Support is Being There

Supportops.co podcast episode #96 – “Make Meetings Count” with guest Justin Seymour. ( http://supportops.co/96-make-meetings-count/ ) Near the beginning of the episode, Justin says something like: [as HelpScout customer support, it’s our job to ] ‘be present for the customers’.

I liked hearing this because it seems accurate.

I’ve been thinking how it’s not accurate to describe Software Customer Support role as “helping the customers”, nor is it accurate to describe it as ‘problem solving’. ( see ~~What Support is for a Software Support and Development Engineer http://w̶i̶e̶l̶d̶l̶i̶n̶u̶x̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/?p=1333~~ )

Instead, I like this description of ‘being present for the customers’. Also I like “triaging customer issues” or “troubleshooting customer issues”.

What does this mean for me as a software support person? “being present for the customer”. describes “being”, not *doing*. So in other words as a support person the accurate description of my job is to just be there and have conversations with customers, direct them how to use our software. Tell the customer how they can well use our software.

Indeed it is as some have previously discussed — on the supportdriven.com supportdriven.slack.com chat — software customer support is like being a Hotel Concierge / Front-desk Role.

Edit: This post was previously published at: w̶i̶e̶l̶d̶l̶i̶n̶u̶x̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/2016-07-03-support-is-being-there.php

[2019 edit: Moved to: https://i̶n̶v̶e̶s̶t̶o̶r̶w̶o̶r̶k̶e̶r̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/2016/... .html.]