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Taking the Pain Out of Support Engineering by Cecy Correa Production support is not a priority. No one on the team wants to work on support cards. Being on-call is a pain. Does this ring a bell? We've all been there! There is a better way to handle Support Engineering for your product. A way that will level up your team, and create positive support experiences for your customers. Drawing on 3+ years of Support Engineering at two different companies, I will share successful Support patterns and tools you can start using today to improve your product support.
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The video titled "Taking the Pain Out of Support Engineering" presented by Cecy Correa at RailsConf 2018 addresses the challenges and best practices in support engineering, drawing on Ms. Correa's extensive experience in the field. The talk emphasizes the importance of effective support engineering in creating positive experiences for customers, particularly when dealing with technical support for software products such as APIs. ### Key Points Discussed: - **Definition of Support Engineering:** Support engineering involves providing technical assistance to developers or end-users, emphasizing the role of support engineers in troubleshooting and communication. - **Critical Thinking:** The talk encourages teams to think critically about potential problems early in the product development process. An example cited is Correa’s experience with Electronic Arts, where early access to a game allowed the support team to predict user questions and create helpful documentation. - **Prioritizing Relationships:** Emphasizing the importance of maintaining a relationship between support teams and development teams, Correa shares a case involving a confusing DLC redemption process in Mass Effect 2, demonstrating how poor communication led to overwhelming support requests. - **Support Structures:** Correa outlines two models of support: dedicated support, where specific teams own tickets from start to finish, and rotating support, which may lead to inefficiencies. She argues that dedicated support fosters continuity and improves customer relationships. - **Ownership and Escalation:** The importance of proper ticket ownership is highlighted, comparing removed and owned escalations. Correa advocates for a system where support engineers both own the issue and communicate directly with clients to improve accountability and resolve issues faster. - **Setting Boundaries:** She discusses the importance of establishing clear boundaries with customers to avoid burnout, illustrating this with an anecdote where she had to create space between responses to prevent a developer from relying too heavily on her for coding help. - **Reinforcing Good Behavior:** An essential aspect of managing support involves setting expectations for customer communication to maintain morale among support staff. - **Tools and Documentation:** Correa emphasizes the significance of documentation and tools such as dashboards, log aggregators, and support playbooks, which provide transparency, reduce training time, and improve support efficiency. ### Conclusion: Cecy Correa concludes by asserting that good support engineers are valuable as they can identify patterns and inefficiencies within the product. Investing in support engineering contributes to a healthier engineering culture overall, ultimately benefiting customer service and product development. The discussion encourages companies to recognize and prioritize the role of support engineers to foster both client satisfaction and employee well-being.
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