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The Business
Oct. 26th, 2020 10:30 am
Last week was a pretty intense one for the day job. Over the past year, we've become a bit more structured with projects and initiatives, and it seems to have come to fruition at the beginning of this quarter: the language about our projects have shifted, and the things we're stressing have changed.
It's easy to see the new CEO's stamp on almost all of this. He's built his reputation on aggressively collecting data to find out what's working and what's not, so suddenly we're really paying attention to the data we feel is "core" to figuring out our performance and tying any projects we're undertaking towards moving those numbers. The metrics themselves feel closer to industry standards, like first reply time, full resolution time, customer satisfaction, etc. If we want to bring up any improvements for the support team, we have to be able to show the potential impact to at least one of these metrics.
For now, though, we have a company-level OKR (meaning that with every company-wide quarterly update, this goal is mentioned) to resolve most of our tickets within 24 hours. I think the goal is to make those numbers a feature of our support, especially to enterprise clients. But in order to do that, we have to be a LOT more together with our problem-solving process.
So we've changed the "flat and specialized" structure of our support to something a bit more tiered and generalized. Tier 0 is self-service: forums, help centers, FAQs and so on. Tier 1 is chat and email, designed to take care of the most simple issues. Tier 2 is for more complex issues that will take collaboration with other teams to resolve. And Tier 3 is really deep-dive stuff that more or less has to do with specific courses and how they're put together. In this new paradigm, I'm a Tier 2 Specialist, which actually suits me just fine.
In addition to handling the Enterprise side of the business I'm also expected to be dealing with Scholarships, which is the business unit I've had the least experience with. Almost everyone on the support team will need to be trained on something they have no idea about, so this quarter will be a bit...loose as we still manage our usual field of expertise while training and learning so much other stuff. In addition to THAT, the projects that we're working on still have to move forward.
Last week was really intense. There were multiple meetings every morning, and I had evening meetings on top of that three days out of the week. I'm working on updating the email templates we use to respond to our customers, which is my jam. I'm also working on an internal "SLA" that formalizes how support approaches other departments and holds them accountable for responding within a certain time. We absolutely need that if we're to have a hope of solving 80% of tickets within 24 hours.
During the evening meeting where we were introducing all of this, I had the realization that THIS is the moment I had been excited about when first arriving at my day job more than one year ago. I knew that this was a pretty unorganized support team, and it was really cool to have the opportunity to help build a team from the ground up. Well, it's finally happening! Creating internal documentation, improving support processes, and laying down the foundation for collaboration is what I hoped to be doing, so....very cool. :)
I'm not sure if it was because the quarter was starting or if this is the culmination of long shift, but last week took a lot of work and I was well and truly tired by the end of it. I really didn't have the time or energy for much else, including writing or gaming. I don't really mind that, but I'm not sure I want to burn the candle quite so hot for a sustained period. That being said, I might not have a choice. My Lead has been out of the office for over a month with a health issue, and had to take another leave after his first day back when he sustained a concussion. I've been handling Lead-ish duties since then, inherited his projects, and been largely responsible for training others in his absence. All of which I'm happy to do! But also, I'm fairly proud of the work I've been doing and especially how dope this is all going to look on my resume. ;)
This week might be a little bit calmer, but I'm still going to need to be on my A game a lot of the time. With things easing off just a bit, I'd like to refocus on doing a few things more consistently: writing, reading, exercise, home upkeep. One thing this year has taught me is that it really doesn't take a whole lot of time to improve things -- just steady intention and effort. But my brain, with its capricious moods and energy levels, makes putting in that steady effort a bit of a challenge. Even when I fail, though, the most important thing is to get back on the horse as soon as possible. And that's basically what this week is. Getting back on the horse.
It's easy to see the new CEO's stamp on almost all of this. He's built his reputation on aggressively collecting data to find out what's working and what's not, so suddenly we're really paying attention to the data we feel is "core" to figuring out our performance and tying any projects we're undertaking towards moving those numbers. The metrics themselves feel closer to industry standards, like first reply time, full resolution time, customer satisfaction, etc. If we want to bring up any improvements for the support team, we have to be able to show the potential impact to at least one of these metrics.
For now, though, we have a company-level OKR (meaning that with every company-wide quarterly update, this goal is mentioned) to resolve most of our tickets within 24 hours. I think the goal is to make those numbers a feature of our support, especially to enterprise clients. But in order to do that, we have to be a LOT more together with our problem-solving process.
So we've changed the "flat and specialized" structure of our support to something a bit more tiered and generalized. Tier 0 is self-service: forums, help centers, FAQs and so on. Tier 1 is chat and email, designed to take care of the most simple issues. Tier 2 is for more complex issues that will take collaboration with other teams to resolve. And Tier 3 is really deep-dive stuff that more or less has to do with specific courses and how they're put together. In this new paradigm, I'm a Tier 2 Specialist, which actually suits me just fine.
In addition to handling the Enterprise side of the business I'm also expected to be dealing with Scholarships, which is the business unit I've had the least experience with. Almost everyone on the support team will need to be trained on something they have no idea about, so this quarter will be a bit...loose as we still manage our usual field of expertise while training and learning so much other stuff. In addition to THAT, the projects that we're working on still have to move forward.
Last week was really intense. There were multiple meetings every morning, and I had evening meetings on top of that three days out of the week. I'm working on updating the email templates we use to respond to our customers, which is my jam. I'm also working on an internal "SLA" that formalizes how support approaches other departments and holds them accountable for responding within a certain time. We absolutely need that if we're to have a hope of solving 80% of tickets within 24 hours.
During the evening meeting where we were introducing all of this, I had the realization that THIS is the moment I had been excited about when first arriving at my day job more than one year ago. I knew that this was a pretty unorganized support team, and it was really cool to have the opportunity to help build a team from the ground up. Well, it's finally happening! Creating internal documentation, improving support processes, and laying down the foundation for collaboration is what I hoped to be doing, so....very cool. :)
I'm not sure if it was because the quarter was starting or if this is the culmination of long shift, but last week took a lot of work and I was well and truly tired by the end of it. I really didn't have the time or energy for much else, including writing or gaming. I don't really mind that, but I'm not sure I want to burn the candle quite so hot for a sustained period. That being said, I might not have a choice. My Lead has been out of the office for over a month with a health issue, and had to take another leave after his first day back when he sustained a concussion. I've been handling Lead-ish duties since then, inherited his projects, and been largely responsible for training others in his absence. All of which I'm happy to do! But also, I'm fairly proud of the work I've been doing and especially how dope this is all going to look on my resume. ;)
This week might be a little bit calmer, but I'm still going to need to be on my A game a lot of the time. With things easing off just a bit, I'd like to refocus on doing a few things more consistently: writing, reading, exercise, home upkeep. One thing this year has taught me is that it really doesn't take a whole lot of time to improve things -- just steady intention and effort. But my brain, with its capricious moods and energy levels, makes putting in that steady effort a bit of a challenge. Even when I fail, though, the most important thing is to get back on the horse as soon as possible. And that's basically what this week is. Getting back on the horse.
