify E-Commerce, AI-Assisted

US MARKET EMAIL SUPPORT VA - SHOPIFY E-COMMERCE, AI-ASSISTED
Remote | Part-time, about 2-3 hours per day (growing) | Start: ASAP | $2.50 - $4 per hour


READ THIS FIRST

This job post is long. That is on purpose.

I am hiring ONE person. I would rather get 5 serious applications than 200 lazy ones. If you send the same message to 40 job posts a day, close this now - you will not get through.

But please do not be scared off either. You will not be thrown into deep water alone. We have written SOPs for every situation, training videos of real past cases, I will train you, and we have a 1-on-1 call every single week. You do not need to invent anything. You need to be reliable, careful, and willing to learn our system.

If that sounds like you, keep reading.


ABOUT US

We run five direct-response e-commerce brands on Shopify. We sell physical products to customers in the United States, and we advertise on Facebook and Instagram at a four-figure daily budget.

Growth means more orders, and more orders mean more customer emails. That inbox is what we are hiring for.


THE BIG IDEA - WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS MORE THAN A NORMAL SUPPORT JOB

Acquiring a customer through paid ads is expensive. We pay for every single one before we ever make a cent.

Now think about what happens when one of them writes to us and gets no answer for four days. They do not politely ask again. They open a PayPal dispute or they call their bank and do a chargeback. And that does not just cost us the order - it costs us the dispute fee, it costs us the product that is already on a plane, and if enough of them pile up it costs us the payment processor itself. A store that loses its payment provider is a store that is dead, no matter how good the ads are.

That is the real math of this job. Every email you answer fast and properly is a dispute that never happens. You are not "answering tickets" - you are protecting the money at the exact point where it leaks out.

A business is also like a house. Most people only build the front: the ads, the product page, the pretty pictures. Then the first storm comes and it falls over, because there is no foundation. The foundation is the backend. That is what you are.


THE ROLE IN ONE SENTENCE

You own the customer inbox across all five brands and you keep it at zero.

This is not a typing job. You do not write every reply from scratch. We use AI to draft, and your job is to judge the draft, fix what reads robotic, check the facts in Shopify, and send. Editor and decision-maker, not typist.

The number we hold you to: every customer email gets an answer within 24 hours. That is the whole scoreboard. Within 90 days we want you handling 80 percent of the inbox without asking us anything.

This is a doer role. Nobody reports to you and you do not build a team.


HOW THE DAY WORKS

One focused block per day. You come in, you clear the inbox across all brands, you handle what you can handle, you flag what needs us, you send a short end-of-day note. Then you are done.

Our customers are in the United States, so the inbox fills up overnight your time. You work your block in the morning, Philippine time, and everything that came in during the US evening is handled before it gets old.

We are looking for one person long-term. Someone who gets faster and more independent every month, not someone who needs the same question answered twice.


WHAT YOU WILL DO

1. CUSTOMER EMAILS (your main job)

We currently handle around [MAIL-VOLUMEN] customer emails per week across all five brands.

- Sweep the support inboxes across all five brands and clear them, every working day
- Answer tracking questions ("where is my order") using our tracking tools and the order data in Shopify
- Answer product and usage questions from our templates
- Process returns, cancellations and address changes along our decision tree
- Keep the inbox at zero. No email older than 24 hours.

2. CASES AND DISPUTES

- Spot disputes early - PayPal cases, Klarna claims, chargebacks - and log every single one in our tracker with its deadline
- Respond to the case: upload the tracking, assemble the evidence, write the response
- Never let a deadline pass. A dispute we lose by default is money we simply hand over.

3. ADDRESS PROBLEMS

- When an address is wrong, incomplete or undeliverable, you take it from there: you email the customer, you get the correct address, you update it in Shopify, and you confirm it back to our supplier.
- We should not have to sit in the middle of that. You are the link.

4. PUSHING PROBLEMS BACK TO THE SOURCE (this one matters to us)

You do not just fix problems for the customer. You push them back up the chain so they stop happening.

If ten customers this week asked the same question, that is not ten tickets. That is one broken product page, and we want to know about it. If three packages arrived damaged, we do not want you to quietly send three replacements and move on - we want the order numbers, the photos, and the question of why it keeps happening.

So you document it: what went wrong, how often, which orders. Then you bring it to the weekly call and we fix the cause instead of the symptom.

Tell us when one of our templates, our processes or our product pages is bad. We built them and we will change them. Nobody here is attached to being right.

To be clear about what this job is NOT: you do not order stock, you do not manage inventory, you do not do purchasing, you do not write marketing copy, and you never talk to a customer on the phone. Everything is written and asynchronous.


STOP. READ THIS PART CAREFULLY.

Start your message with the word TAMARIND, exactly like this:

TAMARIND - Your Full Name

Apply right here through OnlineJobs.ph. Do not email us - we read everything in this system and nowhere else. If TAMARIND is not the first thing in your message we will never see it, no matter how good your experience is. This is not a joke and there is no exception. Most applicants will fail this, and that is fine.


