Partner Success Manager

Job Advert Summary

Optix reaches a meaningful part of the African market through partners. Those partners carry our technology, our brand and our safety promise into fleets we do not touch directly. The service their clients receive is read by the market as Optix service, whether or not an Optix employee was in the room.

At present that service layer is supported informally. Partners draw on Customer Success Managers, technical support, logistics and reporting teams case by case, without a single accountable owner and without a defined standard of care. The result is uneven: strong where a relationship happens to exist, thin where it does not. The Partner Success Manager makes the support deliberate, measurable and repeatable.

The role gives every partner one accountable point of contact for service delivery and operational excellence — onboarding, enablement, fleet health, escalation, and performance reporting. It applies the disciplines of the Customer Success Manager operating model at a cadence proportionate to an indirect relationship, where the partner, not Optix, owns the end client.

Minimum Requirements

Qualifications and Experience

• A relevant tertiary qualification in business, logistics, information systems or engineering, or equivalent demonstrable experience
• Five or more years in customer success, account management, service delivery or technical account management
• Demonstrated experience working through a partner, reseller or distributor channel rather than only direct accounts
• Exposure to fleet telematics, video telematics, transport operations or a comparable technical service environment
• A track record of running structured service reviews with external organisations and holding both sides to commitments

Technical Competencies

• Confident with CRM discipline, ideally Salesforce, including account hierarchy, case management and reporting
• Comfortable interpreting device health, connectivity and platform data, and translating it into an action a partner can take
• Able to build clear operational reporting in Excel to a standard suitable for external presentation
• Working understanding of installation practice, hardware fault patterns and field service constraints
• Familiar with data protection obligations under POPIA as they apply to shared client and driver data

Behavioural Competencies

• Builds credibility with technical and operational counterparts rather than relying on relationship alone
• Holds a partner to account without damaging the relationship, and does the same internally
• Works to a cadence and keeps it, including when the immediate pressure is elsewhere
• Writes clearly and concisely, because most of this role’s influence is exercised in writing
• Comfortable operating without direct authority over the people whose delivery the role depends on
• Curious about how partners run their businesses, and willing to learn the constraints before advising

First Ninety Days

The appointee should be assessed at ninety days against the following, which also serves as the induction plan:

• Complete a service baseline for every partner in the portfolio, covering installed base, health position, open escalations and current cadence

• Confirm partner tiering and agree the resulting review cadence with each partner service lead

• Publish the standardised partner scorecard and issue the first cycle to every Tier 1 and Tier 2 partner

• Establish the escalation path with each partner, tested at least once in practice

• Present a portfolio risk position to the Head of Client Relations, identifying the partners requiring intervention and the reason

Duties & Responsibilities

Partner Onboarding and Enablement

• Run the onboarding programme for newly appointed partners, from technical readiness through to first client go-live
• Establish the partner’s service operating model: support hours, escalation path, named contacts, ticket routing and internal ownership
• Deliver product, platform and installation training to partner teams, and certify partner trainers where the volume supports a train-the-trainer model
• Maintain a current enablement library covering platform guides, installation standards, troubleshooting trees, release notes and client-ready collateral
• Confirm partner readiness before the first client deployment proceeds; refer to Appendix A for the activation checklist applied at that gate

Service Delivery and Operational Excellence

• Hold the Partner to the agreed service standard and hold Optix to ours, tracking both sides of the relationship against defined response and resolution targets
• Monitor ticket volume, ageing and resolution patterns across the partner portfolio, and act on the trend rather than the individual case
• Identify recurring failure modes across partners and route them to Product, Technical Support or Logistics for structural resolution
• Review installation quality and first-time-fix performance where Optix or its appointed installers deliver on the partner’s behalf
• Maintain and improve the partner service documentation set, including SOPs, escalation matrices and request forms

Fleet and Device Health

• Monitor device health, connectivity and data continuity across the partner installed base, and surface deterioration before the client reports it
• Issue a monthly health position to each Tier 1 and Tier 2 partner, identifying units requiring intervention and the remediation owned by the partner
• Track remediation to closure, escalating unresolved health issues that place client data or safety outcomes at risk
• Coordinate firmware, hardware and platform change activity affecting the partner base, ensuring the partner is informed before their clients are

Escalation Management

• Act as the single Optix escalation point for Partner service issues, applying the established priority matrix and response targets channeled through the support teams
• Coordinate Optix technical, logistics and product resources on partner-raised escalations, holding internal owners to committed timelines
• Keep the Partner informed at a defined cadence for the duration of an escalation, and confirm closure in writing
• Conduct root cause review on every priority one escalation and every repeat priority two, issuing corrective actions with named owners and dates
• Escalate to the Partner Sales Lead and Head of Client Relations where a service issue carries reputational, contractual or safety consequence

Reporting and Partner Reviews

• Produce the standardised partner service scorecard covering fleet health, ticket performance, escalation history, adoption and enablement status
• Chair operational reviews at the cadence set by partner tier, with a written record of actions, owners and due dates
• Prepare and deliver the service component of partner business reviews, supporting the Partner Sales Lead who leads the session
• Report portfolio-level partner performance into the Client Relations management cycle, flagging risk early and with evidence

Adoption and Capability Growth

• Track feature and module adoption across the partner base, and identify where partner capability rather than client appetite is the constraint
• Design and run targeted enablement to close identified capability gaps, measured on subsequent adoption rather than attendance
• Surface unmet client needs observed through the partner channel to Product and to the Partner Sales Lead, without engaging the commercial conversation
• Champion the partner voice internally, ensuring channel requirements are represented in roadmap, process and support design

Data Integrity and Systems Discipline

• Maintain accurate partner and end-client records in Salesforce, including account ownership, installed base and contact hierarchy
• Keep partner records in the Client Opportunity M