I'm not at a startup but this resonates.
AWS crushes it with customer service. Google is a PITA.
AWS crushes it with customer service. Google is a PITA.
Obviously there is a balancing act here to avoid slamming the engineers with too much load answering support questions, but it is not uncommon for customers to be getting answers from the people who built the thing. And on my team at least we always try to use support questions to know where we need to improve documentation with more troubleshooting steps, etc.
Absolutely. In my ex-team at AWS, you could literally see visceral pain on the on-call's face when a customer tickets-in with a totally avoidable issue. The feedback from such customer contacts did inform most of the product roadmap.
And most certainly, the most heavily prioritized and celebrated feature launches were the ones improving operation excellence including fixing things that a lot of customers had complained about.
That said, cloud support engineers, often times, in my experience, were more knowledgeable than software engineers owing to their interactions with customers which lead them to internalise a tonne of troubleshooting patterns. Only a novel issue would stump them where a software engineer would have to work in-tandem to sort it out.
The detailed internal knowledge-base that these support/software engineers write for issues impacting customers probably also plays an important role, because then even semi-technical folks like TAMs can more or less help the customer out pronto by searching through the knowledge-base, without requiring to escalate further.
As a converse, I've also had the extreme displeasure in dealing with Oracle and Tenable/Nessus support...
With Oracle, its either a continual feature-push to go to professional for only starting $50k/yr more (NO), or troubleshooting ends up asking 100 questions for your question.. And if you answer them, they give you 100 more. Effectively its a technical DOS in the hopes you abandon the ticket.
Nessus/Tenable is similar. They want you to use their terrible tenable.io (which isn't fedramped), and will badger you incessantly. And service tickets demand enhanced logs be turned on and provided to them. Their tool can censor some passwords, but have caught passwords in there along with services, addresses, and exploit data about them. And even if you censor the logs prior to shipping to them, they will put their foot down and demand unedited logs.
This would explain the response I got (backstory - I am a contributor to a number of open source packages / not totally clueless, but was coming in from a micro personal account). I was like, how the heck do they afford this response for $99! (or whatever it cost back then - this was a long time ago).
I kept my support plan active for a year as a courtesy though I never had another question aside from the first two I put in.
That said, as a programmer I like time to focus so being asked customer questions would drive me nuts, hopefully they filter out the idiots who just can't setup things right (80% of issues are not bugs but customer setup issues).
1.) Support engineer receives the case. In most cases, for most services, the run-of-the-mill support engineer has gotten enough training on the service that they'd considered a SME at any AWS partner/enterprise.
2.) If front-line support engineer can't solve the case, they talk to their more tenured friends.
3.) If they still can't solve the case, they escalate to Premium Support SMEs in the service. These are support engineers that have proven they have solved complex enterprise-level cases and get specialized training from the service teams on the internals of the service.
4.) If the SME can't figure it out, it's escalated to the service team (i.e. the actual software engineers that write the code).
Steps 1-3 deflect a lot of the annoying, unnecessary escalations. But sometimes escalation to the teams is unavoidable. For example, some service limits are hardcoded into the service and updates require a code push. Or (somewhat rarely) there's a service bug.
That being said, Premium Support engineer have access to the backend service code for most everything. While not every PS engineer knows how to code, on more than one occasion, I've dug through a code repo to figure out why something was behaving oddly.
I keep throwing large sums of money at AWS because they insist on making their products useable. AWS wants to me adopt their products, they want to remove barriers, they want to help me make money. I have no problem continuing to invest in their services.
"Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers."
Out of interest, here are the other values:
Ownership
Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job."
Invent and Simplify
Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here." As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.
Are Right, A Lot
Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.
Learn and Be Curious
Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.
Hire and Develop the Best
Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.
Insist on the Highest Standards
Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.
Think Big
Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.
Bias for Action Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.
Frugality
Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense.
Earn Trust
Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.
Dive Deep
Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them.
Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.
Deliver Results
Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.