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Proposal to Fund the Customer Support Workstream
Mission: Delight and educate customers as they navigate and experience The ShapeShift DAO.
Goals:
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Create and maintain a self-service helpdesk using Zendesk.
- Redesign current helpdesk (requires cross-DAO efforts).
- Provide a streamlined ticketing system that operates 7 days a week.
- Sustain a 48 hour first response time for all user inquiries (current first response times in centralized ShapeShift are < 8 hours, and we suspect this to remain with the current rate of tickets, but a spike in the markets or a particular feature of the platform could result in longer wait times). Most crypto companies respond within 72 hours, so our base of 48 hours will keep us competitive.
- Maintain a presence in Discord and other social channels to funnel all high-level support needs to the formal ticketing system.
- Increase total number of app reviews by targeting happy users.
- Data reporting on customer support interactions, satisfaction, feedback, and bug reports.
Success Metrics:
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Weekly Productivity Goals for Customer Support Agents are met (targets will be established within first 30 days)
- Monthly Quality Assurance score >93%
- Monthly Customer Satisfaction Score >93%
- Helpdesk Content successfully running through the auditing process by January 30th.
- Monthly Customer Support Workstream calls held to review product changes, support protocol changes, and quality assurance awards.
- 5+ app or Trust Pilot reviews each month.
Sample Support Data from a previous 12 week block in 2021:
Budget: DAO Support Budget Worksheet - Google Sheets
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Payroll will occur at the agreed time of other workstreams for sake of ease on setting the USD price each pay period.
- Unused Chua Award payments will roll to the next funding round for the workstream.
What are Chua Awards? Myleene Chua was an agent with the ShapeShift Customer Support team for 2.5 years. She unfortunately passed Sept 17, 2021. We wanted to remember her as she was a longstanding member of the team. She was sweet, kind, and loyal to her role. Now our monthly performance awards will be named after her. <3
Staffing:
*** Workstream Leader - hopefully!** - 1 @cryptohmeg
JD:
The goal of this position is to “keep the lights on”, ie: pay vendors, leadership training and consultation, proposal management, cross-team communication, with the end goal of phasing this role down to an advisory position that assists team on a parttime basis with vendor relationships and high-level general needs. The goal for the transition to “advisor” 8-12 months. You can see more on this plan in the “
*** Data & Quality Assurance Manager** - 1 @ssmarc
JD:
- Data/Quality Assurance Manager - JD - Google Docs
- The DQA Manager manages all things productivity and performance with the support staff. Reports of agent and team performance as well as a detailed report of support data will be delivered weekly to the DAO community (see below for a sample of our QA system) - more specifically to the product and growth workstreams to ensure further understanding of the user experience. Monthly meetings will be held with the entire support staff to review scores, train on product changes, and discuss common roadblocks. At the monthly meeting “Chua Awards” will be issued to recognize top performers.
This role should be seen as the “glue” that holds the staff together.
This role is also on the “leadership team” of Customer Support.
*** Helpdesk Manager** - 1
JD:
- Helpdesk Manager - JD - Google Docs
- The helpdesk manager creates and oversees the creation, editing, and auditing process of our helpdesk content. This role will be a newer role for the team. In the past ShapeShift has relied more heavily on the ticketing queue, but in the spirit of decentralization we’d like to leverage our robust self-service helpdesk to educate our users. This cost-saving step will continue to pay back dividends over time as we phase down our reliance on real time staff for tickets and lean more on self-service articles.
- The role may also require the occasional contracting of writers for How-To product articles.
One of the first goals will be to re-design our helpdesk with the help of a designer - this will include a payout of 3,000 USD equivalent in FOX to the designer.
This role is also on the “leadership team” of Customer Support.
*** Support Staff Managers** - 2 @ss-jules & @donna
JD:
- Customer Support Team Manager - JD - Google Docs
- To ensure quality support and training are provided to all support agents, we will need trainers and managers for teams of agents. Donna and Julius have been support team coaches for over a year and thrive in the 1:1 coaching environment. The challenge for them will be the constant training on new products, but if you’ve met or worked with either of them, you’ll notice their thirst to dive deep into topics.
