Live Chat Support at Automattic

Live Chat Support

I’ve had the opportunity to begin leading a new live chat initiative at Automattic with a few other awesome Happiness Engineers and thought it might be worthwhile to post some thoughts. Live chat support is a big push within Automattic this year as we strive to give our customers the best and fastest method of support possible. We’re starting off slow, but hope to ramp up as the year goes on.

Live chat support is very exciting since it’s an almost immediate way to help users, where as they may have to wait hours or even days in extreme cases to get help via email. As long as there are enough happiness engineers online to handle the volume, users can expect quick response times and fast follow-up replies from those helping them. It’s is also preferable to email because the issue is usually resolved once the chat is finished, whereas email correspondence could take several emails to resolve an issue, often spread over days. In rare cases we may need to follow-up with the user via email if their issue can’t be fixed immediately, but that’s easy enough to do and doesn’t disrupt the flow of incoming chats too much.

The rapid fire nature of live chat support can be a bit overwhelming at first, but everyone adjusts quickly and once they’re up to speed on the tool and feel confident in giving answers, we can all handle 3 or more chats at once with relative ease. It definitely helps to use a tool like TextExpander to have some general replies and links ready to go, but I generally wouldn’t recommend having large blocks of text as snippets since the conversation then begins to lose its informal feel.

All in all, this has been a great experience, and I look forward to expanding it even more as the year goes on. We’re already planning a live chat focused meetup later this year so we can brainstorm how to refine and improve our current setup. If you have questions or comments about what we’re doing, I’d be happy to receive those. The best way to get in touch with me is via Twitter.

The Prompt #37: The World’s Greatest Podcast Title

The Prompt #37: The World’s Greatest Podcast Title. →

This week’s episode features a very interesting discussion around Apple’s App Store model and the various implications it has for users, developers, and anyone in between. One point that I found quite interesting, and identify with myself, is the Mac App Store. In the same way the hosts mention, I also tend to go directly to software developers to purchase software rather than purchasing through the Mac App Store to avoid the sandboxing and other limitations the App Store enforces. It also makes me feel better when giving money directly to the developers rather than giving Apple a 30% cut, with the hope that the developer will be able to continue making their software better.

Some of Apple’s lemons

Some of Apple’s lemons — 512 Pixels →

While Macintosh hardware is considered some of the most reliable in the industry, the company has had some pretty epic failures in the past.

This is a great article detailing some well known and some other lesser known failures of Apple in the past. The late 2008 MacBook in particular is one I remember well. My wife used one of them all through college, and the palm rest cracking was (and is) very evident.

WP Engine Raises $15M →

WP Engine Raises $15M →

WP Engine, one of the largest hosting companies that specialize in running WordPress sites, today announced that it has raised $15 million in funding from North Bridge Growth Equity.

I haven’t personally used WP Engine, but have heard some great things about the service. I think this rather large round of funding backs that up, and seems interesting for such a specialized hosting company. Obviously this speaks to the popularity of WordPress as well, which is always exciting. Maybe if this site ever outgrows its current shared hosting plan, I’ll look at WP Engine to see if it could support my needs, but right now it’s a bit pricey for what I’m doing.

Do you have any experience with them? What do you think of this round of funding?

Should You Rethink Your Nest Purchase?

nest-thermostat-featured

Now that Nest is owned by Google, many people have brought up some very legitimate concerns about privacy and are curious if and how they’re Nest data could be used by Google. The folks at Nest are trying to assuage those fears, and have been speaking out a bit on this topic, including Nilay Patel’s interview with Tony Fadell, CEO at Nest.

One key quote from that interview really stands out to me.

But you’re not going to share data with Google down the line.

Right. At this point, there are no changes to our terms of service, and that’s it. That’s all I can say.

I understand that Fadell can’t speak with certainty on the future of Nest with Google, so that probably explains his vagueness about the future. I’m not sure that comforts me though. I’m not an uber-privacy-minded person, but there’s something a bit unnerving about Google being able to access information about my home and away habits, energy usage, etc…

Let’s hope that Nest will stay Nest, and not succumb to the data-monger that is Google, but I’m afraid that might be inevitable. In closing, Nest with caution.

On Switching to T-Mobile

t-mobile logo

Last week after hearing T-Mobile CEO John Legere announce their plans to become the “Uncarrier” I was very intrigued. I’ve always felt like I was paying too much for wireless service, and after looking into T-Mobile’s offerings, I found that I could indeed save some money every month by switching. On top of that, they would pay my ETF from Verizon, so why wait?

So far the experience has been great. Their support staff was able to help me through a few problems with transferring our numbers over, and since completing the transfer things have been functioning properly. I will say that their coverage isn’t nearly as great as Verizon’s in our area, but I’m hoping upgrades to their network later this year will improve that.

All in all I think it was a great decision, now to decide how to use those savings…

Matt Mullenweg New CEO at Automattic →

Matt Mullenweg New CEO at Automattic →

Matt Mullenweg and Toni Schneider are switching jobs at Automattic. After joining Automattic eight years ago, Toni Schneider is moving into a product-focused role within Automattic, and Matt Mullenweg is the new CEO.

First off, super excited to work under Matt’s leadership. As many have said, though it won’t amount to a huge change organizationally or managerially, it’s a great thing to see nonetheless. Automattic was founded by Matt 8 years ago, and it’s awesome to finally see him take the reins as CEO. There will undoubtedly be some awesome things coming from Automattic in 2014, and with Matt and Toni’s help, hopefully for many more years to come.

Hire by Auditions, Not Resumes – Matt Mullenweg

Hire by Auditions, Not Resumes – Matt Mullenweg →

We hire all of our employees on a contract basis, and all go through a trial. They can do the work at night or over the weekend, so they don’t have to leave their current job in the meantime. We pay a standard rate of $25 per hour, regardless of whether you’re applying to be an engineer or the chief financial officer.

This is a great article by Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg regarding how we go about hiring new employees. Hiring isn’t done based solely on interviews and looking at past work, we actually put the potential employee to work doing the very job they’re interested in to see how they perform. It’s a great for Automattic as a company to see if the person is going to be a fit, but also for the applicant to find out if the job is really a fit for them as well. I imagine more companies will adopt something similar to this in the future to try and improve their hiring process and get the best people onboard.

Want to join us? Click here.

Snapchat “apology”

Snapchat – Find Friends Abuse →

The Snapchat community is a place where friends feel comfortable expressing themselves and we’re dedicated to preventing abuse.

It’s amazing to me that nowhere in the entire post do they apologize or even say sorry for the hacking and data breach that’s happened. Take a lesson from Buffer and others when responding to events like this and apologize for your mistakes or mishandling of situations.