6 ms·

I once worked for eBay a long time ago, and support consisted of 4 concurrent chats, offering pre-programmed macros often pointing to terribly written documenta

I once worked for eBay a long time ago, and support consisted of 4 concurrent chats, offering pre-programmed macros often pointing to terribly written documentation the person had already read and was confused about. If you took the time to actually assist somebody you were chastised in a weekly review where they went over your chat support. The person doing mine told me I had the highest satisfaction record in the entire company, and a 'unique gift of clear and concise conversation, like you're actually talking to them face to face' then said I'd be fired next week because my coworkers were knocking off hundreds of tickets a day just using automated responses, leaving their customers fuming in anger with low satisfaction ratings, as people are very aware of being fed automated responses but the goal was not real support, it was just clearing the tickets by any means possible. I decided to try half and half, so if the support question was written by somebody who obviously would not understand the documentation (grandma trying to sell a car), I would help them but just provide shit support to everybody else in the form of macros like my coworkers. Of course this was unacceptable and I got canned the next week as promised. Was an interesting experience, I can imagine DO having an insane scope to their support requests like 'what is postgresql'. Anyway imho you should have taken the support position and schemed your way into development internally. This was my plan at eBay before they fired me, though they shut down the branch here a few months later and moved to the Philippines anyway so I wouldn't have lasted long regardless.

zeta0134 7y ago
I'm fortunate that my own company (Rackspace) at least has a level head about this sort of thing. My direct manager looks at my numbers (~60-80 interactions per month) and my colleagues (many hundreds of interactions per month) and correctly observes that we have different strengths, and that's the end of the discussion. I have a tendency to take my time and go deep on issues, and my coworkers will send me tickets that need that sort of investigative troubleshooting. My coworker meanwhile will rapidly run through the queue and look for simple tickets to knock out. He sweeps the quick-fix work away, but also knows his limits and will escalate the stuff he's not familiar with. Let me stress here, this is not nearly as easy of a problem to solve as it appears to be on the surface. We're struggling as a company right now because after our recent merge, a lot of our good talent has left and we're having to rebuild a lot of our teams. Even so, I'm still happy with our general approach. Management understands that employees will often have wildly different problem solving approaches and matching metrics, and that's perfectly OK as long as folks aren't genuinely slacking off and we as a team are still getting our customers taken care of. I think that's important to keep in mind no matter how big or small your support floor gets.
- ethbro 7y ago
  Support should be looked at as a profit center, but almost everyone tries to run it like a cost center. It's crazy that companies spend $$ on marketing and sales, then cheap out on a interaction with someone who is already interested in / using their product.
  - vinceguidry 7y ago
    Running profit centers requires comparatively rarer leadership resources while running cost centers only requires easy-to-hire management resources. You don't want your best leaders whipping your support center into shape letting the company's competitive edge fritter away.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      Alternatively, I'd ask if you want easy-to-hire management resources as your primary touchpoint with paying customers.
  - hitekker 7y ago
    Crazy from the individual perspective; natural from the group's. "We have a mark, lets suck it dry until we can throw it away and find new and better marks." Sustainability tends not be a concern until after a group's leadership jumps ship and parasitizes other hosts.
- Phlarp 7y ago
  +1 for Rack support. A previous company I worked for was heavily invested in Rackspace infrastructure and while I often opined not getting the equivalent experience with AWS for the resume, I was regularly floored with the quality of their support. Whenever I had the pleasure of needing to open a ticket they solved my problems and usually taught me something new in the process. The linux guys were very clearly battle hardened admins. I couldn't imagine getting that level of support from DO, let alone Amazon.
  - bluedino 7y ago
znpy 7y ago
> imho you should have taken the support position and schemed your way into development internally > This was my plan at eBay before they fired me I guess you answered yourself.
pfortuny 7y ago
You are very much like Bob Parr (Mr Incredible) at the Insurance company. The reality is that his boss is true...
tialaramex 7y ago
It remains weird to me that this even _can_ work as a business strategy. Customers know this isn't right, so they are only staying with a business that does this for so long as it is the absolutely cheapest/ only way to achieve what they want. That's super high risk, because if a competitor undercuts you, or an alternative appears, you are going to lose all those customers pretty much instantly. Almost invariably the high ticket rates are also driven by bad product elsewhere. Money is being spent on customer "services" sending out useless cut-and-paste answers to tickets to make up for money not spent on UX and software engineering that would prevent many of those tickets being raised. Over time that's the same money, but now the customer is also unhappy. Go ask your marketing people what customer acquisition costs. That's what you're throwing away every time you make a customer angry enough to quit. Ouch.
- jjoonathan 7y ago
  "Abuse your customers and get away with it because they aren't good at punishing you" is the status quo in a depressing fraction of companies.

