Support Ops Hangouts

In the quest to save a few bucks, many companies turn towards customer powered support forums. These are the forums you see where customers help other customers with their questions and problems. But is that a good way to work with customers? And is it the right choice for your team?

This week's topic comes from Chris Gallo over at Highrise. We all have tools that make us better and faster at our jobs. Which ones are your favorites? And what happens when that app breaks?

We've all been watching Buffer over the last few months as they tried out a self-management model that was completely flat. They removed all managers, stopped mentorship sessions, and let people choose what areas of the product they wanted to be involved with. On this episode, we'll talk about how that worked, what they learned, and see what other companies can take away from this experiment.

We all strive to make support interactions memorable for our customers. But what's the secret to doing that? This week, we look at a few ways to inject fun into your customer interactions.

Despite presenting your best argument, your company's leadership went with a decision you don't agree with. It might not happen often but it'll definitely happen at some point in your support career. Even though you don't like it, you still have to make that decision happen. How do you support a decision when you disagree with it and continue to give customers great experiences?

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?

It can be a little overwhelming with all the choices for your work setup. Standing desk or kitchen table? Remote spot or the office? Headphones or a 80's style boombox? With this episode, we're looking at the setups that let us do our best work.

With any product, you're going to have customers that have a bad first impression. Of maybe they've been customers for a while and have a bad experience. Either way, they're left with a negative impression of your product and team. So how do you go about changing that?

After our last episode, we received several emails from support pros wanting to know more about the split between reactive and proactive support. We're diving into what proactive support looks like, how effective it is, and how to start doing it no matter how big or small your team is.