Looking for technical support? Please visit the Support Page instead.
The overall direction for Support in 2018 is set by our overall strategic objectives, with a particular emphasis on continued improvement of (Premium) Customer satisfaction. As can also be inferred from our publicly visible OKR page, the effort focuses on the following elements.
Triaging Support Effort
By triaging support effort through internal SLAs and integration of SalesForce, Zuora, and Zendesk, the team can improve the support experience for Premium customers while still addressing the questions of all subscribers.
Increase Capacity & Develop Experts
In 2016 and 2017 we expanded the support team significantly, and this trend will continue in 2018. Along the way, the Support team developed internal training tools to assist in rapid, robust, self-guided training for any team member. As GitLab – the product – continues to expand, so will the skill and knowledge of all Support Engineers to be able to continue providing an excellent customer support experience.
Know someone who might be a great fit for our team? Please refer them to the Support Engineer job description.
Actionable Analytics
Better reporting on ticket metrics (topic, response times, product it relates to, etc.) will help guide the Support Team's priorities in terms of adding to the greatest documentation needs, bug fixes, and support processes.
Just as Support Staff are expected to adhere to the Code of Conduct, we also expect customers to treat the Support Staff with the same level of respect.
If you receive threatening or hostile emails from a user, please create a confidential issue in the GitLab Support Issue Tracker and include:
Include your Manager, Director of Support, Abuse Team and Chief Culture Officer in this issue. Together we will evaluate on a case-by-case basis whether to take action (e.g. ban the user from the forums for violating the Code of Conduct).
Support has four meetings each week. These allow us to coordinate and help us all grow together. Each meeting has its own agenda and is led by a different member of the team each week.
| Weekday | Region | Meeting Name | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday | APAC | Support Call | Discuss metrics, demos, upcoming events, and ask questions |
| Tuesday | AMER | Ticket Crush Session | Perform demos and cooperatively solve challenging tickets as a group |
| Wednesday | AMER,EMEA | Services Support Call | Services team meeting to discuss metrics, demos, upcoming events, and ask questions |
| Thursday | EMEA | Support Call | Discuss metrics, demos, upcoming events, and ask questions |
| Friday | AMER,EMEA | Support Call | Discuss metrics, demos, upcoming events, and ask questions |
The regions listed above are the regions for which each call may be the most convenient, but all are welcome on any call. Every call is recorded and notes are taken on the agenda for each one. If you miss a meeting or otherwise can't make it, you can always get caught up.
All Zoom and agenda links can be found on the relevant calendar entry in the Support Calendar.
The notetaker should take notes during the meeting and if action is required, create a comment and assign it to the appropriate person.
If the notetaker is not available when it is their turn, they should find a substitute.
The main role of the chair is to start the meeting, keep the meeting moving along, and end the meeting when appropriate. There is generally little preparation required, but depending on the meeting, will include choosing a "feature of the week" or similar. Please check the agenda template for parts marked as "filled in by chair."
During the meeting, the chair:
If a chair is not available, it is their responsibility to find a substitute.
The links to the relevant ZenDesk views are in the agenda template, but can also be found under the Reporting tab in ZenDesk. Two areas to cover:
Answers to questions, deeper insight, and analysis is not expected of the chair. Support Managers will cover metrics in more depth as needed.
As a result of our direct interactions with customers, the Support Team occupies a unique position in GitLab. As such we have standing meetings across functions to help surface issues and smooth the interface between groups. If you're missing from this list (and want to be on it) please let the Support Managers know in #support-managers
If you're on the Support Team and have something you'd like to surface, or would like to attend one of these meetings, feel free to post in #support-managers.
| Function | Party | Support Rep | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Production | Dave Smith | Lyle Kozloff | every 2 weeks |
| Product | Jeremy Watson | Lyle Kozloff | every 2 weeks |
| PeopleOps | Jessica Mitchell | Lee Matos | every 2 weeks |
| Finance | Chase Wright | Tom Cooney | 1x Qtr on budget + once per month |
| PeopleOps | Jessica Mitchell | Tom Cooney | every 2 weeks |
| Recruiting | Nadia Vatalidis | Tom Cooney | weekly |
The Support Team follows GitLab's paid time off policy. However, do note that if a large number of people are taking the same days off, you may be asked to reschedule. If a holiday is important to you, please schedule it early.
In addition to the tips in Communicating Your Time Off please also:
If you do not have access to the Support Time-off team calendar, please raise it in the #support channel on Slack and someone will share it with you.
Please see Support Ops.
Breach hawks are members of the support team who help the rest of the team keep an eye out for nearly-breaching tickets, so that they can be responded to in a timely manner. Of course, any and all members of the Support Team will have a sense of how many tickets are close to breaching and how high the load is on any given day. But it can happen that you're deep into a ticket, a customer call, etc., unaware of the impending doom. That's where breach hawks come in: they tackle their tickets, but they also keep an eye out for the team at large and can call in the Support Turbos when needed.
Every now and then, it may occur that we come close to breaching our SLAs. To prevent an actual breach from occurring, the Support team can call on the help of several "Support Turbo" developers who are denoted on the Team Page.
Anyone within the support team can call Turbos when there is a need for it. Turbos should be called by pinging specific people via Slack. If you are in doubt who is available, you can use @turbos, but this may lead to a bystander effect.
The support team calls for help when necessary via Slack. Support Turbos should treat requests to solve breaching tickets with high priority. If a Turbo is working on something that cannot wait (e.g. security release, critical regressions, direction issues with near deadlines), the Turbo should ensure that someone else fields the request for Turbos by checking with the development lead or VP of Engineering.
Further guidelines when rolling up your sleeves to do Turbo work:
Fellow GitLab team members can reach out for help from the Support Team in various ways:
#questions channel in Slack, so that everyone can contribute to an answer. If you're not getting an answer, try cross-posting in the relevant support team channel.The Support project hosts an issue tracker meant to improve our workflow by reporting any problems that may arise in our tools or processes. It's also meant to propose and discuss ideas in general.
The issue tracker is open to the community and part of the GitLab.com group. It should not contain any sensitive information. Links to Zendesk or other references are encouraged.
We use our chat internally as a realtime communication tool. The support channels are as follows:
In order to attract support team's attention in Slack, you can use the team handles, mentioning multiple team members in a message or a thread where support is needed. Support team handles are:
@support-selfmanaged - Self-managed support team members.@support-dotcom - GitLab.com support team members.@supportmanagers - Support director and managers.