Interview: Behind the Scenes in the Brandwatch Support Team

How’s the Support team connected to the rest of the company?

“We often need to raise questions to other teams,” Anna says. “We’ll use Slack and Stack Overflow because it’s the quickest way to do that. Everyone is happy to help within their area of speciality, so overall communication is good.”

Ciara explains that customer queries are fed to the rest of the team and there’s a lot of contribution from across the organization, with Slack channels set up for each new component. The goal is to ensure that no question goes unanswered, and each answer is well informed.

“It’s a team with a very well defined methodology and structure,” Ciara says. And the processes they use to gather feedback from across the technical teams at Brandwatch ensure that queries get the answers they need.

How are the ideas customers come to you with fed back into the product?

If a client or someone internal raises an idea or comes up with something that could improve the platform in any way the Support team will raise the idea to the product team.

The more people that vote for it, Anna says, the more likely it is it’ll be implemented. “It’s mainly based on clients’ ideas.”

In this way, customers play a vital role in developing future iterations of components within Brandwatch products. Ensuring that suggestions for improvements don’t remain stuck within one team is a priority.

What characteristics do members of the team share, and how are members different from each other?

Ciara says: “The best thing about having an international team is everyone has their own point of view and we’re able to unite all those pieces of the puzzle. One person might bring the technical skills, another might have more experience, another might bring fresh ideas.”

Anna says that an open mind is very important for being a member of the team: “Being happy to learn new stuff and not assuming you know everything. It’s important to be happy to learn and to share what you’ve learned.”

Both Anna and Ciara agree that teamwork is incredibly important, both within Support and across the organization. Consuming a lot of coffee and tea are also essential.

What kind of relationship do you have with customers?

While the Support team aren’t customers’ main points of contact, they still consider themselves ambassadors of the organization and approach interactions with warmth and professionalism.

“Speaking the same language of the client is our goal,” says Ciara. “There is a lot of understanding and empathy. Without empathy you can not work on this team.”

Thanks to Ciara and Anna for taking the time to speak with the blog team.