Support Ops

Learn to be a customer support pro.

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A Few of Our Best Episodes

Whether you’re brand new or have been here a few times, here’s a few of our best episodes and articles we’ve got.

 

The New Manager Series

You’re a brand new manager, which means your priorities are going to shift. As Carolyn put it on episode #99, “Your customers are now the ones taking care of the customers”. In this series, you’ll learn the ins and outs of being a new manager.

Regardless of Seniority, Every Good Manager Will…

There was a great Tweet that caught our eye, both because it’s a great prompt and had a great conversation thread alongside it. “Regardless of seniority, every good manager will” and you get to fill in the blank. With this series, we’re filling in that blank.

Growing Your Team’s Influence

Getting a seat at the proverbial table is tough. Lots of companies (hopefully not your’s though) see customer support as just another expense. A cost center. One more thing to minimize at all costs. But we know you’re more than that.

Effective Team Communications

Automattic has a great idea in their creed – “I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company.” We’d go as far as to say communication is the oxygen of any team – both local and remote. But how does an effective team communicate with each other?

Keeping Your Team Happy

We’re always talking about keeping customers happy. From easy refunds to pro-active support, we go out of our way to make sure they stay customers. But what about our fellow employees? How do we keep our teams just as happy as our customers?

Does Language Matter?

Buffer calls their support pros “happiness heroes”. Wistia calls them “champions”. Does it matter?

Then there’s your internal lingo. Some of us refer to support issues as tickets and other teams call them cases. Do you call the people that pay for your product – customers, clients, or users?

All that to lead to the main question – Does language matter or is it just semantics?

Hiring and Training Remotely

We look at hiring and training a new support pro remotely. The best part of this is that we’ve got both sides here. Carolyn and the Buffer team are remote while Jeff and the Wistia team all work from the Wistia office. It makes for a fun discussion.

Customer Security Interactions

A customer contacts your team and requests ownership of an account because the current owner left the company for whatever reason. It’s challenging and sometimes even scary since lots of things can go wrong. So let’s talk about how to make it safer!

Customer Support is a Feature

Customer support is as much a feature of your product as that last feature your team added. When done right, it can set you apart from your competition. An app can be recreated easily. A rocking support experience is much harder to copy. When customers know they’re going to get great support, they’ll usually choose you over the competitor.

New Customer Onboarding

When a customer signs up for your product, you want to give them the best onboarding experience possible. With this series, we’ll take a look at best practices and ideas for helping every customer learn your product and convert to a paying customer.

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