The Owlery

As much fun as stories are, when we play out these dramas in real life, conflict inevitably occurs. This is a particular risk when it comes to working in customer support, because you are working directly with people.

Customers use our software in the course of their work, in jobs which are often complex, demanding and stressful. When they ask us puzzling questions, it’s our job to decode their true meaning, so we can provide the best support experience possible.

The value of a knowledge-centered business is more obvious during times of stress. You have already captured what is important for use at a later date. And if you haven’t been capturing knowledge already, it’s never too late to start.

We need to meet regularly to review and make decisions on bug reports and feature requests from our customers, and we use a combination of tools to make this happen.

Here are some suggestions on tweaks or features you can use in KnowledgeOwl to help streamline some of those new processes.

From having a sensible customer support infrastructure, to reminding yourself that we don't know everyone's story, here are strategies for having more empathy.

Your team handbook is the manual that you present to all employees, and it contains the essentials of working for your company.

Jidoka means catching errors in the production system at the first chance you get, in order to stop them snowballing into larger problems and defects.

The documentation team at Splunk have written their own book called The Product is Docs. It covers the most important aspects of documentation for software development product teams.

There’s quite a difference between engineering a “newsworthy” customer service experience, and simply just getting it right every time. It may not go “viral”, but it wins you customers for life.