On taking time away

"Take some time off. Everyone needs a chance to relax and recharge."

You've probably heard that a lot lately. It's great advice, but for Support Professionals it's easier said than done. Customers don't stop needing help because you're on vacation. And during the holidays? Seems like customers need you the most when the rest of the company is on a holiday break.

Time off isn't just a holiday issue, either. Does your team participate in annual work retreats as fully as other teams do? Does everyone in Support get at least one uninterrupted week of vacation per year? How about two or three weeks per year, like most workers in the US?

I'm going to guess that your answers are "no." I'm also going to guess that the idea of taking that much time off causes stress instead of relieving it, as you think about how the understaffed support queue will look and your eye starts to twitch.

It's a problem. And from what I've seen, it's industry-wide. But you and your Support colleagues really need some time off, so let's look at the most common ways Support teams handle vacation—and their pros and cons.

Take turns

When I was managing a small Support team, I kept the team operating in shifts with reduced hours: each day, a small number of team members are working and the rest get that time off. The size of the working team and the length of each shift (half days, full days, multiple days) will depend on your team size and customer needs, but the goal is for each member of the team to have roughly the same amount of time off. On my team, this worked well enough for holiday breaks and company retreats—it's particularly useful for week-long blocks where the company or the team will be in some reduced capacity—that we did it for a few years.

Pros:

• Everyone gets some time off.
• Customers get attention during company holidays and retreats.
• It's cheap; you don't need additional funding because no additional staff is brought in.

Cons:

• Support team members don't get the entire time off, which can be a morale hit during retreats or company-wide holidays if the rest of the company isn't working at all.
• Customers will get delayed responses, especially for low-priority issues. This will impact SLOs, so you may want to let customers know that the team is working at reduced capacity.

Bring in help

When you need to maintain customer response times, start thinking about bringing in outside help to supplement your team with extra people so team members can fully unplug. There's a range of ways to do this—you can hire seasonal or part-time contractors or increase the usage of a pre-existing BPO vendor. No matter where the help comes from, it's important that anyone interacting with customers be fully trained before being let loose in the queue, which often requires thorough documentation.

Pros:

• Customer SLOs are unaffected.
• Support team members can potentially take full blocks of time off.

Cons:

• Irregular support staff reduces the quality of support.
• New help needs to be fully trained quickly even if they're only working in the queue for a week.
• Bringing in contractors or BPOs is expensive and requires approval from legal and finance folks.

Use the help you have

Like shopping in your own closet, you can bring in help from other teams within the company. While I personally advocate against all-hands support, many teams use this as a way of spreading the work around the company.

Pros:

• Customer SLOs are unaffected.
• Support team members get the same time away as the rest of the company.
• Training other teams on product-related support is easier than training outside contractors.
• It doesn't incur any costs, since the added help comes from existing staff who're already getting paid anyway.

Cons:

• Not everyone is great at providing support, even people who know the product well. The quality of all-hands support is usually worse than what the Support team provides.
• Everybody gets the same amount of time off, but nobody gets full time off. Everyone has to work at least some of the time.

Turn it off

The most extreme option is turning off support for the week. Maybe leave some team members on call for urgent issues, but let customers know that your team is away and let them take the time off. Some support tools (like Yetto!) let you automatically triage support requests, so you don't need to have someone monitoring the queue; when something urgent comes in, have your system notify the person on call so they can drop in as needed.

Pros:

• Everyone gets time off.
• No outside contractors or staff need to be trained.
• No extra funding or legal work is needed.

Cons:

• Customers might not like to hear that you're out of office. This is highly dependent on your product and your customers' expectations.
• The team will come back to a full queue that needs extra attention.

Side note: preparation matters

No matter which option you go with, you'll need to do some up-front work to pull it off. Clear documentation makes it possible for non-regular staff to handle all the situations they'll see in the queue. Training new staff—outside contractors or colleagues from other teams—takes time. Scheduling support coverage requires research and planning to get the right number of people working at the right days and times for your customers. Changes to automated triage workflows need to be set up before folks log out for vacation. Even choosing the "turn it off" option takes prep, so your backlog is cleaned out and your customers aren't left hanging.

Don't try to jump into vacation mode without preparation; the advance work gives your team and your customers the best chances of success. And most of the prep, like updating documentation and training materials, is good hygiene for the team anyway.

What's it gonna be?

These are a few of the more common ways to give your team a break, but there are surely others that I didn't mention or haven't heard of. And these can all be mixed and matched in ways to best suit your organization. Maybe you'll give everyone some time off and let other teams share the on-call rotation, or maybe you'll do shifts for a few days and close completely for a few days. There's no magic solution—it depends on your team, your company, your product, and your customers. Do what works for you!

I hope you and your team got some time off over the winter break, or that you'll get some now that the holiday rush has passed. I'd love to hear how you managed that time for your team. And if you want to try a new help desk that lets your team stay organized and connected while giving everyone some breathing room, Yetto is still in open beta for the time being.