One of many first hires we made at Buffer was for our buyer help workforce, and that was intentional. We have at all times needed each one that reaches out to really feel genuinely valued and heard, striving to set the bar for distinctive buyer help. That dedication to excellence in buyer help hasn’t modified within the practically 15 years we have been in enterprise. Over time, we have constructed a workforce the place everybody takes possession of the client expertise and actively seeks new methods to ship stand-out experiences.
Buffer’s buyer help workforce consists of 18 gifted teammates from seven nations, and the common tenure for our workforce is 9 years. By means of considerate planning with our four-day work week, we keep 24/7 protection for our clients, and this steadiness displays our dedication to each our workforce and our clients.
Learn on to study extra about how we strategy buyer help and the way we work collectively.
Buyer advocacy metrics on buffer.com/metrics
“We imagine within the exceptional energy of giving folks greater than they count on.” –Will Guidara
A key piece of Buffer’s Buyer Advocacy workforce is our hospitality mindset. We adopted this mindset to degree up the help expertise and to offer readability to our why, how, and what.
A hospitality strategy in buyer help signifies that we try to create standout, above-and-beyond, and private experiences in each buyer dialog. Whereas a lot of our help conversations stem from buyer friction or frustration, we imagine we are able to nonetheless ship an encounter that leaves a long-lasting impression. Our objective is to be the corporate that we might wish to go to for buyer help if we would have liked one thing.
To maintain this strategy prime of thoughts, we begin by being curious and intentional in each buyer dialog. This mindset additionally signifies that we search for methods to personalise and join throughout every interplay.
We’re working towards having fewer conversations about person friction and bugs by prioritizing product high quality much more than normal proper now. Our objective is to in the future have extra conversations with clients who attain out as a result of they wish to join with us, whether or not to learn to get essentially the most out of Buffer, discover social media methods, or share their successes and challenges. We at all times love fixing issues for our clients, however the connections are what make our work significant.
We draw a variety of inspiration from The Frictionless Group, a ebook written by Invoice Value and David Jaffe.
Our guiding rules
For every buyer interplay we now have with clients, we even have three guiding rules:
- Consciousness (I perceive and see you): Taking the time to actually see the client permits us to look between the traces for areas of frustration, alternatives to empower clients additional, or doorways to construct a deeper relationship.
- Readability (I wish to ensure you perceive me): Our communication is our solely medium to indicate our character and guarantee our buyer is sorted. We offer the clearest path towards a decision potential, specializing in how we are able to make it easy for patrons to get to a solution.
- Empowerment (I can assist you): We purpose to be specialists, not solely as customer support professionals but additionally as specialists at our product and the way clients can efficiently use it. We go above and past to seek out info for patrons, and we’re neither afraid to ask for assist nor lean on one another to offer an above-and-beyond expertise.
Buffer’s Buyer Advocacy workforce on our 2025 workforce retreat
Every firm approaches buyer help in a different way; right here’s what we do at Buffer.
A workforce constructed on belief, possession, and adaptability
What makes our tradition really particular is the inspiration of excessive belief, excessive possession, and adaptability. Our workforce feels a excessive degree of possession of the client expertise at Buffer and have a deep understanding of their very own impression as a help workforce member.
We belief our teammates to create significant connections with each particular person they work together with. Most significantly, we belief one another to comply with our instincts and make choices that put our clients first. Whereas we now have a complete inner FAQ and Wiki, we encourage our workforce to do what’s proper for the client. This mannequin means everybody has important autonomy in how they handle their work and relationships with clients.
This degree of possession over the client expertise is uncommon and transformative. We acknowledge that possession and decision-making abilities come simpler with expertise, and that is not one thing we take with no consideration. We work carefully as a workforce to help one another with questions, intestine checks, and “second pair of eyes.” This occurs throughout Slack, Zoom calls, and even in notes in HelpScout. As workforce members construct up a deeper understanding of our product, our clients, and our tradition, their confidence and independence naturally develop.
When somebody is newer on the workforce, they have a tendency to ask for extra recommendation, which we welcome and encourage.
