In my time at FreshySites, I’ve held a lot of different positions. I started with the company in September 2013 as a Junior Web Designer. Having virtually no web experience, I stumbled my way through the first couple of websites with the help of many many Google searches and WordPress tutorials.
After getting the hang of that, I started taking on more and more support tickets, helping our clients out with issues on their websites and trying to troubleshoot their problems. A couple dozen support tickets, and a whole bunch of white screens later (don’t worry we fixed them), I gained 10 times the knowledge I had prior.
Building the FS Support Ecosystem
During my time in support, a co-worker and I started using the same line at the end of any support ticket: “Please let us know if there’s anything further we can do for you!” It wasn’t just something we said – it was something we truly meant.
We were eager to help, and wanted to make sure our clients’ support experience was a good one. We saw how relationships were made, how our clients came to trust us, and we definitely valued that above all else. After repeating this process probably a few hundred times, we found that the more time we invested in client relationships, the happier our support ecosystem seemed to be.
Change in Roles, Same Hands On Approach
As the company added staff, we specialized more and more, and eventually I moved out of support and website builds, focusing on project management and operations. As for the co-worker who helped me standardize our email closing? She became the head of our Support Team!
In all of the time I’ve been with FS, the time spent “in the trenches” has been hands down the most valuable, and has laid the groundwork for the project management style we’ve cultivated today.
Today, we specialize in high-touch project management and taking a hands on approach to web design. We’ve come to find out we’re much more in the customer service business than the business of building websites – and we wouldn’t have it any other way! We have an Ethos at FS and the two points we ask our project managers to follow the most closely are:
- Serve the Customer
- Service as Marketing
We strive to get as close to this as we can everyday, though there are of course times where we come short. What I’ve come to realize during my tenure at FS though, is that you learn by doing, by trying, by making mistakes, and failing from time to time.
It’s been a while since I’ve built a website or been deep in the support trenches, but the things I learned during that time will continue to shape the way we run our project management team.
To put it simply, it’s just what works for us.
