Startups in New York require more than VC’s and angels investors. The best startups need devoted team members, committing all their energies to the job.
At the early stages, you will see these two aggregated positions:
1. Founder/Sales/Operations/Business Development/HR
2. CTO/Product/Support/Creative/Marketing
The stereotype is true, everyone will work about four jobs until eventually the positions are split and segmented; creating the workflow that looks like this (in order of hiring)
Sales > Creative > Developer> Operations > Product > Business Development > Community > Marketing > Support
Internally as the team grows, the support team’s position becomes an independently driven by metrics, graphs and analytic requests, but in the beginning this is not the case. Which leads to the flow of information in client service model start up:
Client Feedback > Support > Product > Business Development > C-Positions> Sales > Product > Developers> Marketing > Support > Client Services
Remember playing telephone as a kid? Remember how much it sucked to be the last one in line? In the game of b2c telephone support is the last in line.
According to a colleague just down the alley, “[Support] lives under the marketing team, but works under the sales team, therefore piggy backing on the ROI of sales success”. Ideally, this happens organically. The flow of information through the hands of the support team will automatically curate a relationship that begins and ends with the client.
The support team deals with all feedback and service needs. The support team is the “silent member” of the team, gathering information from the clients and funneling messages to and from the team. Messages must be simple and concise.
I’ve heard of titles given to members of the support team like “Success Manager” or “Happiness Director”. On LinkedIn this sounds like a plushy position, but in reality such responsibilities contribute the overall human experience of many web-based startups.
In our startup culture, each client is priority. Everyone is heard.When was the last time you emailed Google about your Google+ account issues or called up Apple to chat about resetting your email on your new i07? Never. You will get nowhere. Have you ever tweeted at Apple? No. There is no such thing. They’ve got all the users they need — as a startup we do not.
Oh the other hand, wanting to chat with Foursquare about merchandising help for a business or for help with a profile picture is simple and effective. Their team works on 24/7 shifts to ensure a positive customer experience. Bit.ly’s process flow provides a safe place for “human talk”, via two separate knowledge basis and a team of dedicated staff. That is serious user commitment!
After working in operations position at a few startups now, (and wearing many hats as well) the one I appreciate most is being an active member of the support team. From the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel, the support team is the company's brand voice to the world.
The general motto of a support team is someone is always here to help!
Please share your thoughts on a support team in your company.
