As soon as you get your first customer, you’ll also get your first questions.

When I joined Hi Marley, I was immediately asked to field inbound questions from our first eight customers. I didn’t realize it at the time but that was the start of building our support process that now is a funnel for new employees on our Customer Success team. Here are some things that I learned along the way.

#1: Define Your Values

Your values will define your voice, tone and messaging to your customers.

This can be just as important as having technical expertise in your product. Your product will change, and the team may shift, but if you can establish strong values then you will be able to deliver amazing customer experiences regardless of the changes that your company will be going through.

Here are the values that I created for support when I started the team.

Our support team strives to be:

Empathetic to our customers needs and concerns
Available when our customers need us
Knowledgeable of the Hi Marley platform and it’s functionality

#2: Debug the Human

The one thing that all tickets will have in common is that they are all reported by a human.

I tell my teammates to “debug the human” first — meaning put yourself in their shoes, and think about what result they were hoping for. Think about their level of technical knowledge, so that you can create a response that lets them know that you heard them and hopefully can teach them a little more about your platform.

This is especially relevant for the tickets where a customer assumes there is a bug but just might not understand expected behavior. Debugging the human behind the ticket can reduce your frustration and help you craft responses that are empathetic.

#3: Document Everything

Documentation is a resource that gets more valuable over time.

It is critical to document everything that you are building, learning, and aiming for. Write down what the current state of support is, map out where you want the process to be, track your debugging process, etc. Everything will help.

Technical documentation becomes invaluable to your customers and enables training materials to be created faster. Process documentation will help your team grow so that the next hire can just jump right in. And, over time, all documentation helps reduce repeatable questions, both internal and external.

Great support experiences can help retain customers as your company grows. What are some things that you have learned from working with customers in support? Leave a comment if you want to continue the conversation or feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.