Let's Wave Goodbye to the Team Calendly (Round Robin)

Problem Statement

Although the Team Calendly (Round-Robin) has proven to be a benefit to our customers in that it provides one link that they can use to schedule a call at their convenience, even from the beginning it has created many problems that still exist today.

What is the problem?

  1. The scheduling, at best, surprises the recipient and at worst, upends their schedule
  2. The recipient gets a cold handoff of a ticket that is likely to be complicated or complex, requiring significant pre-call work
  3. The recipient might not have the appropriate skill set
  4. Even with the minimum 4-hour notice, the recipient may not have enough open time to prepare
  5. The recipient might need to drop other work to prepare for and handle the call
  6. Our workflows document no advice as to when it is appropriate to use the Team Calendly

Why is this a problem?

The Support Engineer is likely to be unable to deliver a good customer experience on the call due to being stressed and ill-prepared. And this greatly outweighs the scheduling convenience the customer experienced.

Proposal

Given that all tickets should be assigned to an SE and a Group once a first response has been made, I propose we make the following changes:

  1. Eliminate the Team Calendly and the process of sending a ticket to a randomly selected SE for taking a customer call
    1. Remove the Team Calendly / Round Robin account and rotation from Calendly
    2. Remove any related macros, apps, triggers and automations from Zendesk
    3. Remove the Team Calendly setup material from the Onboarding Modules and Handbook
  2. Establish a new workflow that makes good use of the SGG system
    1. If the customer wants to meet during your working hours, and you don't have the expertise for their problem:
      1. Pair with an SE who has the right expertise - look to your group first, and then look to the rest of the global team
    2. If the customer wants to meet outside your working hours:
      1. Find someone in the appropriate region of your group who is willing to take the ticket, preferably but not necessarily with the needed expertise
      2. The new SE can pair with another person in their region if necessary
      3. (sync or async) Review the ticket with the new SE before handing it over

Benefits

  1. Customer Calls will always be arranged by mutual agreement between the customer and the assigned engineer (with or without additional colleagues).
  2. Customers will not be faced with having to brief an engineer who is unfamiliar with their situation.
  3. Engineers will not be faced with having to drop work for other customers and quickly come up to speed quickly on unfamiliar situations.

DRI

@mdunninger will act as the DRI for this issue.

Required Resources

  • Support Ops will need to be engaged to make Calendly and perhaps Zendesk changes
  • Senior Leadership will need to approve the process change

Potential Roadblocks/Things to consider

  • Do we need to provide additional training, coaching, shadowing, etc., to help SEs to feel comfortable with managing customer calls?

Desired Outcome

What does success look like?

The Support Handbook no longer refers to the Team Calendly and instead describes clearly a simple process for scheduling customer calls and ensuring that SEs with appropriate skillsets are prepared and in attendance. The process description encourages SEs to make use of the skills within their group before looking outside the group.

SEs are successfully and efficiently scheduling customer calls. They are handing over calls to other SEs only for time zone reasons. And SEs are bringing in expertise from their group as well as from outside their group, as needed, to help them to run effective customer calls.

How do we measure success?

  1. Verify that the handbook has been updated to be consistent, complete and clear on this topic.
  2. Survey SEs after a few months to ask whether scheduling and participating in customer calls is causing more or less stress than it used to.

Where would future feedback go?

Future feedback regarding this issue should be provided via a new issue with this one linked to it.

Related Issues/MRs/Epics/Tickets

  • Original post-implementation issue: #1501 (closed)
  • First issue suggesting the end of the Team Calendly: #3300 (closed)
  • Second issue suggesting the end of the Team Calendly: #3951

@gitlab-com/support/managers : Please review and comment

EVERYBODY: Contributions are welcome. I'd also like to see lots of people voting using ➕ or ➖