Wire is proud to be pushing the boundaries of standardization with Messaging Layer Security (MLS). Raphael Robert discusses the new era of secure group messaging at Black Hat in Las Vegas, August 7th. The session will shed further light on the ongoing developments and progress of Messaging Layer Security (MLS).

Since his days serving treats at Dairy Queen, to cashiering at Shopko—which, fun fact, is how he met his wife—to supporting Zendesk customers as a Tier 1 support agent, Brett Bowser is a customer-service natural. After more than three years answering customer queries as a front-line advocate, Brett is now a Community Engagement Specialist in Zendesk’s Madison, Wis. office, where he applies years of hands-on customer-service skills to a different kind of support experience.

Back in 2006, we self-published Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web app. It was our first foray into broadly sharing how we work at book-scale. It struck a nerve, turned heads, and changed minds. It offered product people, designers, and developers a way out – an escape hatch. They could finally ditch their way of working that wasn’t working for a new way that would.

Customers are growing increasingly savvy and as they do, their needs are changing. What you provide your customer with will obviously have to account for this change, and evolve accordingly. In fact, if you don’t make changes, your customers may end up leaving, especially considering your competitors do make changes to their support strategy to address the changing tides. Some of these factors are fairly small and make use of existing tools.

You decide to buy a phone. Do you go for the phone of your dreams even though it’s beyond your budget, or would you settle for a functional, but less-ostentatious one that fits into your budget? Do you wait for special offers so you can avail a discount, or get the device on credit? These are the kind of behavioral indicators that decide the types of customers and what aspect of a product/service appeals to them.

The disconnect between how many companies claim that they only hire the best and how they try to actually do that is perverse. A depressing number of job postings are barely more than a list of technology or process requirements paired with an arbitrary desire for years of irrelevance. That’s then fluffed up by a bunch of trite rah-rah bullshit about the supposed glory of hiring company. Ugh.

Two of the biggest customer support technology trends for 2019 are bots and omnichannel support. Bots are picking up traction as more companies are using them to help customers find information, to route queries to the right department, and to carry out transactions that don’t require a human agent.

One-on-one meetings are one of the best ways for managers to build a strong rapport with their teams and create a culture of trust. Unlike standups, status reports, and other types of meetings, one-on-ones are more flexible and create dedicated space for a manager to address an employee’s growth, long term plans and give personalized feedback. In our team, one-on-ones happen every week and last for an hour.

In the past, support was just answering phone calls coming into a call bank. The customer didn’t expect anything other than getting the answer to their question, and as long as they did, they were satisfied. However, as support has grown more prolific, the bar for customer loyalty has become higher as well. Being able to measure and understand the quality of your support responses has also become more important.

There’s an unfortunate pattern amongst the Silicon Valley set whenever a startup heralding from their midst is subjected to even mild scrutiny. It’s perhaps best illustrated in its archetype by this tweet from Paul Graham: In 2008, Facebook had a mere 100 million users. In 2018, they had over 2 BILLION users. The scope of a startup’s impact and influence is correlated to the amount of scrutiny it receives. This is a feature, not a bug!