Here at our company, those who serve customers in technical support are the experts themselves. We rotated the devs who supported them for a long time: every week, three different people attended to all called technicians. In my case, the job was to quickly answer the tickets (opened by the customers): my mission was to solve the problem in a few hours. Otherwise, the call is passed to other experts who would do a more thorough and time-consuming investigation of the problem. Know here how this process works.
I was good at it. I would put the phone on, call my playlist called Ticket Killing, close any window on the computer that was not related to technical support, and focus on killing tickets. At the time, my mentality was this: I would finish quickly with these calls so the customers would be happy.
It worked. Service targets were being beaten, and customer satisfaction ratings were positive. However, it was not an attitude that I thought was Customer First. The clients had their call resolved. However, I did not fix them with care. For me, being Customer First goes beyond hitting goals and solving problems. Thinking about the customer first is exercising empathy.
After beginning to study and practice some practices of Buddhism, I was able to apply, at work, some concepts that I read and reflect on every day.
Kindness and Empathy
Kindness is an ability to go beyond one’s identity and to look at other beings from their own perspective.
From Buddhism, I have learned that true goodness goes beyond helping a little lad carry the bags from the market, even at home. Genuine kindness includes extracting my perception and entering entirely into the context of the little lord. Only then will I be able to get closer to understanding the pains he feels in the joints and the fatigue he feels when taking his hard steps from the market to the house.
What does this have to do with technical support? All. It is not enough for me to investigate a problem in the system and solve it and inform the client. I’m a developer, and I create new stuff. So it is essential that I feel what the customer feels when he has some difficulty. When I say, I think I mean building a genuine empathy for him. I must work on forgiving myself from my perspective and putting myself in the user’s shoes to understand how the problem impacts your work, mind, and innermost self.
The practice of goodness is an exercise in active transcendence – we go beyond ourselves, a forgetfulness of our usual tendencies arises and there we become able to effectively assist others.
“I am you, and you are me. We are part of a larger self.”
My technical support weeks were extremely tiring. I liked it because I knew our customers and their pain better – this allowed me to develop software with more quality. However, every day I was exhausted and tired of solving problems – even more tired of not being able to solve them. I could reverse this tiredness with the most active Buddhism in my life.
When I understood that all of us – living beings – are part of something bigger and unique, I could also see this in technical support. I could see that there would always be tickets, and there would always be new problems for me to solve. No matter how fast or efficient I was in service, and new challenges would always arise. I could also see tension at both ends: I was tense with a problem to solve, and the client was also tight with an unresolved issue.
Like in the comic, the client was a wave, and I was another. Once the problem was solved, we would leave the waveform we had at that moment, and we would be a just sea: a developer and a client: both in the same context. Shortly, I would find it in waveform again, and we would have a helping relationship. As I began to understand and absorb this dynamic, I saw no reason to be anxious in resolving the calls or tired at the end of the day. I was a wave that would take another form the next day, and nothing I did would avoid this.
With more calmness and a more focused mind, I could attend to the tickets more calmly and had more clarity to know the problems and find the solutions. After all, walking on firm ground is more accessible than during an earthquake. So it is with our minds as well. 🙂
May you be happy
In the way I explained, it seems like this slowed down my service, but that did not happen. I kept the speed, and I had much more quality in the service. I’ve come to have more empathy and peace of mind in resolving technical support calls. It was possible to sense in the customers’ responses that they were satisfied – more than before this change in mentality. Ultimately, all this is about knowing ourselves better and being happy. I understood my and clients’ feelings better and became more comfortable with these concepts. Besides, I think I made many customers more content as well.
In addition, the playlist I listened to during service changed to Buddhist Mantras.
Today, the support process is a bit different. Each of the large Product Team teams responds to calls related to their areas of expertise, and I have done much less in technical support. Still, the learning reported here is still present in my way of developing software – but that is a subject for another time.
When we understand the preciousness of our life and use it to produce benefits for other beings, it is a sign that the teachings created the transformations we were looking for.
