Five Favorites and Five Less Fun Things About Support

This is what I think aka answers to question 1

In the task, you asked me to rank my top 5 things I like about support and five tasks that I don't find as fun.

  • Respond to 25+ support requests via email every day
  • Dig through logs to troubleshoot a customer's broken project
  • Write and maintain support articles and docs pages
  • Create video tutorials to help teach users a specific feature or use case
  • Help resolve billing issues for customers
  • Analyze hundreds of support tickets to spot trends the product team can use
  • Identify, file (and, where possible, resolve) bugs in private and public Vercel/Next.js repos on GitHub
  • Manage a support team
  • Find and recruit teammates for the support team
  • Help train and onboard new support teammates
  • Run ticket review sessions to make sure tone is consistent
  • Work with 3rd party partners to track down a tricky situation for a joint customer
  • Work with the product team to develop a new feature based on feedback from customers
  • Respond to queries on Twitter, Reddit, Hacker News and other 3rd party sites
  • Act as a dedicated CSE for a handful of key customers to ensure their success using Vercel
  • Work with engineering teams during incidents and provide updates to internal and external stakeholders
  • Scheduling time-off coverage and collaborating as part of a growing cohesive support team
  • Engage multiple users at once in a public discussion, to answer their questions and troubleshoot problems
  • Work with people to figure out if Vercel is suitable for their use case

My five favourites:

Respond to 25+ support requests via email every day

I like to have things to do. It doesn't matter if it's small things or big things, just that I have things to do.

Dig through logs to troubleshoot a customer's broken project

Currently working at a logging company, so I think that might answer the question. I do enjoy logs. A customer can say how they feel or what the problem is in 100 different ways, but logs will continue being logs that stay the same. Logs just say so much with so few words, you know?

Find and recruit teammates for the support team

Talking to people is fun, so I find recruitment fun. I have been told several times after interviews that I made the person who was being interviewed feel at ease and take a bit of the pressure off, and that always makes me feel good.

Work with engineering teams during incidents and provide updates to internal and external stakeholders

This is something I do a lot in my current job and I like it. That hyperfocus that an incident can require is something I find fun and rewarding.

Help train and onboard new support teammates

I enjoy training newbies, so I've always asked to be in charge of this in my earlier jobs. I think I'm quite good at explaining complex things in a way that makes sense, or at least I hope I am!

My five least favourite:

Should start by saying that these are all things you need to do when you work in support. You can't and shouldn't ever try to get out of them, but some things are less interesting for sure. I will try to explain each as well as I can.

Help resolve billing issues for customers

Billing is one of those things that kind of stays the same. It's very cut and dry. You rarely sit digging through logs to figure stuff out with billing issues, so that's why I find this less fun than technical issues.

Respond to queries on Twitter, Reddit, Hacker News and other 3rd party sites

Talking in a public forum for your company is more scary than answering a ticket, in my opinion. So, that makes me feel less confident than usual because I know so many people can read it. Also, no one wants to be on Twitter (X?) now that Elon Musk bought it. Just sayin'

Create video tutorials to help teach users a specific feature or use case

Sometimes a video is the only thing that will explain something well to a customer, but I hate having to trim it afterwards and hear my own voice.

Act as a dedicated CSE for a handful of key customers to ensure their success using Vercel

I don't mind this part necessarily. However, there's always a risk with it. I've had customers want me to be their CSE and then not want help from my colleagues. So that part of the job is risky. We need to make sure that the customer understands that we are all competent in the team.

Work with people to figure out if Vercel is suitable for their use case

This can be both. Sometimes, an onboarding engineer will be better help than support, but sometimes customers need someone with a lot of technical knowhow of the product (and no one can beat support there)