Slightly than having inflexible processes in place, we lean closely into trusting our workforce and the collaborative help strategy we now have in place. This basis of belief we place in one another comes by way of within the service that we offer. It’s a pleasure to do the fitting factor by clients and that’s one thing that I genuinely imagine of us discover.
How we function with out complicated hierarchies
Our workforce operates with out escalation processes or complicated hierarchies. We work alongside one another within the Advocacy workforce and with different groups to ship the very best expertise. By rising communication and collaboration, we imagine we are able to enhance each the help and product expertise.
We purpose to be distinctive
We’ve got three pillars which can be the inspiration of how we work and the expertise we wish to ship:
- Exceptionally Quick
- Exceptionally Private
- Exceptionally Knowledgeable
These pillars information our work as a workforce and assist us with objective setting, each as a workforce and as people.
Working remotely and making a collaborative tradition
Our workforce spans a number of time zones, and this has created one thing fairly particular: we have discovered that distance does not need to imply disconnection. We have constructed methods for seamless collaboration that really feel extra like having teammates proper subsequent to you than working throughout continents.
An ‘open workplace’ strategy
Slack serves as our digital workplace, nevertheless it’s excess of only a messaging platform. It is the place workforce members pop in to say, “Has anybody else seen this come up?” or “I am engaged on this tough dialog — any ideas?” Consider it as that open workplace atmosphere the place you may faucet somebody on the shoulder or name out a query to the room, understanding somebody shall be there to assist.
We’re intentional about chatting transparently and brazenly about any conversations or help points we’re struggling to unravel. There’s one thing highly effective about this vulnerability — when somebody admits they’re caught or uncertain, it creates house for your entire workforce to study collectively. We have discovered that the conversations we battle with individually usually change into those that educate us essentially the most collectively.
Open communication is not simply how we resolve issues; it is how all of us get higher at what we do. Group members know they’ll attain out for assist the second they hit a roadblock, and there is by no means any judgment — simply real eagerness to determine it out collectively. Whether or not somebody wants assist understanding a technical problem or needs to brainstorm the easiest way to answer a annoyed buyer, workforce help is at all times there.
Collaborating carefully throughout Buffer
Collaboration is on the coronary heart of all the things we do. Slightly than working in silos, we accomplice carefully with groups throughout Buffer to establish friction factors, improve the client expertise, and ship distinctive help. This cross-functional strategy fuels steady development, each individually and collectively, which straight interprets into higher experiences for the folks we serve.
Our workforce recurrently collaborates with Product, Engineering, Design, and different departments, making certain buyer insights circulate naturally by way of each resolution we make. This connection helps your entire firm keep grounded in actual buyer wants.
Just a few members of our Buyer Advocacy workforce at our 2025 workforce retreat
How our Buyer Advocates develop at Buffer
We imagine that buyer help is each important to our enterprise and a satisfying profession selection for workforce members who genuinely care about serving to of us and love fixing issues. In our Buyer Advocacy workforce, everybody interacts with clients no matter their degree or function. We concentrate on creating pleasant buyer experiences, each by supporting the profitable adoption of our product and by digging into bugs and UX points that want consideration.
Because the workforce that connects most with our clients, we now have an immense impression on our enterprise. We have constructed our workforce round the concept that buyer help professionals can each develop and specialize inside this space. All workforce members want a broad basis in our buyer help fundamentals, however from there, they’ll select their very own development path. Some stay generalists who excel throughout many areas, whereas others develop deep experience in specialisations like AI, our Assist Middle, buyer training, billing, technical troubleshooting, product improvement, and inner documentation.
Inside our workforce, particular person contributors (which means teammates who aren’t managers) have a profession framework to offer readability of what development appears to be like wish to help furthering their careers and growing their abilities. It is crucial for us that there are development alternatives past the standard administration monitor. The framework should not restrict anybody to 1 path—we lean into self-led development the place every workforce member works with their supervisor to stipulate what private development appears to be like like for them. The objective is to have readability about the place you could belong whereas encouraging everybody to seek out their very own function and development trajectory.
There is a real delight that comes with being a part of Buffer’s help workforce. Buyer expertise is not only a division; it is a company-wide precedence that everybody values.
When you already know your work straight impacts folks’s success and that your organization really invests in help excellence, it creates a way of objective that is arduous to seek out elsewhere.
