[Molly OttoParticipant]

How do you handle refreshers/training for support reps? We’re so busy that it feels like once someone has been onboarded it’s hard to take time away to do refreshers, trainings, workshops. That said, it’s so important to maintain a consistent tone and standard policies even when things get crazy, and taking time away from tickets to get back to basics is a great way to do that.

I’m working on putting together some of that material right now, and building out trainings for our CX reps, and would love to hear what you do to stay fresh and re-train on certain essentials. Do you do regular workshops on new topics you want to address? Have running documentation people are expected to read? Any and all training tips?

[Simon OuderkirkParticipant]

One of the things I think we do really well at Automattic are internal rotations - we have plenty of different wrinkles to our support methodology - vanilla tickets, forum posts, Live Chat - and even beyond that we have different services or products that our Happiness Engineers can dip into. This really helps to keep things fresh, plus the benefits of a new pair of eyes on a set of tools and procedures.

 

We don’t have any sort of standardized “You’ve been here six months, here’s your new binder” sort of thing, though I can see how that would be useful!

[BurtonParticipant]

This is challenging, especially as your team grows.

An approach I’m particularly fond of is something I like to call the buddy system. How it works:

1. Pick a random co-worker
2. For one hour, they sit at your desk and you tell them what to do. I mean every mouse click, button press, etc.
3. Switch spots and do the same thing for another hour.
4. After the two hours are up, provide feedback to each other
5. Rinse and repeat with a different coworker once a week/month/preferred period of time

One of the biggest benefits to this is seeing other’s workflows. By seeing all the little tricks people have come up with to improve their workflow, you can integrate the tricks together to create a more optimal and efficient workflow that the whole team can adopt.

 

Another technique we call “ticket recycling.” Normally, once a tech has replied to a ticket that ticket stays with that tech unless he or she manually assigns it to another tech (or a different tech assigns it to himself). When ticket recycling is on, the ticket gets put back into the general queue each time the user replies. In theory, another tech will get the ticket and will then have an opportunity to provide you with feedback.

[Carolyn BreitParticipant]

This is such a good question. My support team is still really small so I don’t feel like we have trouble learning/retaining information since we’re in the thick of it every day. But I do feel like regular updates are necessary for our Sales team a lot of the time. They work with customers one on one every day but a lot of what they learn in training goes right out the window. Do you guys have any suggestions on how to foster learning/review opportunities for members of the Sales team who are supposed to know the product (all of the informational/educational stuff) really well?

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