How we close the loop between our Product and Support teams
Customer Support involves a lot of communication. Each day we’re communicating with customers, with our fellow Advocates, and with other teams at Buffer. Over the years, we’ve found that a good connection between the support and product team is essential. Support teams need to know what product changes are coming down the line, and the product team needs to hear from those using the product they’ve built. Figuring out how to strengthen these communication channels has been a journey for us, and we’d love to share it with you.
The early days: a simple report
This whole journey started with a need. Communication hasn’t always been the strongest between our Product and Support team, and we wanted to bridge that gap.
As our product grew and evolved, we wanted to be ready to stand next to our customers through those changes. So, we created a weekly Product to Advocacy report. It was a simple system, where a few of our Advocates would sync up with the product team so they could pass along updates to the rest of us.
Evolving the report to better serve the team
The weekly report was a quick update (usually less than 2 minutes — here’s the first one) on what the Product team was working on. To keep things clear and concise, I’d skim through my notes and try to pull out only the most relevant information and then link to the full notes in case anyone wanted more details.
As Buffer has grown, and the Product team has evolved, the Advocacy update became more involved as well. The Product TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read), as we call it, has grown into a much larger report. Currently, it includes:
- Screenshots of features
- Links to relevant documentation
- Charts to keep track of feature progress and roll-outs
- FAQs that might come up
While we’re still evolving our communication processes, the Product TL;DR is still in use to this day, and is a huge component in keeping our Advocacy team up to speed on everything happening with Buffer.
From ‘messenger’ to ‘liaison’
When we started this report, the communication between our teams was a bit one sided, with Advocates primarily functioning as messengers. Over time, there was a recognized need for feedback, acknowledging that the position should be more of a two-way bridge between teams rather than a one-way street. As the Product team worked on some bigger features, it felt like there was an opportunity for Advocates to share customer experiences and their own perspective directly with the Product team.
There was also opportunity to advocate directly for customers on common themes and signals that surfaced in the inbox. Advocates have the joy and privilege of chatting with so many of our customers each day, which gives us invaluable insight about common questions and friction points within the product. It felt important to be able to share these with the Product Team. Intercom describe this need in much stronger terms in a blog post (linked below), discussing the issues that you can face if product feedback isn’t shared with the product team.
When thinking about what to share with your Product team, it might be helpful to ask yourself, “What questions do I find myself answering the most for customers?” For example, some of the common themes in our inbox were unclear error messaging, connection issues, and billing issues. It might also be helpful to dig into the inbox statistics to see exactly how many tickets come in regarding a certain issue or question. On our team, we completely revamped our tagging system so we could synthesize common themes and provide a data-driven approach to sharing feedback with our Product Team about areas we could potentially improve.
Beyond the weekly catch-up
Outside of the weekly meetings between Advocacy and Product, there’s also plenty of room to work one-on-one with Product Managers via direct message, or a quick video call, to provide more context around a signal, or to do some QA before a new feature is launched. Having had no prior Product experience, these “after hours” syncs and chats were super helpful to deepen my understanding of how we approach Product at Buffer, ask better questions around new features and experiments, and provide both teams clear and concise updates.
If you are curious about learning more about Product at your company, consider reaching out to a Product Manager on your team to ask them about their approach to Product, what they enjoy, any challenges they face, and how you can better support them in your current role. They have a wealth of information to share!
Continuing to meets the team’s needs
The Product TL;DR would be nothing without the amazing feedback of the Advocacy Team. Twice per year, a survey goes out to the team to ask how helpful the document is, whether the length feels appropriate, how the format feels, and what would make it more helpful. There’s been some interesting feedback overall — half the team prefers brief, succinct information and the other half prefers ALL the details. It feels super important to be mindful of both when crafting the doc, and to keep iterating as we grow our product and our Advocacy team as well.
As we introduce new features, my hope is that the weekly product update invites excitement, creates clarity, and still makes space for any questions that come up! The format we have now might not make sense in the next quarter, and that’s totally okay! It’s important to be flexible, proactive, and open to feedback.
It’s true to say that when customer support has a seat at the product table, ownership increases, and Kayako cover this nicely in this blog post. From my perspective, this role has deepened my knowledge about our product and my relationships with my fellow Advocates. I’m immensely grateful for the opportunity to be in this role where I can support two amazing teams, find ways to keep information accessible and transparent, and be a voice for our customers as well!
Success moments
We’re so very grateful to have this working collaboration with the Product team. In the years since we started the Product TL;DR, we feel we’re much more informed when speaking to our customers. It also makes it easier to raise signals when needed, and offer insights at crucial early stages in the product development cycle.
We’ve recently set up Advocacy Days, where team members who don’t work in support are scheduled to spend a day in the inbox, teamed up with a full-time customer advocate. Our Product Managers have found this especially helpful to gain a better understanding of the product they are building and for whom. This is definitely another story we hope to share more about soon. Customers are at the heart of everything we do, and there’s no better way to understand the challenges they’re facing, than to work with them directly.
Thanks for letting us share our journey with you! If you have any tips about how you’ve approached communication between your Product and Support teams, we’d love to hear from you!
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