Six month wrap-up
It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness
Welcome to the end of June! Since it’s now been six months since I started this newsletter, I wanted to take a moment and look back at what we’ve already discussed.
Back in January, I kicked off the newsletter with a five-part series about writing a great support email. We covered content, structure, tone, and style, all of which are of near-equal importance to a good customer communication.
Writing a great support email: content • Buttondown
Be content with your content
Writing a great support email: structure • Buttondown
Mens sana in corpore sano
Writing a great support email: tone • Buttondown
Don't look at me with that tone of voice
Writing a great support email: style • Buttondown
Stilus virum arguit
Writing a great support email: notes and handoffs • Buttondown
He listens well who takes notes
From there we went into hiring support engineers: when is it time to hire, who’s the first person to hire to build the team, what titles you should use. Next we dug into the hiring process, from the skillsets to look for to how to put together a great interview progression and how to onboard new engineers.
Your first support hire • Buttondown
Choose wisely
Support titles: what's in a name? • Buttondown
Rosa rosa rosa est est
Hiring support engineers: the skills • Buttondown
... to pay the ... well, you get it
Hiring support engineers: preparing the process • Buttondown
Thinking about preparing to initiate a plan to devise the blueprint to...
Hiring support engineers: the interview process • Buttondown
FINALLY
Hiring support engineers: onboarding • Buttondown
Baby engineer on board
After that we looked in more detail at some specific hiring-related topics, from the importance of unflappability to deep dives on shadowing, interviewing, and conducting and evaluating tech exercises.
Deeper dive: shadowing • Buttondown
Where doubt there truth is—'tis her shadow.
Customer engineer skills: a missing link • Buttondown
Hiding, relaxed, in plain sight
Deeper dive: interviews • Buttondown
Talk talk
Deeper dive: technical exercises • Buttondown
Showing off the moves
Having said all I wanted to about hiring for a while, we then moved into the various considerations around inaugurating a support team as a new leader. Depending on what you were brought in to accomplish, you need to focus on very different things for your first few months.
Onboarding as a new support leader • Buttondown
Ready, fire, aim. Wait, no, try that again.
Starting a support team from scratch • Buttondown
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe
Sorting out and scaling support • Buttondown
Bringing order to chaos
Fixing broken support: learning and planning • Buttondown
Not fixies. That's something else
Fixing broken support: pitfalls • Buttondown
Can't fix what's not broken, so maybe you'll have to break it first (please don't do this)
Taking over a high-functioning team • Buttondown
Looking a gift horse in the mouth
Most recently we looked at the three kinds of meetings you need to know how to run as a support leader, went over eleven different kinds of support tickets that all need to be taken into account in building your ticket response process, and meditated for a moment on the first, and sometimes hardest, hurdle in a customer interaction.
Three kinds of meetings (part 1) • Buttondown
That's a lie, I'm only covering two today
Three kinds of meetings (part 2) • Buttondown
Really I just wanted an excuse for more cat school pictures
Eleven kinds of tickets • Buttondown
One is not pictured because it would make an ugly macaron
The first support hurdle • Buttondown
Figuratively speaking, I hope
And that’s where things stand today. Over the last six months we’ve gone over a number of macro and micro topics, and I plan to do more of the same over the next half of the year. There are still lots of different things to talk about when it comes to building and running a great support team, and I look forward to taking this journey with all of you who have come along for the ride. Thanks for reading!
Thanks for reading Andy's Support Notes 💻💥📝!