PeepSo Annual Support Report

The beginning of the year is usually a good time for reviews and summaries. To look back and analyze the past year. I suppose 2020 was an exceptional year for all, and because of Covid, it wasn’t a good year. It seems that everybody has been affected to some extent. It wasn’t an easy year for PeepSo either. 

But… life goes on. In 2020, we finally released a new PeepSo 3. That was the biggest release in PeepSo history. A huge undertaking and change noted by everybody involved. But, apart from that, this year was also a time of perhaps not so much noticeable at first glance but significant changes in PeepSo support.

Support, what we did in 2020

In this report, I would like to point out the key actions that were undertaken to improve our support. Also, to show some statistics to give you perspective.

The team

PeepSo team has grown by hiring one developer and two support agents. Nurul becomes our new front-end developer, Artur is our new support agent, and I, Chris, am in charge of the Support. As you know, we are mostly based in Asia and Europe. You can see our team here. 

Three more people working in Support, generally means replying to our client’s questions and solving issues faster and more effectively. But also, thanks to this manpower increase, we are able to appoint not one, but two agents, each working flexible 4 hours on Saturday and 4 hours on Sunday.

We try to cover every weekend with one agent from Asia and one from Europe. Because of time-zone differences, that extends the support time coverage during weekends. In addition to that, we introduced back-shifts. Artur (Europe) works alternately  07:00-14:00 and 14:00-22:00 GMT+1 every other week. 

Thanks to the afternoon shifts, the hourly gap in support coverage is now reduced from 12 hours to 4 hours daily every other week. 

Our support procedures

During 2020 we brought together and straightened up existing support procedures. Then, we upgraded them and at the same time we were gradually creating new detailed instructions covering all different aspects of technical support and customer service. 

By doing all this we were able to eventually create new PeepSo Standard Operating Procedures. At the same time, we were working hard on their implementation and execution. Including staff training and managerial supervision. All these actions were undertaken to unify and standardize our performance and reduce miscommunication. But most importantly, to improve the efficiency and quality of our support. 

PeepSo statistics

Currently, on our website you can still find the following information:

Despite having to handle a lot – 700 tickets a month, we reply to the majority of requests in less than 24 hours. The average time for the first reply is at about 13 hours. 

These were statistics from 2019 and they were not bad figures. What is the current picture? Are all these actions undertaken in 2020 noticeable in the statistics?

• We still have around 700 tickets a month (the least 600 in March and almost 800 in October). 
• Average time for the first reply in the second half of the year was between 4.5 and 7.2 hours.

In recent months, our first reply was sent:

• in less than 24 hours in 99.5% of cases
• in less than 12 hours in 83% of cases
• in less than 1 hour in 28% of cases.

Apart from that, as you know, a “Satisfaction Survey” email is sent after closing the ticket. It’s a very simple request, to rate our support “Good” or “Bad”. In 2019 we received the “Good” rating in 13% of all cases. The “Bad” in 0.5% of cases. What tendency are we observing now? The “Bad” rating remains on the same level, while the “Good” evaluation of our work reaches 21-33% in recent months.

Support, what we plan in 2021

Essentially, we are going at least to keep up the pace in terms of the response time and to improve the quality of our replies in the broad sense. And for those, who like or prefer to try and get the answer instantly using a “self- service” first, before they send a ticket, we will update and expand or Documentation. This action is in progress already.

I believe we can achieve the above with our current staff and procedures. We hope, at some point, we will be able to hire and train one more support agent from the “America” time zone to minimize the support coverage hourly gap. Apart from all that, again, for those liking the “self- service”, we also may create a brand new extensive FAQ page.

I hope the above information shows you a kind of “behind the scene” picture of what we do in PeepSo and that you find it interesting. I will continue my reports on a quarterly basis. Should you have any questions or comments, please do let me know below. I’m here to help.

Brought to you by Chris Jaworski

My very first contact with computers and programming was in the 1980s, while getting my Masters of Engineering degree. Despite the fact that most of my past professional experience was more “analog engineering”, I find the skills obtained there (analytical thinking, problem solving, general understanding of technology) very useful in the digital era.