An important aspect of how we relate to each other as a team is our differing team roles. While we have a generally flat organizational structure in some ways—anyone’s opinion is valued and conversations don’t have to follow a strict chain of command—we also have a hierarchy in terms of responsibility. This doc will clarify the differing roles, and how our team is structured.
There are 3 “levels” of staff on the support team: Support Technician (ST), Senior Support Technician (SST), and Head of Support (HoS). While there’s only one HoS, there can be multiple STs and SSTs.
The Support Technician role reports to both the SST and the HoS.
As the team member with the most daily contact with customers having technical issues, the ST is crucial in making the rest of the team aware of technical issues as they arise. When a ST begins to see a pattern of multiple tickets with a problem, their job as customer ambassador is to replicate issues, and then escalate them to development as helpfully and thoroughly as possible.
The ST should feel the freedom to reach out at any time to other STs as well as the SST or HoS to gain clarity and perspective on an issue. We use Slack calls for these short face-to-face troubleshooting sessions.
When necessary, STs can and should interface directly with the developers on issues to bring clarity and assistance.
A helpful distinction for where the ST role ends and HoS/Development team begins is that STs declare what’s important to the customer, but don’t decide what’s important to the business or team. STs create and contribute to product feedback, document our customer’s frustration or happiness, and leave the timeline for fixes to other roles. STs are equally developer ambassadors to customers, in this case. STs clarify timelines set by developers, or “run interference” when no timeline is set.
Senior Support Technicians report to the HoS.
SSTs, in addition to the duties and responsibility of STs, are responsible for stepping into situations where the customer is aggressive, or where the ST is unable to resolve an issue.
To clarify, SSTs also work the “front lines” of the ticket queue, alongside STs. The only additional expectations on the SST role is that they be more aware of how everyone’s queue is looking, not just their own. They are ready to step in and take the load off of of STs and even the HoS as able.
The SST also functions as a “queue wrangler” for not only their own Help Scout queue, but also for the queue of the entire team. This role of the SST is critical in making sure that everyone on the team is carrying an equitable load, and also helps the SST to proactively see whether STs are getting stuck on tickets in a way that the SST can help. Queue wrangling includes reassigning tickets from one ST to another, as well as stepping in to close tickets that are resolved, and ask for ratings and/or reviews as necessary.
SSTs are available during their work day to help when STs need it, via Slack calls or chat.
The Head of Support, when it comes to day-in-day-out behavior, does not spend much time in the general ticket queue, instead working with escalated tickets and assisting by helping STs and SSTs to get “unstuck” on issues.
The Head of Support is the bridge between customers and the Dev team in terms of advocating for the customer’s needs and setting direction alongside the Scrum Master to help with prioritizing the needs of the company and the customers.
In addition to assisting in the queue with more complicated issues, helping to bridge the gap more fully with the development team, and maintaining a high-level view of how things are going on the support team, the HoS is responsible for facilitating the weekly meetings, and maintaining the data for reports both to the entire team as well as individual STs and SSTs.