ACCOUNTABILITY AND COMMUNICATION

This is the part we care about most, so we are going to be very clear.

We are not looking for someone who never has a problem. Everybody gets sick. Power goes out. Family emergencies happen. Typhoons happen. We have zero problem with any of that.

What we have a problem with is silence.

If you are ill, if your internet dies, if something happens in your family, if you simply cannot work today - send us one message. Before, not after. That is all we ask, and if you do it, we will always find a solution together.

Disappearing without a word is the one thing that ends this immediately. Not because we are strict about hours, but because we cannot run a business on someone we have to chase.

Beyond that, we expect three things:

- You work independently. You do not need to be reminded or micromanaged.
- You own the outcome. An escalation comes to us with your recommendation attached, not as a forwarded email that says "what should I do".
- You are honest when you do not know. A wrong answer sent confidently to a customer costs us a dispute. "I need to check this" costs us nothing.


THE TOP THREE SKILLS WE ARE HIRING FOR

1. Shopify Admin, hands-on - orders, customers, fulfillments, refunds, every day
2. Native-level written English - our customers are American, and a reply that sounds translated costs us the sale
3. Judgment on AI drafts - you know when a draft is confidently wrong, and you check before you send


WHAT YOU MUST BRING (hard requirements)

1. Hands-on Shopify Admin experience: orders, customers, fulfillments, refunds. Not "I have seen Shopify" - you have worked in it daily and you can tell us exactly what you did in there.

2. Written English that reads like a native-level support agent wrote it. Our customers are American and they notice.

3. A paid ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscription, and you already use it daily. Not the free tier. This role runs on AI drafting and the free versions are too slow and too limited for a daily inbox block. If you do not have one yet but you are otherwise a fit, say so - we will cover it from day one. What we cannot work with is someone who has never used these tools seriously.

4. You know where AI gets things wrong. You can tell when a draft is confidently wrong and you check the facts in Shopify before you send.

5. Parcel tracking tools (17track or similar) and the patience to read what a scan history actually means.

6. Google Sheets for the dispute tracker.

7. Reliable daily availability, a stable internet connection, a working computer, and you are reachable on Telegram during your working block.

8. At least 1 year in customer support, e-commerce preferred.

9. Willing to sign a freelance contract and a short NDA before you get access to our systems.


BONUS (not required, but it moves you to the top of the list)

- You have handled PayPal or Klarna disputes before and can describe a real case
- Previous direct-response or dropshipping support
- Experience with high-volume US customers specifically
- Helpdesk tools - tell us which ones you have actually used: Gorgias, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Re:amaze, Commslayer, anything. It means you start faster.
- Any tool that makes you faster: text expanders, AI tools, order lookup tools. Tell us your setup.
- Any experience with Meta Ads Manager


THE TOOLS WE USE

Shopify Admin, Gmail, 17track, Google Sheets, PayPal and Klarna resolution centers, Telegram for internal communication, and an AI assistant for drafting. Every account you need is paid by us.


WHAT WE PROVIDE

- Full written playbooks: response templates per brand, refund decision tree, dispute workflow, carrier patterns, escalation rules
- Training videos walking you through real past cases, start to finish
- Delegated inbox access - you never handle our passwords
- Every tool account and software licence you need, paid by us
- Direct feedback, and a standing invitation to tell us when something we built is bad


WORKING HOURS AND WHERE THIS ROLE IS GOING

- 100% remote, from anywhere in the Philippines
- Right now: about 2 hours per day, sometimes up to 3 when volume is high. Roughly 10 to 15 hours per week.
- The hours depend on how much comes in. Quiet days you are done in an hour. After a big ad push it takes longer. You are paid per hour, so this works both ways - we are not going to pretend it is a fixed 40-hour job today.
- You choose when you work. The only rule: every customer email answered within 24 hours, and your block lands in your morning so the overnight US inbox is cleared before it gets old.
- Day-to-day communication is asynchronous on Telegram. No ---------- , no "quick calls", no being on call.
- One fixed 30-minute call per week, camera on. We agree on the day and time together once you start, and then it stays there. We go through the numbers, the problems that keep coming back, what you need from us, and what we think you should do differently. You get direct feedback and we expect you to use it. We also expect you to tell us when you think we are wrong - that call goes both ways. This is a team, not a hierarchy.
- We use time tracking. We say this openly because we would rather lose an applicant now than have a surprise later.
- Where this is going: we are scaling, and we are moving our ad launches onto software. Once you are solid on support, this role can grow into launching ad campaigns from creatives and briefs we prepare - execution inside a tool, not strategy, not creative decisions. More hours, more responsibility, more pay. If that sounds like something you want, say so in your application.


