I’ve long-wished for more blog posts about the craft of customer support, posts that came from individuals rather than company blogs. Perhaps when you spend all day writing to customers the idea of even more writing isn’t exactly appealing. Fair. But there’s something qualitatively different about individuals writing in their own space on the web. And while I wrote more in the past, that’s lagged in recent years.
I’ve also long-felt that, no matter our career, we build our experience in the margins. Our expertise is driven by the small edges we find, polish, and learn deeply. That holds true for support, and when we do the work well it can be a long-term career. The question is how we as a community explore and teach that expertise. Writing on the open web feels like the best answer, though I’m naturally biased given my work of the last 10+ years and counting.
Starting next week I’m going to combine those two outlooks and, twice a month, write about the craft of support. What exact form this takes is a bit TBD, but I’ve been thinking about two topics:
- Support writing: Our words are our primary connection to customers and I’d like to explore how small adjustments in our writing can make all the difference.
- Book recaps: Since reading is my primary hobby I’d like to recap my key takeaways from various customer support books, with an eye toward helping people find books worth exploring.
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Here’s to writing more about customer support and to finding our expertise in the margins. We can always learn from one another and improve.