All Hands Support
wistia.com
All Hands Support
1–10 of 16 posts
Re: All Hands Support
#2"All hands support" (provided by engineers) is cool and all, but ONLY IF your product/service is targeted at other engineers or highly technical users (like Wistia and New Relic).
Support for B2C or B2[Brick and Mortar]B services is a different animal, IMO, and one that many startups don't get.
Re: All Hands Support
#3Sounds great when you're small, but "All-Hands Support" self-destructs when you try to scale it.
Re: All Hands Support
#4"All hands support" (provided by engineers) is cool and all, but ONLY IF your product/service is targeted at other engineers or highly technical users (like Wistia and New Relic). Support for B2C or B2[Brick and Mortar]B services is a different animal, IMO, and one that many startups don't get.
interesting point..maybe it's just that the support is best provided by the employees with the "most domain knowledge on product"? In technical startups, these employees happen to be engineers. But in other startups, take for example AirBnB, the most knowledgeable employees might be the ones who have traveled the most.
IMHO, B2C still has some applicability here. It is still beneficial to rotate support among the employees responsible for the final customer-facing product...whether that product is technical or not. Taking a support day periodically to experience your customers' problems firsthand becomes a great way to internalize their most important pain points and desires, so that you can effectively prioritize new products and feature development. Spending quality time with customers can give you a ton of insight into the "whys" and "hows" of what makes them happy :)
Re: All Hands Support
#5"All hands support" (provided by engineers) is cool and all, but ONLY IF your product/service is targeted at other engineers or highly technical users (like Wistia and New Relic). Support for B2C or B2[Brick and Mortar]B services is a different animal, IMO, and one that many startups don't get.
Seriously. If you're not dealing with another engineer/developer/tech-y, you should reconsider having your engineers interact with the public.
Actual entire response from one of our (very smart, social and senior) engineers recently to a customer who couldn't login:
"Hi (customer): I can't recognize the web browser you are using! Can you possibly try to login with one of our supported browsers and let me know if you still have a problem? -(engineer)"
Sure, it's exactly what he needs to know to start fixing the issue, but there's no chance the customer (a florist) is going to know how to respond to that. We're just wired differently.
Re: All Hands Support
#6"All hands support" (provided by engineers) is cool and all, but ONLY IF your product/service is targeted at other engineers or highly technical users (like Wistia and New Relic). Support for B2C or B2[Brick and Mortar]B services is a different animal, IMO, and one that many startups don't get.
Seriously. If you're not dealing with another engineer/developer/tech-y, you should reconsider having your engineers interact with the public. Actual entire response from one of our (very smart, social and senior) engineers recently to a customer who couldn't login: "Hi (customer): I can't recognize the web browser you are using! Can you possibly try to login with one of our supported browsers and let me know if you…
great illustrative story. But couldn't this be more a matter of learning good customer service skills, not a matter of intrinsically being "wired differently" as an engineer vs. non-engineer?
Re: All Hands Support
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously. If you're not dealing with another engineer/developer/tech-y, you should reconsider having your engineers interact with the public. Actual entire response from one of our (very smart, social and senior) engineers recently to a customer who couldn't login: "Hi (customer): I can't recognize the web browser you are using! Can you possibly try to login with one of our supported browsers and let me know if you…
great illustrative story. But couldn't this be more a matter of learning good customer service skills, not a matter of intrinsically being "wired differently" as an engineer vs. non-engineer?
The engineer thinks of the problem as a technical problem with a technical solution: wrong browser, switch browsers. Simple!
Out of curiosity, how would someone with good customer skills handle this situation?
Re: All Hands Support
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously. If you're not dealing with another engineer/developer/tech-y, you should reconsider having your engineers interact with the public. Actual entire response from one of our (very smart, social and senior) engineers recently to a customer who couldn't login: "Hi (customer): I can't recognize the web browser you are using! Can you possibly try to login with one of our supported browsers and let me know if you…
great illustrative story. But couldn't this be more a matter of learning good customer service skills, not a matter of intrinsically being "wired differently" as an engineer vs. non-engineer?
Well sure, that would be ideal.
But as an engineer, are you even remotely interested in learning good customer service skills... or making sure the site doesn't come crashing down in an hour?
Re: All Hands Support
#9"All hands support" (provided by engineers) is cool and all, but ONLY IF your product/service is targeted at other engineers or highly technical users (like Wistia and New Relic). Support for B2C or B2[Brick and Mortar]B services is a different animal, IMO, and one that many startups don't get.
The vast majority of our customers are far from tech savvy. In fact, on the rare occasion where we suggest getting a customer's IT department involved (say, for an email deliverability issue), they often beg us not to -- "IT is too slow, never solves our problems, will want to build their own version of Wistia, etc." I'm always surprised when I hear this, but I guess it means we're doing a good job with the product and support!
Re: All Hands Support
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
great illustrative story. But couldn't this be more a matter of learning good customer service skills, not a matter of intrinsically being "wired differently" as an engineer vs. non-engineer?
Well sure, that would be ideal. But as an engineer, are you even remotely interested in learning good customer service skills... or making sure the site doesn't come crashing down in an hour?
sure, as far as "job responsibilities" go, I agree that keeping the site running trumps answering support emails. That's the primary job of an engineer or ops guy/gal. But hopefully urgent events like this aren't the hour-to-hour norm for a company.
To answer the first half of your question: as an engineer myself, I am personally very invested in good customer service skills. Admittedly, doing a startup (vs. being part of a much larger organization) probably drives my customer interest quite a bit. However, even from an engineering perspective the customer interaction has definitely helped to focus my work on solving real (often recurring) customer pain points and requests, and communicating those back to the customer in a way they understand.
anybody out there with similar experiences as an engineer doing both customer support and development?