The freedom to work whenever you want
By my nature, I'm not an early bird. Sometimes I dream about a merciful death only to not wake up. Life somehow becomes manageable no earlier than 6 pm and maximum productivity is achieved only after 11. At the same time, some of my acquaintances wake up no problem at 6 am without an alarm clock and enjoy the brand new day with its first rays of sun. Our world is filled with mad men of all kinds, but this diversity must be respected and paid consideration.
I got lucky to find a place where I am understood. As the VK support agents have a flexible schedule, each agent can decide when to work and when to rest. Some join the outside world for the weekend, while others prefer to visit places by taking their break in the middle of the week so as to avoid queues.
Since we have built a Support system to guarantee an average number of agents working online, our users' time is not wasted and answers to them are timely provided.
A detailed story about this system is a nice subject for another article, I should definitely talk about it next time.
The freedom to work wherever you want
One way or another, work is something that we spend the majority of our lives doing. However, it's preferable to spend this time somewhere pleasant.
What places can be considered pleasant? Traditionally, this important question is addressed by the employer, and, if lucky enough, employee opinions would be taken into account. Unfortunately, it's not so simple because everyone has his or her own opinion on what perfection constitutes. Cubicles or open spaces? Office chairs or beanbags? Tabs or spaces? It is possible to make annual changes to the office interior, or go even further by refusing to have a private office as they are irrelevant and overrated.
The Support team has been doing well without it for over six years now. It's simple. All agents have the privilege to decide their own working conditions, whether from a park or the couch at home, a café or even the hammock located in our coworking space inside the heart of St. Petersburg, as well as choose between an isolated cell and a noisy crowd of colleagues. So long as there is Internet, the place is perfect.
The freedom to influence processes
Isn't it a horrible feeling to realize you're a small cog in the wheel and everything you should do is to mechanically produce pre-determined phrases and sit locked away inside for a regulated amount of time? Regardless of what you do and whether or not you're doing something useful, it makes no difference.
You're lucky if you don't feel this way. With regret, I still recall how during one of my previous jobs I was wasting my time sitting and waiting until the end of the shift even though all necessary tasks were finished some hours previously.
Support agents manage to escape this misery. It's very simple to evaluate the effectiveness of the job we do. For every request, there is a living human being with his or her difficulties and sorrows. Our task is to help every one of them. Sometimes to do this a couple minutes and simple advice are enough, and other times serious changes to the website's functionality must be made.
VK is constantly growing, and past decisions become irrelevant over time and a shift in thinking is needed. This is why your feedback is essential for us. Without the help of users, it would have been impossible to monitor every corner of the website.
Agents process and analyze feedback from millions of VK users, recheck section work themselves and discuss questionable moments with developers and designers. As a result, we are constantly changing, implementing more appropriate rules, transferring buttons and whole sections or completely adjusting the logic of the product's functionality.
The development of VK is the result of collaborative teamwork between developers, systems administrators, designers, Support agents and VK users. Each of us makes a difference.
The freedom to create
Six years ago, we got rid of the word "technical" and named ourselves simply "Support" to begin answering any questions, including those that at first glance seemingly had nothing to do with VK.
But this was simply at first glance. The website had long outgrown its primary task of being the most modern, quickest and aesthetic work of online communication at all times. Now VK is a complete ecosystem where all sides of life are presented. Not only is it comfortable to communicate and make new friends, but businesses can be developed, movie tickets ordered, videos watched, lectures conducted, football results announced and soothing music heard. Our Support can assist with any question.
The beauty of our job includes not knowing which question awaits. This can be anything possible, from standard "how are you?" to complaints about how unique community visitors are incorrectly counted. And this complaint can even be written in Portuguese.
Each agent is an independent fighting unit with individual styles and approaches. We don't have pre-written scenarios or step-by-step instructions to each potential situation. Each question is its own riddle and the process of solving it is pure creativity.
Not only grammar skills and a sense of humor are necessary, but logic, psychology skills and the ability to explain one's position well are also needed. Working as a Support agent teaches how to uncover the truth in any unexpected situation.
Moreover, this job allows you to be yourself. An agent may be sad or happy, talk about their position, suggest favorite books and movies (I have subtly recommended mine through the illustrations in this article). Some conversations last years and grow into friendship.
These principles, which we've been following for six years already, have long been used by support services of other companies. This proves that a good example may be contagious. And in no time, the world will be conquered.