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Structuring your customersupport organization

Structuring your customer support organization2To quickly scale your customer serviceorganization, you need to continuouslyrethink how to best provide support, whatkind of people and skills you need, andhow you’re going to organize it all.That’s what this guide is all about. It’s the lessons we’ve learned at Zendeskover many years of rapid growth and—as a result—how we structure ourcustomer service organization around specific teams, tiers, and roles.We define success as a combination of people, process, and technology—where the people part always comes first. One of our most importantinitiatives over the last several years has been our focus on building thatpeople-first approach to customer service.Key to that is providing well-defined roles and performance expectations,which gives everyone on the team an understanding of what they should beachieving and their career path options and goals to work toward.This guide represents the work of many present and former Zendesksupport team leaders who managed the support organization to keep pacewith the company’s growth and to continuously provide a great customersupport experience.What you’ll find here is a framework of the core elements of a customerservice organization that you can use to build out your own organization.

The roles, teams, and tiers301The roles, teams,and tiersThe Zendesk Global Customer AdvocacyThe Global Custom Advocacy team includesteam includes more than 250 people and isthe people who interact directly with customersspread out across eight locations around theand solve tickets, a team devoted to supportingworld. The organization has been structuredthose customer-facing teams by buildingaround functional teams and tier levels ofworkflows and tools to make their jobs easier,customer support to reflect increasing levelscustomer service data analysts, trainers, theof complexity and the skills and experiencemanagement staff, and people who manageneeded to handle that complexity.projects and programs across the organization.

The roles, teams, and tiers4How the organizationis structuredThe Global Customer Advocacy teamsare currently organized into these threemain functions: Tier 1 Customer Advocacy(Product Support) Tier 2 & 3 Customer Advocacy(Technical Support) Support Operations(Advocacy Operations)The advocacy teams are organized into tiersto manage complexity. Tier 1 handles theeasiest support issues, and Tier 3 takes themost difficult. We’ll talk much more abouteach of these tiers in the following sections.Directors lead each of these functions, withmanagers reporting to them in office locationsacross the globe. In other words, Directorlevel leadership is global, not regional. Allthree of these functions are global andco-located with each other. This makes sensefor Zendesk because of how closelyintegrated these teams are.There are some inevitable regional andproduct-specific differences in how teams aremanaged and how processes are developedand followed, but the Directors align thesewith the organization’s overall goals andperformance expectations.All of the teams in the Zendesk GlobalCustomer Advocacy organization report to theVice President of Global Customer Advocacy.Organization and management structures arealways changing to adapt to the growth andchanges in the business. Therefore, how youorganize your customer service team at thislevel will reflect your own company’s needsand circumstances.Tiers and retentionThe needs to scale our organization to keepup with our rapid growth, increasingcomplexity, and ticket queue volume weren’tthe only drivers for implementing a tierstructure. Employee retention was justas important.Before we had tiers, Advocates’ only optionto advance their careers was a move intomanagement, support operations, or anotherrole in the company.Providing levels of seniority within theAdvocacy team gives people who are happyin a customer-facing support role theopportunity to demonstrate peer leadershipand gain status, while staying in a job thatthey love. What better way to retain thosegreat employees?

