Why everyone should work in customer support (at least sometimes)
Every new hire at Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com and the amazing WooCommerce plugin) starts off with a two-week support rotation. It doesn’t matter whether you are a developer, a designer, a product manager, or a new division lead - you’ll be working alongside our Happiness Engineers for the first two weeks. Usually, this means answering tickets for WordPress.com customers, maybe even dipping a toe into livechat.
This is not your only personal encounter with our customers, though. Every year, around your work anniversary, you’ll spend another week diving back into the support queue. A Happiness Engineer in your time zone will help you to get up to speed again, review tickets for you, and make sure that you get exposed to as many different customer queries as possible. At Automattic, we believe that direct and unfiltered contact with our customer will make you a better developer/designer/product manager/division lead/you-name-it if.
Two immediate advantages of a support rotation
Talking to real customers, solving real problems, seeing their struggles first-hand has an almost cathartic effect on those who do not usually work in customer support. The support rotation recaps are full of lightbulb moments, new ideas, nascent features and, yes, quick bug fixes.
Working alongside Happiness Engineers also keeps the company culture focussed on our customers. The support department isn’t a closed-off entity designed to keep unreasonable customers away. By working alongside Happiness and creating a bond with the support rotation buddy, bridges are built that remain after the official support week. Customer Happiness permeates everybody’s work - and it helps us as a company to focus on the customer, on every level.
What if we do not have time for this?
Call me European, but if your company cannot do without a designer/developer/product manager/division lead/you-name it for one week, you need to review your processes. For real! Having any person focus on something different for a week (or go on a three-week vacation in August) should not negatively impact your day-to-day as a company. If it does - congratulations, you’ve just detected a bottleneck.
This is actually a very valuable lesson. If you can’t spare a particular person for a week, it’s time to look at why this person is absolutely irreplaceable. You are not doing them a favour, since if they can’t step out, they can’t step up either. And you are not doing your company a favour, because people leave for a million reasons when you don’t expect it.