HOW SUCCESS IS MEASURED

Five numbers, nothing else:

1. First response time - under 24 hours, always
2. Inbox at zero at the end of every block
3. Disputes logged with their deadline, none missed, none lost by default
4. Escalation quality - is your recommendation usable as it is
5. Independence over time - fewer questions to us every month

We do not measure how many words you wrote.


COMPENSATION (all amounts in USD)

You are paid per hour, for the hours you actually work. We start low and we move you up fast. We are honest about that instead of promising you a number we do not know you are worth yet.

STEP 1 - PAID TRIAL: $2.50 per hour. Real tickets, real customers, from day one. You are paid for every hour of it whether or not we hire you. Short, and we d ---------- quickly.

STEP 2 - APPROVED: $3.00 per hour. The position is yours.

STEP 3 - PROVEN AND LONG-TERM: $3.50 per hour.

STEP 4 - FULLY OPERATING, running the whole inbox on your own: $4.00 per hour.

At roughly 10 to 15 hours per week that is about $110 to $260 per month today - and both the hours and the rate grow as we scale. We move people up this ladder fast when they earn it. We have never lost a great person over money and we do not plan to start.

Also included:

- Paid monthly, on time, every month, no exceptions, via Wise or PayPal
- A 13th month bonus after one full year
- Bonuses when the business does well - when we grow, you grow
- All tools and software licences paid by us, including your AI subscription if you do not have one
- Paid Philippine public holidays
- Freelance contract and NDA
- Long-term position - we want someone who grows with the brands

The steps above are not promises we forget about. They are tied to the five numbers under HOW SUCCESS IS MEASURED, and we review on schedule.

One honest note: at today's hours this is a part-time income. If you currently work with another client, that is completely fine with us, as long as our emails are always answered within 24 hours. As we scale, this role is meant to become your main one.

Why we start at $2.50: we have hired for this role before and it did not work out, and it cost us months. The trial is where both of us find out. If you are good you are past it quickly - we have no interest in underpaying someone we want to keep.


ENGLISH

Our customers are American. A reply that reads translated costs us the sale, and a support agent we cannot have a normal conversation with costs us far more than that.

So there are two steps, and we are open about both. First, the short recording you send with your application - that is how we hear you before anyone spends time on a call. Then a video call in English, camera on, before we hire anyone. You need to be able to hold a normal working conversation: understand what we are asking, ask a question back, tell us when something is unclear.

Written English alone is not enough. We have been burned by exactly this before and we are not doing it again.


HOW TO APPLY

Apply through OnlineJobs.ph and start your message with TAMARIND - Your Full Name.

Keep it short. We are not asking you to do unpaid work to apply - nothing below takes more than ten minutes, and nothing below is work you have to invent for us. Be specific: vague answers are the fastest way to get rejected.

1. WHERE YOU DID SUPPORT BEFORE. Which companies or stores, for how long, and in which tool (Gorgias, Zendesk, Gmail, whatever it was). Numbers, not adjectives.

2. HOW MANY EMAILS PER DAY you handled there, and what your average first response time was.

3. YOUR SHOPIFY EXPERIENCE. What did you actually do in the admin? "Refunds, address edits, fulfillments, daily" tells us more than "I know Shopify".

4. YOUR AI SETUP. Which subscription do you have (ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, other) and what do you use it for day to day?

5. YOUR TIME ZONE and the daily block you would work in.

6. ONE PIECE OF PROOF from your past support work. Your pick, and any of these is fine: a screenshot of your ticket stats, an SOP you followed or wrote, a few of the templates you worked with, or a reference we may contact. Black out or remove anything confidential - customer names, order data, anything your agreement with a past employer covers. We do not want you to break that agreement to apply here, and a redacted screenshot tells us everything we need. If you genuinely cannot share anything, write us a short SOP instead: "A customer writes that the package never arrived. Step by step, what do you do?" A few lines is enough.

7. A 60-SECOND RECORDING OF YOURSELF SPEAKING ENGLISH. Loom, a voice message, an unlisted YouTube link, whatever is easiest. Introduce yourself, tell us what you did in your last support role, and say why this one interests you. No production, no script, no editing - phone camera or just audio is completely fine. We are not judging your setup or your confidence on camera. We want to hear how you speak English, because that d ---------- whether this works.

That is it. No cover letter, no essay, no test task.


WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

1. We read your answers and listen to your recording
2. Short video call in English, camera on
3. After the call: a small PAID trial on real cases from our inbox
4. Hire, starting rate, then the first review

The trial comes after we have spoken, not before. You get paid for it whether or not we hire you. We keep the number of trials small on purpose, so if you get there you are already a serious candidate.

Applications that do not start correctly, or that skip any of the 7 points, will not be reviewed. We are strict about this on purpose: following instructions exactly is the single most important part of this job.

We reply to every application that follows the instructions, and we reply fast.

If this sounds like you, apply today. We are hiring one person and we are hiring quickly.

Apply here on OnlineJobs.ph - start your message with: TAMARIND - Your Full Name