In 2019, I got invited to an event called HYPERGROWTH.
When I walked in, there was a DJ playing music, graffiti on the walls, and lots of people who were excited to be there. (Mind you, we weren’t concerned about being six feet apart then.)
When I walked into the room, I thought, “Woah. I’d love to work for a company like this.”
Fast-forward to today, I now work at Drift out of our EMEA office as a customer advocate. That means I get to talk to customers every day and “drink our own champagne” by using Drift Conversational Service. Through my conversations with customers, I’m able to help identify and advocate for improvements in the customer experience.
Drift is a fast-growing company, and with that comes a product that evolves quickly — so my day-to-day changes depending on customer needs. Below is a breakdown of what a typical day in my life looks like.
The Morning
When I log on in the morning, my teammates in APAC are logging off. We typically have a bit of a chat, covering both work and non-work-related topics. It’s a really neat way to start the day.
I live in Leeds, England, and I am part of the growing Drift EMEA team. What I love about working with this team is that we’re like a startup within a startup. I often get to sit in on our weekly EMEA meetings and learn what people in different departments and roles are doing. I’ve been able to develop relationships with people outside of just the support team, which has been super valuable.
My mornings are also spent checking Slack. I’ll look at our tier one and internal support channels to see if there are any important messages I missed from the previous day since I do log off earlier than my US teammates.
Then I go into Salesforce and check my open ticket cases. For the tickets that I’m currently working on, I’ll see whether the customer has responded to me and try to get a response out to them if they have.
Once I’ve done that, I will go into our open or unassigned queue and start taking on new or open ticket cases that no one’s responded to yet.
At Drift, there are two ways a ticket can be submitted — by emailing support@drift.com or chatting live with our bot. Our team will always try to resolve an issue in chat but, if an issue needs an extra set of eyes, we can create a ticket through one of our service integrations without having to leave the chat.
Typically, if I’m the agent manning the chat and have to create a case, I’ll assign it to myself so that the customer can get a consistent experience — with the same agent throughout.
Sometimes, though, the customer will find what they need just by talking with our bot, as Drift’s custom chatbots can deliver knowledge base articles directly in chat. If a customer were to say “I need help with routing,” the chatbot can instantly source a help doc on that topic. It’s one of my favorite things to see while I’m monitoring chat.
The Early Afternoon
I spend most of my afternoons resolving customer cases.
Drift Video is the most useful tool for following up on tickets. In fact, I send a Drift Video with almost 100% of the cases I work on — because it’s a much more efficient way to explain a fix to a customer.
Plus, customers are always super appreciative of videos, even though it doesn’t really take up any extra time. To tell you the truth, it probably saves me time.
I’ll also send Drift Videos internally to answer any questions that come from our team. At Drift, we even have a Slack channel specifically set up to quickly answer any questions from a customer success manager (CSM) or onboarding manager. We call that channel #customer-quick-question (CQQ) — and there’s always someone from the customer advocate team monitoring it.
To ensure these questions are being responded to, our team is set up in blocks: chat block, ticket block, and CQQ block. Depending on your schedule, you’ll either be chatting with customers, working on ongoing or new tickets, or responding to Slack questions.
Lastly, we have a gatekeeping block. The gatekeeper isn’t toggled live so they won’t get routed into a live chat. Instead, their job is to monitor chats and be a resource for teammates. For example, if someone isn’t sure of an answer or wants to confirm best practices, the gatekeeper is there to help.
We do this using the internal notes slash command. Internal notes are messages teammates can send that only they can see.
Some other helpful slash commands we use are for tagging conversations, sending transcripts, and inviting another teammate to the chat.
The Late Afternoon
In the late afternoon, I may have a meeting to attend. One of those meetings is a one-on-one with my manager, Steph. In our weekly one-on-ones, we’ll talk about how I’m doing, look at internal workflows, discuss career growth, and review metrics.
There are a few metrics we keep a close eye on. CSAT, or customer satisfaction, is a big one. We also look at chat and ticket volume, as well as SLAs (service-level agreements). Drift Reporting is a big help in keeping track of these metrics.
Signing Off
So, that’s a typical day in my life.
There are a lot of things I love about my team and my day-to-day. But the thing I love most is that I’m encouraged to always be myself and be human.
Whether we’re responding to customers or internal teammates, we’re never asked to be robotic. If we’re in chat and want to add a LOL or an emoji, we’re encouraged to do that.
At the end of the day, my job is about putting myself in the customers’ shoes and teaching them how to navigate our product. And to me, there’s nothing more fun and exciting than getting to use that same exact product to share best practices that will help customers get the most value out of Drift.
The wait is over. See how Drift Conversational Service delivers meaningful customer service experiences in a digital-first world.
