Although there’s not much about Support work I don’t like, I have a special love for support operations and management because it melds two of my favorite aspects of Support: being part of a well-oiled team and being a behind-the scenes process nerd.
I’ve worked in support operations in some form for my entire career, usually for small- to medium-sized teams. I’ve often focused on the documentation side of operations (see my experience in Knowledge Creation and Management for more details on that), but my experience certainly isn’t limited to that area. Below you’ll find my support operations and management experience by company and role.
Abstract
Support Engineer III, then Support Engineer Manager
As the transitional Support Engineering Manager (November 2021 to February 2022, when the company was undergoing a change of ownership), I led the Support team of 2. During this time, I:
-
- Created a queue management policy with internal SLAs that would accommodate a smaller team,
- A triage manager rotation to manage high support ticket volume (ensuring for a meaningful, proactive, and positive experience for all customers during the transition),
- An incident response and management procedure that would accommodate smaller Support and Engineering teams during and following the transition,
- And lastly, a basic Abstract training program for new Support Engineers following the transition (delivered via Trainual, Scribe, and Guru). The training oriented them on our internal processes and policies, taught our support tools and tech, and helped them learn to use our product as well as Sketch.
Before that, as a Support Engineer I helped design our triage management policy during normal operations, and mentored a new Junior Support Engineer as they onboarded, helping them to grow their support and technical skills throughout their career at Abstract.
I also served as the voice of the customer on the Notebooks product team, advising this cross-functional team on the needs of our users and ensuring information flows freely between the product and support teams.
Khan Academy
Community Support Lead
I co-led a team of 8-15 BPO frontline support agents, keeping them unblocked and facilitating communication between our team and product managers, engineers, and other teams to resolve or investigate escalated issues. I mentored vendor team members, provided feedback and collaborated to help them grow toward their goals.
As a Community Support Lead at Khan Academy, I was embedded as the voice of the customer on the Learning Platform and Test Prep teams, advising these cross-functional teams on the needs of our users, identifying trends in user issues, and ensuring that information flowed freely between the product teams and our frontline support team. Additionally, I worked closely with the Test Prep engineering and product teams to identify and prioritize high-impact user issues to be worked on in upcoming sprints.
I built and encouraged a healthy, safe, and productive community on Khan Academy and in the Support Community as Community Manager. I conceived and managed the community safety investigation program to proactively identify and respond to risks to protect the safety, privacy, and security of the learner community.
As Community Liaison, I also recruited, coordinated, and trained 20-30 community volunteers in the Challenge Council, Guardian, and Support Advocate volunteer programs. In 2020, I refreshed the Guardian volunteer program by producing a volunteer handbook, designing and delivering online training, and updating the program’s internal knowledge base.
Shortcut (formerly Clubhouse Software)
Customer Experience Representative
Continuing my love for documentation, I frequently contributed to the internal knowledge base, the Shortcut Help Center, and planned and managed a successful campaign to update and optimize 80% of our public knowledge base to make it easier for users to find and read information about Shortcut. I also occasionally contributed to our marketing materials, with an emphasis on matching the joyful, people-first tone of the Shortcut app.
I was an advocate for customers, collaborating with other teams to optimize user experiences and test new features and releases. I wrote macros and documented internal Support processes and provided training on Shortcut to new employees. I also set up and maintained a Help Center automation (Answerbot for Zendesk), and provided monthly reporting on its function.
