Kayak.com Makes Developers Do Customer Support
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: Kayak.com Makes Developers Do Customer Support
#2Great find, thanks! My favorite quote from this was:
"If you make the engineers answer e-mails and phone calls from the customers, the second or third time they get the same question, they'll actually stop what they're doing and fix the code. Then we don't have those questions anymore."
Re: Kayak.com Makes Developers Do Customer Support
#3That is properly great for the business, but I can't imagine you can attract even the second-best programmers if you want to use them as a glorified answer system.
I know that if I was to do this, I would find a new place to work, really, really fast.
Re: Kayak.com Makes Developers Do Customer Support
#4Cool article! Although for me what stood out in the article was not that he made his developers do customer support, it was his work ethic and his outlook on life.
I like it that he advocates "work really hard for 40 to 45 hours a week, but we believe in people having strong personal lives". Makes for a more balanced life and ultimately a more sustainable company.
Re: Kayak.com Makes Developers Do Customer Support
#5I welcome the idea and practice so wholeheartedly that I feel the use of word "make" in the title is inappropriate.
It implies that the developers at Kayak.com are forced to do something outside of their responsibility -- it certainly would sound stupid to say "XYZ.com Makes Developers Do Proper Coding", however, both practice lead to the same outcome -- better product.
Re: Kayak.com Makes Developers Do Customer Support
#6"On any given day, you might find him tracking down potential hires, going for a run with his software engineers, or personally answering calls to Kayak's customer hotline." Honestly, he seems very down to earth and genuinely happy. I also like how he doesn't have a problem constantly checking his email unlike all these productivity blogs and such saying its the worst thing you could ever do. I feel my behavior is somewhat vindicated in being one of those differences that doesn't really make a difference.
Re: Kayak.com Makes Developers Do Customer Support
#7He lives this. I once sent in some feedback via Kayak's web form, and got a (brief) personal reply from Paul English within 24 hours.
> "We developed our own customer support software. One of the things it does is randomly select an employee response to a customer and send that response out to the entire company and to all of our investors each day. It keeps us on our toes."
That's a clever little social hack.
Re: Kayak.com Makes Developers Do Customer Support
#8Great find, thanks! My favorite quote from this was: "If you make the engineers answer e-mails and phone calls from the customers, the second or third time they get the same question, they'll actually stop what they're doing and fix the code. Then we don't have those questions anymore."
It requires a very fine balance, however.
When building a big system you need uninterrupted hacking time to make sure you can keep all that state in your head. That won't happen if there's a loud ringing phone or your CEO bouncing around having loud conversations in the office. That's why Joel has private offices, and pg differentiates a maker's schedule with that of a manager.
Re: Kayak.com Makes Developers Do Customer Support
#9He lives this. I once sent in some feedback via Kayak's web form, and got a (brief) personal reply from Paul English within 24 hours. > "We developed our own customer support software. One of the things it does is randomly select an employee response to a customer and send that response out to the entire company and to all of our investors each day. It keeps us on our toes." That's a clever little social hack.
I see the idea, but you can take everything too far. To the entire company and to all investors? Every day? Really? That's borderline fascist surveillance regime.
Re: Kayak.com Makes Developers Do Customer Support
#10He lives this. I once sent in some feedback via Kayak's web form, and got a (brief) personal reply from Paul English within 24 hours. > "We developed our own customer support software. One of the things it does is randomly select an employee response to a customer and send that response out to the entire company and to all of our investors each day. It keeps us on our toes." That's a clever little social hack.
I see the idea, but you can take everything too far. To the entire company and to all investors? Every day? Really? That's borderline fascist surveillance regime.
The proof is in the pudding. Is Kayak keeping their customers happy. Are the investors happy and of course are the employees happy?
If the answer is yes, then the approach works. Fascism is a strong word for a novel approach to customer service. If this approach stops working then they will try something else.
This is not an ideology, you know.