Support Ops

Learn to be a customer support pro.

Archives for March 2014

Hangout #38 – Rapid Fire!

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This week, it’s rapid fire! We’re taking listener questions and answering them as quick and concise as we can. These are questions that don’t really need a whole show for them. So sit back and listen to our first ever rapid fire!

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This week’s shownotes

This week’s shoutouts

If you’ve got a question for us or an idea for a future episode, send us a message here. And if you enjoyed the show, show us some love by giving us a review in iTunes.

Episode #30 – The Productive Support Pro with Thanh Pham

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This week I talk with Thanh Pham from Asian Efficiency. We look at  how to prepare for a product launch when your team is still pretty small. Thanh also shares with us how his team is scaling their support while still providing a very personable customer experience.

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Show Notes and Links

Hangout #37 – Support at Automattic

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This week we’re talking about how larger companies like Automattic handle support. We’ve covered small 1-2 person support teams so now it’s time to look at some bigger support teams.

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Ways to listen or watch: iTunes | MP3 | YouTube | RSS 

This week’s shownotes

This week’s shoutouts

If you’ve got a question for us or an idea for a future episode, send us a message here. And if you enjoyed the show, show us some love by giving us a review in iTunes.

Live Chat Support at Automattic

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Live Chat Support

I’ve had the opportunity to begin leading a new live chat initiative at Automattic with a few other awesome Happiness Engineers and thought it might be worthwhile to post some thoughts. Live chat support is a big push within Automattic this year as we strive to give our customers the best and fastest method of support possible. We’re starting off slow, but hope to ramp up as the year goes on.

Live chat support is very exciting since it’s an almost immediate way to help users, where as they may have to wait hours or even days in extreme cases to get help via email. As long as there are enough happiness engineers online to handle the volume, users can expect quick response times and fast follow-up replies from those helping them. It’s is also preferable to email because the issue is usually resolved once the chat is finished, whereas email correspondence could take several emails to resolve an issue, often spread over days. In rare cases we may need to follow-up with the user via email if their issue can’t be fixed immediately, but that’s easy enough to do and doesn’t disrupt the flow of incoming chats too much.

The rapid fire nature of live chat support can be a bit overwhelming at first, but everyone adjusts quickly and once they’re up to speed on the tool and feel confident in giving answers, we can all handle 3 or more chats at once with relative ease. It definitely helps to use a tool like TextExpander to have some general replies and links ready to go, but I generally wouldn’t recommend having large blocks of text as snippets since the conversation then begins to lose its informal feel.

All in all, this has been a great experience, and I look forward to expanding it even more as the year goes on. We’re already planning a live chat focused meetup later this year so we can brainstorm how to refine and improve our current setup. If you have questions or comments about what we’re doing, I’d be happy to receive those. The best way to get in touch with me is via Twitter.

Originally published here.

Hangout #36 – Openness and Transparency

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This week we’re talking about being open and transparent with your customers. Openness and transparency are big topics these days with companies. And it’s for a good reason – customers love knowing the ins and outs of the company they’re buying a product from.

But how much openness and transparency is the right amount? We’ll look at the right balance between sharing everything your company does and sharing nothing.

Listen / Watch the Episode

Ways to listen or watch: iTunes | MP3 | YouTube | RSS 

This week’s shownotes

This week’s shoutouts

If you’ve got a question for us or an idea for a future episode, send us a message here. And if you enjoyed the show, show us some love by giving us a review in iTunes.

The First Ever Rapid Fire Episode

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Sometimes I get questions from other support pros that are perfect for our hangouts but not meaty enough to devote an entire show to. A ten minute show would be quick but that’s not much fun, right?

Enter the rapid fire episode.

We’ll take those questions and answer them in a rapid style format on our March 24th show. If all goes well, it might make a regular appearance in the future.

Send us your questions!

I’ve got a few questions already on our list to answer. But I know you’ve got some more! It’s super easy to get your question to us for the show.

Just head over to this page and send us a message.

Then tune in live Monday March 24th to see our awesome support panel answer it on the show!

Hangout #35 – Downtime Happens So Be Prepared

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This week we’re talking about that dreaded downtime event. Every app is going to go down at some point. No matter how good your team is, it’s inevitable so it’s best to be prepared. We’ll look at the best practices for preparing for a downtime event along with what to do after it’s all over.

Listen / Watch the Episode

Ways to listen or watch: iTunes | MP3 | YouTube | RSS 

This week’s shownotes

This week’s shoutouts

If you’ve got a question for us or an idea for a future episode, send us a message here. And if you enjoyed the show, show us some love by giving us a review in iTunes.