Warren and Thianh going at it in the semi-finals.
Month: September 2014
Three types of support
When you’re working through a queue of support threads it can help to identify what type of question the user is asking. Doing this helps set the tone for how you approach your reply. In my mental model there are three broad types of support questions.
Users typically ask educational, technical, or transactional questions. Knowing which bucket their question falls in to helps guide your actions.
Educational questions boil down to unfamiliarity with the product. Your goal is to help the user connect the dots. You’re teaching them about how your product works and how they can use it to meet their project’s goals. Take these questions as an opportunity to point users to best practices, existing documentation, and ways they can get continued help.
Technical questions happen from a breakdown in expectations. A user knows what they want, but your software is hampering their ability to get there. Your goal is twofold: help the user get around the issue they’re facing and fix the root cause so it doesn’t happen again. These questions represent an opportunity to dig in to bug details. Maybe it’s an edge case. Maybe it’s widespread. In any case don’t just dismiss the question as a one-time error without verifying that it won’t happen again.
Transactional questions happen any time there’s an issue with purchase-related actions. When you accept payments you will get loads of questions in this bucket. Customers will want refunds, their cards won’t process correctly, they’ll want to pay by purchase order, and more. The goal here is to get the money issue sorted out as quickly and smoothly as possible. There’s no faster route to losing a customer’s trust than making payments and refunds difficult.
At its core, support is requests in one of these areas.
Before you reply to someone it can help to find what area they fall in to. The appropriate language, personality, and content all changes based on that. If someone’s question boils down to a transactional issue you’re better off handling the issue directly. They don’t likely want to read documentation about how to get a refund, for example. Next time you’re working through a queue of support threads ask yourself what type of question you’re answering. Doing so can help ensure you match your response to the user’s primary goals and concerns.
How to Hire and Build a Remote Team. Zapier’s co-founder writes about how they interview, trial, and hire people. There are a lot of commonalities with how we approach things at Automattic.
Not for Teacher. Solid review of Dana Goldstein’s new book The Teacher Wars. It’s interesting to think about what a fundamentally different educational system would look like.
Hypertext as an agent of change:
But the technology we build inherits the social and political systems of the world we inhabit: it is not a pristine, perfect, clear-eyed utopia. It is as messy, sexist, racist, and fucked up as we are.
Park City Sunrise
Beautiful view over the valley this morning in Park City. Nice way to kick off day one of this year’s annual Automattic Meetup.
Whitman College and the Decline of Economic Diversity. Some interesting data showing the impact of Whitman’s shift from need-blind admissions to need-sensitive. It appears my years at Whitman, 2006 through 2010, came right at the tail end of their well-funded aid programs. I know without the tens of thousands of dollars Whitman granted me there’s no way I feasibly could have attended.
101 Questions to Ask in One on Ones. Tons of questions to help prompt discussion and feedback in 1-1 chats with people on your team. Jason breaks the 101 question up in to topical sections. The last two are my favorite tips. (via Michael).
Not a REAL Gamer: Identity and conspicuous consumption:
The construction and maintenance of the concept of “core” games is how someone has or does not have actual cred as a gamer; if you call yourself one, be prepared to back that up with what you play – what you buy.
Am I a Blogger? An edited version of danah boyd’s talk at Blogher this year.