Our story is a lot like other companies. We started small, with a core group of website designers and developers. Something clicked. People really liked the product and the service we provided. Our company grew, and so did our team.
And then we asked ourselves the question every business asks itself when it grows quickly: how do we keep the magic alive, even while we scale? OK, there are a lot of answers to that question, most of them involving process and structure. But that’s just the shape of the ship.
What keeps the boat afloat is customer service, and that’s why we decided to build customer support into the very DNA of our company.
Why?
- It’s already happening, and the best companies are doing it. If you look around at the best companies, they’re all doing some version of the “all hands support” system. Zapier, Stripe, Slack, Basecamp, & many more — all do some version of “all hands support.” This isn’t a new idea, but it’s one that gets easily lost in the internet age.
- Our team starting solving problems at their root, instead of pulling weeds. Our site builders bring a whole different set of skills & training to the support system. We found shortcuts, pointed out flaws, and were able to fix problems more quickly because of our experience on the back end. This makes our support faster, more efficient, and better for the customer over the long haul.
- Our team learns directly from customers. Rather than run customer feedback through a complicated loop, our builders learn exactly where the pain points exist for a customer. If a page is consistently confusing, or if a complaint keeps resurfacing, we prioritize it, and it gets fixed faster.
- It improves our support system. When designers, coders, and builders get their hands on the support structure, they make it better. They find ways to make our internal support tools more efficient. And when that happens, our support system gets better, and our customers benefit.
- The customer gets better service. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s the first and last reason why we do what we do. We found that by putting our site builders & other staff into support roles, they not only learned from the support team, but improved it.
But support only gets better if your team is prepared and you have a plan. Our next article will address how we built customer support into our DNA, and how we structure our team and our time so that support comes naturally, not as an afterthought.
