Operations people often strive for the perfect solution. But is that really effective? To answer that question for yourself, you’ll have to spend some time doing support! Here at GitHub developers help out with support on a regular basis, leading to a better experience for our customers. Some even work on both: half development, half support. I'm going to show you why I think support is awesome and how it benefits your work!

1. !How we run Support
at GitHub

2. !!
Whyhelp out with
Customer Support?

3. !!
Someone talking about
Support, … here?

12. GitHubmakes it easier to work
together than to work alone!

13. !!
Ermahgerd, why Support?

17. 1876
1894
20th century

21. !!
Supportat GitHub?

22. !

23. !

24. !

27. !
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32. Huge props to the GitHub
Supportocats! Avatars had
a gnarly caching issue that
generated a fair number of
support requests.
!
I also got to work with a
bunch of new Hubbers I
haven't worked with before,
so that's always fun.

34. !

35. !

36. !!
Core principles

37. NO FIGHTS

38. NO INSULTS

39. NO EXCUSES

40. NO SUPERPOWERS

41. NO ADVERTISING

42. tl;dr: Bea human! Benice!

43. !!
Birth of a Superfan™!

44. User:
Totally loving what you did with the Windows client and been
loyally using it since it came out. But does it really need to take
up 2.5GB of space? :(

45. User:
Totally loving what you did with your Windows client and been
loyally using it since it came out. But does it really need to take
up 2.5GB of space? :(
Paul Betts:
That's totally not cool (and not expected)! Can you tell us
specifically which folders are taking up so much space?

46. Paul Betts:
That's totally not cool (and not expected)! Can you tell us
specifically which folders are taking up so much space?
User:
Totally loving what you did with your Windows client and been
loyally using it since it came out. But does it really need to take
up 2.5GB of space? :(
User:
As soon as I get back home, I'll send you the juicy details. That will
happen tomorrow.
!
I must say I'm positively surprised by your responsiveness.
Thought it would take a day or two at the least for any reply to
arrive!

47. User:
We're starting to experience increasingly frequent connectivity
errors from our Microsoft azure virtual machine to github.
!
We get a connection error a majority of the time.
Microsoft:
As the plan currently stands, any customer reporting this
problem will be directed to open a new case with Microsoft, but to
reference case #123. This will allow us to coordinate the work on
both sides until we can figure this out. It will also eliminate the
confusion caused when GitHub or customers reference the old
case #123.

48. Microsoft:
As the plan currently stands, any customer reporting this
problem will be directed to open a new case with Microsoft, but to
reference case #123. This will allow us to coordinate the work on
both sides until we can figure this out.
!
We will still work with individual customers until we have a solid
repro, but we will also keep the master case updated with the
associated cases and any specific findings.
!
P.S. When I am back in the office on Monday, let's talk about how
we can manage the individual cases that come in.
User:
We're starting to experience increasingly frequent connectivity
errors from our Microsoft azure virtual machine to github.
!
We get a connection error a majority of the time.

50. !!
Why help out?

51. Stable service

52. Valuable insights

53. Other applications

54. Who? Them!

55. Learning by doing

57. !Thanks!
Image credits:
Otto Yamamoto * Trevor Coultart * butupa * Davide Simonelli * Daniel Imfeld * Adam Fagen * Alexandre Duret-Lutz * Matthew Knight
James Forsyth * Michael Kuhn * J. Michel Carriere * Andrew Eason * 401 K * Chris Isherwood * Travis * Benjamin Golub * Mark Faviell
Costa Ricas Callcenter * Arbeitgeberverband Gesamtmetall * United States Forces * Drew Bennett * Quinn Dombrowski * Anne-Sophie
Want to follow-up?
@fooforge || mike@github.com