The roles, teams, and tiers5Growth tipping pointsThere’s no single perfect formula for growinga customer service organization, but there aresome key milestones that you can considerimportant growth tipping points.When is it time to add aSupport Operations team?When you need someone working full-timeon your support process and workflow tasks,which means that they’re too busy to helpcustomers. We discuss this in more detail inSupport Operations.When it is time to add a tier?When your support team is splitting their timebetween the easy half of their queue (ticketsthat can be solved quickly) and the difficult halfof their queue (tickets that require much moretime and effort or specialized tools or skills).When is it time to specialize?When it is time to triage tickets?As complexity increases, it’s impossible foreveryone on the team to have in-depthknowledge about all the parts. Some peoplebecome experts in some areas, but you can’tscale effectively with only one go-to person inthose areas. We discuss how you can handlethis in Managing complexity with Tier 2squads.Increased complexity also means that youneed to be smarter about assigning incomingtickets. To do this, you need to add a triagestep so that you can more thoughtfully directsupport issues to the people who have theknowledge required to resolve them. Readmore about how we handle this in Zendesk onZendesk: How we triage.Tier 0, making the most of self-serviceever-increasing amount of incoming supportrequests that can be easily answered withthese self-help resources.Reflecting the importance of providingexcellent self-service to manage rapid growthand satisfy customers, the CustomerAdvocacy team recently launched Tier 0.This is the self-service tier: the supportavailable to customers that does not requiredirectly interacting with a customer advocate.This includes the knowledge base availablein an online Help Center: the product trainingthat is available to customers, as well asassistance that is available in the product’suser interface.Tier 0 isn’t a staffed team, it’s an initiative tobetter contribute to and manage self-serviceas a support channel; to better handle anThere are two goals for Tier 0. The first is topractice knowledge-centered support(KCS), which means that reps are bothgenerating and sharing knowledge-basecontent (internally and with customers).The second goal is to devise ways to helpcustomers discover and use that self-helpcontent. An example of this is to useproactive support to spot an issue that acustomer is having or is about to have, thenproactively create a ticket that contains alink to the knowledge-base article that willhelp them resolve it themselves.

The roles, teams, and tiers6Key Takeaways01Although your Support team may be small today, it’s agood idea to think about where it will be several yearsdown the road and define roles and an organizationalstructure that will help you scale.02Create an organizational and management structurethat makes sense for your own company. Getting thefunctional teams in place is key; determining who theyreport to is part of the ongoing management of thegrowth of your organization.03Consider the complexity involved in the support youprovide, the skills required to manage that complexity,and how you can organize to handle it effectively.

Customer Advocates702CustomerAdvocatesThe Customer Advocate teams directly interactIn general, support issues assigned to Tier 1 arewith customers to help them quickly solve theireasier and take less time to solve than thoseproblems and ensure customer satisfactionassigned to Tiers 2 and 3.remains high.Zendesk uses the “advocates” job title becauseThe Customer Advocates are organized intothat reflects our customer-first approach to3 team tiers that reflect levels of complexity.customer service. You’ll also see “agent,” “rep,”Tier 1 is for general product support, Tier 2 isand many other titles used across differentfor technical support, and Tier 3 is for advancedcustomer service organizations.technical support and engineering escalations.

Customer Advocates8TIER 1Providing generalproduct supportThe Customer Advocates in Tier 1provide general product supportacross one or more products.This includes things like helping customersset up their accounts, resolving billing issues,helping them understand how the productworks, and any other help customers need touse the product.Tier 1 is also the first point of contact forincoming support issues. This is where allincoming tickets are triaged and then routedto the appropriate team or tier. The Tier 1team also handles all incoming phone callsand chats.Experienced Tier 1 Advocates take turnstriaging tickets and determining how theyshould be assigned based on complexity,which is defined by the time needed toresolve the issue. Support issues that areassigned to Tier 1 are expected to take 15minutes or less to resolve. If a support issueis more complex and requires more time toresolve, it’s assigned to Tier 2.Tier 1 includes these Customer Advocate roles: Associate Customer Advocate Customer Advocate Sr. Customer AdvocateWe also talk about a Team Lead individualcontributor role in Customer AdvocateManagement.Associate Customer AdvocateSr. Customer AdvocateThis is the team’s entry-level role. We look forpeople with potential, who have a year or twoof experience helping customers in somecapacity, and who possess essential customerservice skills.A promotion to Senior is possible afterabout 9 months of successfully working asan Advocate. Advocates must demonstratethat they can proactively identify problemareas and mentor and train other customeradvocates on how to solve more difficulttickets.Associates are in training and need guidanceto perform at the standard level set forcustomer advocates. We set a target fortickets solved per day and expect an overallcustomer satisfaction (CSAT) rating of 90%.Associates are usually in this role for at least 3months before becoming full-fledgedAdvocates.Customer AdvocateAdvocates are well-trained and can handlemost types of general support issues;therefore, they don’t “cherry pick” tickets.Their performance is measured by the numberof tickets they solve per day and by theirCSAT rating, which should be at least 95%.A Senior’s performance should be abovethe standard, and they should also have anaverage CSAT rating of 96%. They oftenspecialize in one or more product areasand are considered experts in those areas.