GitLab Support's vision is to deliver a consistent, "delightful" experience to our customers. Our team members will collaborate across all timezones to seamlessly deliver the results our customers care about while continuing to strengthen and scale the team.
The overall direction for Support in FY25 will continue to build from the foundations laid in FY24. We will continue to focus on KPI achievement and evolve and iterate our approach to support, keeping the customer centered in our outcomes. Following on to the company's overall strategic objectives, specific areas of focus are:
-[Our ability to achieve business aligned results for our customers](#improving-our-ability-to-achieve-results-for-our-customers)
-[How our team structure supports that ability](#team-structure-and-how-it-supports-our-ability-to-achieve-results)
-[Maintaining and augmenting the culture of our team](#team-culture-and-how-it-supports-our-ability-to-achieve-results)
While our [publicly visible OKR page](/handbook/company/okrs/) and [Key Performance Indicators](/handbook/support/performance-indicators/#key-performance-indicators) reflect the focus and progress for the current quarter, the following provides more detail on the items included in the themes for the entire FY25.
### Improving our ability to achieve results for our customers
FY24 was a challenging year in many aspects. As the workload and customer expectations grew, we needed to look at how we could improve efficiency and create a differentiated Support experience. FY25 is a year to focus and align on our customer needs and put our customers at the center of our understanding of their situations, perceptions, and expectations. To that end, we will:
- Iterate our support model, keeping our customer experience and business vision at the forefront of our decision making.
- Adopt a prioritization strategy incorporating our customers' business impact and GitLab business need, while building an understanding within the Support team for the why behind it.
- Examine and shape the macro and micro trends in group performance and individual efficiency.
- Build a compelling customer digital support experience that will improve the customer journey and reduce toil for our team.
### Team structure and how it supports our ability to achieve results
In FY23 / FY24 we moved towards dividing the team into globally distributed groups of engineers. In FY25 we'll build on that foundation and extend towards differentiating support offerings to better align with customer requirements. This year, we will:
- Progress enhanced support offerings while partnering more closely with the Customer Success Team to meet our customers' business needs.
- Improve how we route and address customer tickets to an appropriate expert with a mind for growing individual engineers from just starting their support journey to complete stewardship of the support journey experience.
### Team culture and how it supports our ability to achieve results
As GitLab grows, Support's influence within the company as advocates for customers must also grow. We need to continue to strengthen the Values-driven cultural attributes that promote efficient collaboration and results for customers while maintaining GitLab Support as a great place to work. In FY25 we will:
- Build leaders and influencers within GitLab as advocates for customers.
- Expand our enablement, training, and education to prepare the current and future generations of Support Engineers to meet the needs of our customers.
### Delight our customers
FY24 was a year of better understanding the needs of our customers. In FY25 we will focus on *delighting* them. We will:
- Pair with our customers and train engineers in setting and exceeding customer expectations.
- Improve our ways to serve customers and resolve their problems before a ticket is even opened while keeping that context to enrich tickets for Support Engineers if a ticket *is* needed.
- Improve our understanding of Support Delivery Quality and how we can consistently provide world class service.
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@@ -14,33 +14,6 @@ The purpose of Support Readiness is to enable GitLab to provide delightful custo
*Our purpose statement is re-evaluated as needed, at minimum every 3 years*
## Support Readiness FY25 Direction
The FY25 Direction for Support Readiness should support and substantiate the overall [Support Direction](/handbook/support/#fy25-direction). To that end, in FY25 we will:
### Improve our ability to achieve results for customers
- Update and refine issue triage, prioritization and work assignment processes.
- Create sub-department and role-based performance indicators.
- Simplify and refine customer and support engineer experiences using Zendesk.
### Team structure and how it supports our ability to achieve results
- Refine team structure and team member roles; check-in with team members to make sure they're in a place where they can contribute best and have appropriate responsibilities to facilitate team results.
- Make strategic hires to help better achieve our purpose and advance us in our direction.
### Team culture and how it supports our ability to achieve results
- Run a SWOT analysis and use its output to form purpose and direction statements.
- Share knowledge, document and train on operationally critical issues to ensure business continuity.
### Delight our customers
- Foster a customer-centric mindset that prioritizes empathy and proactive support.
- Survey the Support team and take action based on the findings.
*Our direction is re-evaluated annually, following the completion of the [Support Direction](/handbook/support/#fy25-direction)*
## Hiring Plan
Currently, Support Operations is using a ratios for our hiring plan. The ratios
