 Hi, thank you all for being here. My name is Amir. I'm a WordPress enthusiast with development background who is currently working as a technical tier 3 support engineer at Born2Plugins. We create high-quality WordPress and WooCommerce plugins and we have some well-known products like Document Library Pro and WooCommerce product table. So the other day, a customer sent us a ticket saying that after installing one of our plugins, his website has been down. He can access his visual editor and he can add or edit products on his website. So he has an online e-commerce website. He has our plugin, but it's useless for him. So he can't use it. At a normal situation, we would refer this to the development team and wait for a response. But I'm a developer. I took a look at the issue and I was able to find the fix and send the patch. So as you can see, having developers on the support team can provide better service to their customers while also increasing the efficiency within product teams. Today, I'm going to tell you about three tiers of support and why it's a shame that most WordPress product companies overlooked tier 3. We'll also take a look at different ways of providing all different levels of support and also creating the best processes which puts customers first. So why should this concern you? If you're a WordPress product company manager or a support team leader, you should consider whether any skills levels are missing from your team. And you should plan to how feel any gaps. If you're already a support engineer, you can have a better understanding of your current role and the complexity of the tickets that you should be handling. If you're a freelance designer or a developer, this can help you to have a better understanding of the level of the support you're going to receive when you request help with WordPress products. So what are those three tiers that I'm talking about? Tier 1 or level 1 is for providing general and basic support for your products, like how to install the product, how to configure it. Level 2 or tier 2 is for providing a little more technical help, mid-level support, and for confirming bugs and gathering more info about the issues. Level 3 or tier 3 is for technical help, for providing customizations, helping in debugging the issues and finding temporary fixes and sending PR to the developers and helping the developers. Now, the thing is that most WordPress companies provide only tier 1 and tier 2 and then refer to the development team for more complex tickets. And this can have some dangers. Customers often have to wait longer for a resolution because the developers are not dedicated to the support and they have to balance the tickets against their other priorities. This often leads to a defensive support strategy. For example, at Born 2, we refuse to offer simple CSS tweaks for so many years because no one in the team had this skill. And the communication gap between the developers and the support team creates a them versus us situation developers against the support team. If we refer every technical ticket to the developers, it would distract them from working on the project that actively grow the company. They need to do all the work to replicate the issues and to find the fix, which a tier 3 can easily give them a head start on. Also, if our highly experienced developers work on the tasks that a less experienced developer can easily do, it's going to be more expensive for us because they are getting paid more. Now, the opposite situation is that when we have all tiers of support or at least one developer in the support team, now this means faster support for the customers, including temporary patches and fixes, which otherwise we may have refused to provide. You can be more generous with the scope of your support. You can offer changes, you can offer customizations and everything, and your customers will be more happy. Also, this will lead to a much closer relationship between the support team and the developer team because that tier 3 guy is responsible for connecting these two groups. This frees up the development team to work on the high-impact projects, your resources manage better, and your customer will end up being more satisfied. So, if you are deciding to have a tier 3 on your team, you might also want to know that what should be the skill set of this role. This role should have development skills. He needs to be at least familiar with all the technologies and languages we use in our products so he can offer patches and simple changes. He needs to also have debugging skills so he can help the developers to find the source of the issues. He also needs to have excellent written English so he can communicate more effectively. If your company is using another official language, then that might be the language. He also needs to have good communication skills so he can manage both the customers and the developers better. Now, if you now decided to have a tier 3 on your team and you're trying to build a team with all three tiers, there are some tips to manage that team better. First of all, you should keep each ticket on the lowest tier possible. When a new ticket arrives, for business reasons, it's more efficient for the least experienced person on the team to handle simpler tickets. For example, if you have a refund request, we can easily assign that to the level 1 because it would be less expensive for us. Also, our team should be flexible. Despite the previous fact, if it's obvious that a ticket is more advanced and more technical, we should straightly assign it to the level 2 or level 3. This would avoid bouncing customers between multiple people. We should consider who is communicating with the customers directly. If a ticket is referred beyond the support team and is referred to the developers, it's better for the support team to remain as the point of contact and not the developers. They can send regular updates and keep the ticket updated. Also, communication is the key. You should always be communicating as if you have a support team with more than one member, and it's important to be in touch. For example, at Born 2, we have daily stand-up video calls. Everyone across all levels of support knows what everybody else is working on. We also share the more difficult tickets. We also share notes. We should always monitor team capacity. Getting team capacity right is difficult. As demand comes in peaks and troughs, such as being quiet over Christmas and being super busy over the Black Friday period, you should always monitor your team capacity and plan ahead when recruiting new team members. You should also know who is in charge. As your support team grows, you need someone to manage your team. At Born 2, we have a head of support for our team, who was previously a level 2 support engineer, and also five other support engineers across the three tiers. So, as a conclusion, you should know that you can't refer every technical ticket to the developers. Just going to not work at some point. If you have a developer or a tier 3 on your support team, it can be beneficial for both customers and the developers. Also, when you have a team with all tiers of support, then managing that team would be another tricky thing to do. So, that was it. I just briefly walked you through over how you can have a tier 3 on your support team and how that can increase the efficiency within your teams. Thank you all for listening. My name is Amir and I'm from Born 2.