zeta0134 7y ago

I'm fortunate that my own company (Rackspace) at least has a level head about this sort of thing. My direct manager looks at my numbers (~60-80 interactions per month) and my colleagues (many hundreds of interactions per month) and correctly observes that we have different strengths, and that's the end of the discussion. I have a tendency to take my time and go deep on issues, and my coworkers will send me tickets that need that sort of investigative troubleshooting. My coworker meanwhile will rapidly run through the queue and look for simple tickets to knock out. He sweeps the quick-fix work away, but also knows his limits and will escalate the stuff he's not familiar with. Let me stress here, this is not nearly as easy of a problem to solve as it appears to be on the surface. We're struggling as a company right now because after our recent merge, a lot of our good talent has left and we're having to rebuild a lot of our teams. Even so, I'm still happy with our general approach. Management understands that employees will often have wildly different problem solving approaches and matching metrics, and that's perfectly OK as long as folks aren't genuinely slacking off and we as a team are still getting our customers taken care of. I think that's important to keep in mind no matter how big or small your support floor gets.

ethbro 7y ago
Support should be looked at as a profit center, but almost everyone tries to run it like a cost center. It's crazy that companies spend $$ on marketing and sales, then cheap out on a interaction with someone who is already interested in / using their product.
- vinceguidry 7y ago
  Running profit centers requires comparatively rarer leadership resources while running cost centers only requires easy-to-hire management resources. You don't want your best leaders whipping your support center into shape letting the company's competitive edge fritter away.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    Alternatively, I'd ask if you want easy-to-hire management resources as your primary touchpoint with paying customers.
- hitekker 7y ago
  Crazy from the individual perspective; natural from the group's. "We have a mark, lets suck it dry until we can throw it away and find new and better marks." Sustainability tends not be a concern until after a group's leadership jumps ship and parasitizes other hosts.
Phlarp 7y ago
+1 for Rack support. A previous company I worked for was heavily invested in Rackspace infrastructure and while I often opined not getting the equivalent experience with AWS for the resume, I was regularly floored with the quality of their support. Whenever I had the pleasure of needing to open a ticket they solved my problems and usually taught me something new in the process. The linux guys were very clearly battle hardened admins. I couldn't imagine getting that level of support from DO, let alone Amazon.
- bluedino 7y ago

znpy 7y ago

> imho you should have taken the support position and schemed your way into development internally > This was my plan at eBay before they fired me I guess you answered yourself.

pfortuny 7y ago

You are very much like Bob Parr (Mr Incredible) at the Insurance company. The reality is that his boss is true...

tialaramex 7y ago

It remains weird to me that this even _can_ work as a business strategy. Customers know this isn't right, so they are only staying with a business that does this for so long as it is the absolutely cheapest/ only way to achieve what they want. That's super high risk, because if a competitor undercuts you, or an alternative appears, you are going to lose all those customers pretty much instantly. Almost invariably the high ticket rates are also driven by bad product elsewhere. Money is being spent on customer "services" sending out useless cut-and-paste answers to tickets to make up for money not spent on UX and software engineering that would prevent many of those tickets being raised. Over time that's the same money, but now the customer is also unhappy. Go ask your marketing people what customer acquisition costs. That's what you're throwing away every time you make a customer angry enough to quit. Ouch.

jjoonathan 7y ago
"Abuse your customers and get away with it because they aren't good at punishing you" is the status quo in a depressing fraction of companies.