Kael Oisinson: Working On Tickets
module-name: "Working On Tickets"
area: "Customer Service"
maintainers:
- rspainhower
- faleksic
Introduction
Welcome to the next module in your Support Onboarding pathway!
As you work through this onboarding issue, remember that this issue is non-confidential and is public. Please do not add any confidential data such as customer names, logs, etc. to this issue. Linking to the appropriate Zendesk ticket is OK!
Goals of this checklist
When you've completed this module you'll have helped your first customers by pairing with Support Engineers and replying to tickets.
General Timeline and Expectations
- Read about our Support Onboarding process, the page also shows you the different modules you'll need to complete as part of your Onboarding.
- This issue should take you two weeks to complete.
Stage 0. Zendesk Basics
You've completed the Zendesk Basics module. A couple of extra tips that you might find useful:
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Read about Sensitive information -
Consider installing the Zendesk Download Router, which will sort downloaded Zendesk ticket attachments into their own folders. This is particularly useful for Solutions focused Support engineers. -
Familiarize yourself with the Support Request for Help workflow, for handling tickets that need involvement from the GitLab Development Group.
Stage 1. See it all in action!
Debugging/troubleshooting tips
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Optional. If this is your first go at Support Engineering or Development, talk to your manager about getting a copy of Pocket Guide to Debugging. Not all sections will be directly relevant, but will help you think about how best to reproduce issues and where to start with tracing bugs in the code.
Pairing Sessions
While you can start pairing any time, it is important that you have worked through and finished up until this point so that you can connect what you're learning with what's happening during pairing sessions. As you begin this stage, you should simultaneously be working on the rest of your onboarding including your area(s) of focus.
Instructions
- Perform at least 10 pairing sessions.
- Include people outside of your immediate region to avoid silos.
- Consider pairing more with people from your SGG to get to know them better.
- Consider having a pairing/coffee chat with someone you has joined GitLab support around the same time as you to support each other.
- Your first pairing or two are expected to be more of you shadowing. After that, have others help you with your tickets, or grab new tickets.
- Ask questions including how they approach new tickets, what they do when they don't know how to proceed with a ticket, or how they approach getting help.
- Create a Google Calendar event, inviting that person. If you're unsure of times due to timezones, feel free to send them a message in Slack first. When it's time for the pairing session, create a new Support Pairing project Issue and use the appropriate template for the call. You might feel hesitant to create a pairing invite with a person you barely know, but do know that everyone here will be happy to see a pairing/coffee chat calendar invite from you. Be sure to join the #spt_pairing channel when working on issues and tickets together.
- Note: Try to pair with at least 1 person for each: majority SaaS, majority Self-managed, majority L&R focused. Also include at least 3 seniors, as they can share their expertise and offer guidance on how to grow.
- To "shadow" team members and get a better sense of how support works at GitLab, consider joining group pairing sessions (also called "crush" sessions). You can find them in GitLab Support Google calendar.
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Call with your support onboarding buddy; issue link: ___ -
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When working tickets, you might need help with particular technology. You can pair with an expert in that topic to help you move a challenging ticket forward. Check out Skills by Subject page to find people you could ask for advice.
When in-depth subject matter expertise is needed and not readily available within the Support Team itself, create a collaboration issue using the Support Request for Help workflow. A counterpart from the relevant Development Group will be assigned to help investigate and bring the reported issue to a conclusion.
Team Tracking
Pairings will be an important part of your day to day work after the onboarding as well. If you're up for a challenge, we also have a Team Tracking template that you can use to try and get a pairing session with every Support Engineer. Gotta catch them all!
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Add yourself to the Team Tracking template so people taking the quest in the future won't miss you! -
Optional: Instantiate an issue with the template for yourself and celebrate your success on Slack once you manage to finish the entire list!
Tickets Review
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Check out your team's responses on tickets. -
Hop on to the #feed_zd-main
channel in Slack and see the tickets in the Global Zendesk instance as they come in and are updated. -
Read through about 20 old tickets that your colleagues have worked on and their responses. A recommendation is not to only read through the currently open tickets, but also through the ones that are in Solved status. You can find those by typing status:solved
in ZenDesk search bar.
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Congratulations! You've now completed the Support Engineer onboarding pathway.
The next step is to discuss with your manager what your first area of focus is. You should then start the pathway for that area (usually "GitLab.com SAAS support" or "Self-managed support").
Please also submit MRs for any improvements that you can think of! The file is located in an issue template in the 'support-training` repository.