Scaling Up for Global Success

oDesk’s rapidly growing Customer Support department boasts around-the-clock coverage from a dedicated, globally distributed team.

It’s the sort of problem many buyers on oDesk face: oDesk was — and is — a rapidly growing startup that needed to quickly scale up a key department, and provide service on a global level as well. Over the last few years, we’ve grown from a customer support department of four contractors resolving online queries within two days to a team of more than 30, answering requests for live chat in a minute, and responding to email support tickets in under an hour.

The department grew fast. By April 2009 we had 10 contractors, up to 17 six months later. In April 2010 we had 33-30 customer support reps and three team leaders, providing services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to our worldwide user community.

“We’re trying to grow a team that reflects where our buyers and providers are,” says Mike Barnett, director of Customer Services. “That can let people chat in local languages.”

“I’ve worked with global teams before, but not this size. Cultural differences exist, but the oDesk platform makes it easy — the Team app integrates chat and work review tools to give me a complete 360-degree picture of everyone in the team.”

— Mike Barnett / Director of Customer Services

While many problems can be resolved with a single reply to a support ticket, many users prefer a live chat, so oDesk has put a lot of emphasis on live response, because our users value the immediacy. That’s what drove the shift to 24/7 chat support.

“We realize that when our customers encounter problems and have to wait until Monday for an answer, this may impact their ability to work and earn money,” Mike says.

Despite the expanding service, the support team remains very cost-efficient. We’ve seen the cost of support drop 40 percent, with early costs of $5 a ticket falling to $3. Part of that success is because Mike and his team leaders have built a rock-solid team, but also, he says, it’s the nature of remote work.

“Our turnover is really low because we offer a great work environment,” Mike says. “Flexible shifts and the ability to work from home make a big difference.”

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

Back when the customer support team had four providers, even a dozen, the department’s director played a pretty hands-on role. As the team has grown to more than a couple dozen, the best and most experienced reps were promoted to team leader to carry some of that weight.

“We have three teams in place, because we needed formalized functions around training and support functions,” Mike says. “The team leaders do day-to-day management, mentoring, whatever’s needed. That lets me be more focused on the strategic direction of the team.”

In other words, as the day-to-day minutiae has mushroomed, Mike has moved more of it off his plate so he can be a better executive, without adding a single in-house position.

Team Lead Alfa Mercado, who manages a team of nine customer support reps, says maintaining schedules, coordinating workloads and communicating with her distributed team is easy. “We rely on web-based tools such as Google Spreadsheets to keep abreast of technical issue updates,” she says, “and use Skype chat in providing answers to reps’ questions in real time, especially those who are providing live chat support.”

Mike says his department will continue to grow in the coming months, and the structures he has in place will let him stay on top of it all. His mission is to help everyone else on oDesk be successful, but in skillfully tapping the potential of remote teams, he’s a great example of success in his own right.

Mike’s Management Techniques

Communicate:

• Teach new providers how the team works, and its goals, expectations and values.
• You, or your team leaders, should hold a weekly conference call to share new information with representatives.
• An always-on group chat (on Skype) lets team members share information and ideas on the fly.

Train:

• Establish a structured training process and a probationary hiring period.
• Use weekly or biweekly training sessions to teach and refresh skills.

Reward:

• Share metrics to encourage high performance and audit chats to provide coaching.
• Pay bonuses to top workers.
• Let providers know they can grow in the job, and show a clear path to do so.