Support zero weeks

Support isn't just about tickets! Well... it's a lot about tickets - but we don't judge the success of support engineers solely by how many tickets they solve. Instead, we like to free up support engineers to spend some time working on other tasks which help users. These tasks can include working on their quarterly goals, building new support features, contributing small PRs for bug fixes, or whatever else they think will help us move faster.

Why are support zero weeks useful?

The goal of zero weeks is to make non-ticket time more efficient and effective, and get more of our quarterly work done as a result.

At times we can really struggle to pull ourselves away from tickets and focus on the bigger picture. Having a block of dedicated non-ticket time allows us to spend time shipping things that will help us become better as a support team, and allow us to better help our customers.

How do support zero weeks work?

Each support team member is given an allocation of 2 support zero weeks in each quarter (i.e. 10 working days). These are weeks that each team member can book.

Team members are encouraged to consider taking the same zero weeks as someone else working on the same quarterly goal (so it can be done hackathon-style, you can consider using your meetup budget, etc)

Before the quarter starts

• During quarterly goal planning we scope out goals that we think are achievable in our zero time each quarter.
• Let Abigail Richardson know if you have any preference or restrictions on when you can take your zero weeks.
• Abigail Richardson will check the PTO calendar, consider time zone constraints, and propose a schedule of zero weeks for the quarter. For each support team member, we will aim to schedule one zero week in the first half of the quarter and the other in the second half of the quarter.
• The weeks will be shared in the support zero weeks calendar (so we don't forget who is doing what).
• Each team member should create a meta GitHub issue for their quarterly goal work.

Before your zero week

• Hand over all of your in-progress tickets (including any in a pending state that you believe are ongoing / going to come back). Do this as a message into #team-support.
• Set yourself as unavailable in Zendesk using the Out of Office app.
• Set a status in Slack so it's clear to the rest of the team that you're on a zero week

During your zero week

• Try your best to avoid the ticket queue (i.e. generally don't pick up new tickets or respond on tickets you were previously working on, except in exceptional circumstances).
• Do reassign tickets back to the main ticket group if they accidentally come back assigned to you directly for some reason.
• Do respond to any questions the team ask in #team-support about tickets you were previously working on.
• Do consider that you may get pulled back onto tickets on a particular day if absolutely necessary (to be avoided as much as possible).
• Make sure to keep notes and design choices publicly available on your meta GitHub issue.

:warning: Team members who are working on tickets need to be aware of ticket queue and highlight in #team-support if the workload is getting too high

After your zero week

• Set yourself as available in Zendesk using the Out of Office app.
• Ask in #team-support if there are any tickets that the team would like to return to you that you were previously handling.
• Ask in #team-support for any feedback that the team has for you based on any of your tickets they have handled during your zero week.
• Consider if this is a good stage in your goal to seek feedback from the team (likely via your meta GitHub issue or a different RFC). Please do consider if it's worth the team's time at this stage.
• Get stuck into tickets!

What does this mean for side quests outside of quarterly goal work?

• Do them!
• The purpose of zero weeks is to give space and focus for quarterly goal work, not restrict what you can do on a day-to-day basis.
• Where you have small things you'd like to do (docs updates, small PRs/bug fixes, setting up example apps, etc), you can absolutely do these alongside your ticket work.
• Please just bear in mind that tickets are generally our highest priority (especially Sales/CS Top 20 and enterprise customers).
• If there are larger pieces of work that you'd like to do, we can chat about updating your quarterly goals.