5 steps to awesome internal customer service from a developer

The following are thoughts written by Ryan Hadley, Senior Linux System Administrator at SurveyGizmo, and shared with their development team a few years back. I got wind of it over in support, and I find myself referencing his thoughts years later when we talk about internal customer service. Enjoy!

So — I had a full day off without anyone ever calling me. Well, I did help Seth out on Skype in the morning. But. I had 6+ hours of contemplative driving time in that time off.

I realized that I was slipping on some of my core beliefs about what makes someone awesome. As Bono would say, I was “running just to stand still”… and in this I lost track of a few things. I thought I’d share my thoughts and if you all had any additional thoughts too, maybe we could all benefit from it. And maybe we could all encourage each other to get back on track should we stray.

Things I believe makes someone awesome:

1. Always admit when you don’t know something.
2. Always admit when you are wrong or did something wrong. Readily, quickly and loudly admit your own fault.
3. Avoid saying “no”.
4. When someone comes to you for help, get up.
5. When someone comes to you for help — help them find the best solution, not necessarily the solution they’re currently trying for.

So, that’s the tl;dr version. Seth — the rest is more wordy but you should still read it. :-P

1. Always admit when you don’t know something.

Pretty simple to understand, but understanding that admitting you don’t know something means asking for help too. If you admit you don’t know what you’re doing, then get help to understand how to do what you’re doing.

2. Always admit when you are wrong or did something wrong. Readily, quickly and loudly admit your own fault.

This makes so many things get resolved so much faster. Don’t hide things to protect your image. Plus, it’s funny, but hiding things you did wrong actually scores you no points while admitting you did something wrong gains you awesome points. Sometimes it’s scary, if what you did wrong is sooooo bad, but in the end it’s always best to just say you were wrong and move on.

3. Avoid saying “no”.

When someone comes to you for help, saying “I don’t know” is important if you don’t know… but you can’t just say “NO HELP FOR YOU!”. Say you don’t know, but then help them anyway.

Alternatives to “no”:

• I don’t know how to do that right now, but I’ll go find out.
• That’s not something we should do, but let’s find an alternative solution that works for everyone.
• Frank over here can probably help you with that, let’s both go and see and maybe we can both learn the answer.

4. Get up.

Seriously, get up. This makes such a huge difference. It makes you infinitely more approachable to others. Say “let’s go take a look”. Get out of your seat, walk to their computer, help them there. This was one of the first things I impressed upon Chris when he first started training as an IT help desk in the office and the change in him and how people viewed him was dramatic.

5. When someone comes to you for help — help them find the best solution, not necessarily the solution they’re currently trying for.

This is a big one for me… asking questions is an art, and it’s an art lots of people don’t know very well. Help them ask the right question, but try not to be smug about it.

The person has a problem they’re trying to solve and they hit a road block with the solution they’re attempting, so they ask you a question about that road block. What they don’t realize is that your brain is not theirs. They should start at the beginning if they need to bring someone else in. I try hard to stop myself and explain the problem before I ask about the road block I hit with the solution I’m attempting. If someone comes to you with a problem to a solution, kindly ask them to explain what the solution is trying to fix.

This might be best with an example…

Frank: Hey, Ryan, is the survey cron running?
Ryan: Why?
Frank: Because this survey isn’t loading.
Ryan: What is the survey id and what environment is this in?
Frank: 123456 and it’s in production.
Ryan: Ah, I see, it hit that mysterious bug where all binary versions were wiped from the table. I’ll restore it from the latest in the log file.

This whole conversation could have been shortened to:

Lloyd: Hey, Ryan, survey id 123456 isn’t loading in production. It says it can’t find the survey object. I don’t know why that would be, can you help?
Ryan: Ah, I see, it hit that mysterious bug where all binary versions were wiped from the table. I’ll restore it from the latest in the log file.

Not everyone is going to be as good at asking question as Lloyd though, so be prepared for Frank — but be polite to Frank. Help Frank get you the details you need to actually help. If you don’t, the conversation would have gone:

Frank: Hey, Ryan, is the survey cron running?
*Ryan checks the dev survey cron — it is running*
Ryan: Yep.

And that would have been useless to Frank.

We hope you enjoyed this most as much as we did! Did Ryan miss anything that makes someone really awesome at internal customer service? Let us know in the comments!