- Their first set of goals will be revamping the current training materials to ensure speedy onboarding with new support staff when needed and doing a refresher course with the current batch of agents.
This role is also on the “leadership team” of Customer Support.
*** Support Agents** - 7
JD:
- Customer Support Agent - JD - Google Docs
- This role will be a traditional agent role. While the helpdesk is extremely important, there is no getting around that we need humans to assist with wonky hardware wallet and defi issues. We have a team in the Philippines that we have been working with for several years that are fantastic and take pride in their work!
- Having 7 agents allows for all 3 shifts to be covered, 7 days a week and sufficient coverage if agents take sick time or vacation. Although running this lean may lead to 1-2 shifts a week being short, this should not compromise overall SLAs much.
- If agents are cut in the middle of a proposal timeframe, the cost to employ these team members will be rolled over to the next proposal’s funding needs.
- Some agents may move to part time if needed. This will be announced in the Support Workstream forum and any additional funding that is not used to pay the contractor will be rolled over to the next round of funding.
It’s also important to note that while Philippines infrastructure is sound, they do experience power and internet outages more often than the US in some areas, so having additional team members to call on in those events is helpful.
Sample agent schedule:
To have a single agent online 24/7, means we have 21 shifts to fill, however most shifts require >1 agent. So with 1.5 agents needed for each shift and assuming a 5 day/week schedule = 42 shifts to fill and with 7 agents = 35 shifts a week…leaving us 7 shifts short of full coverage. However, the leadership team will be providing assistance when needed and will account for the extra time needed to fill in the blanks. It’s also important to note that having a few hours “un-personed” should not grossly affect the support experience or our SLAs.
This plan is to ensure we are operating in a lean fashion while also still maintaining a high level of service that is hard to compete with in the crypto space.
Educational Writers - (as needed)
JD: NA as of now. Helpdesk Manager will create and share once the need arises. Any unused funds for writers will be rolled over for the next proposal term.
All positions except for the Helpdesk Manager and workstream leader will be contracted through Liberty Virtual Assistants. We’ve been working with this outsourcing company in the Philippines for almost 3.5 years. They cover all things HR for the team members and assist us with staffing when we need to expand or contract the team at a faster rate (hello 2017-2018 bull run hiring frenzy). The cost is “per headcount” and is $200/month per agent and $300/per manager - super competitive compared to other staffing agencies like “Support Ninja” which places like Coinbase and Binance use (we’ve thoroughly explored these options as well).
The main vendor cost is for Zendesk. ShapeShift, Inc is grandfathered into a legacy Enterprise Plan with Zendesk which means we have access to the Zendesk Suite for only $125/pp billed monthly. If we opened a new contract, the cost would be $150/pp billed annually (meaning the month to month would be even more expensive. Zendesk Pricing | Plans starting from just $49/month). This bill will be paid monthly through @cryptohmeg’s S Corp, “3Defi”. I’ve confirmed this with Zendesk.
There is a small line item for Zoom. While Discord provides a great place for meetings, Zoom will ensure recordings of training events will go smoothly. It’s also ideal for more private calls the team will need to have due to the nature of the support role and dealing with private customer information.
There are additional options in the future to build out an AI chatbot through a bounty (leveraging Zendesk’s highly customizable chatbot feature or Ada). I’d like to dive into this post-transition and perhaps in the renewal contract of the Support workstream. I don’t believe with the current status of the DAO (meaning our products are still very much influx, so coding an AI chatbot would be very difficult at this time).
Transition Plan:
—>Jan 1st, 2022
Move all vendor-contracted employees of ShapeShift, Inc to DAO employees.
Move former ShapeShift fulltime employees to DAO.
Move all vendor payments to the DAO / Customer Support Workstream.
—> Starting in January, WSL will begin a scheduled training process with new leaders to begin info dissemination. This will also likely begin as soon as early November for the sake of getting a head start!
Total funding needed broken down by month of proposal:
Drawbacks: I’d like to see more contributions from the community in customer support to continue the process of decentralization (ie: hiring agents especially in different timezones), however our current global team is trained, eager, and cost-effective. So hiring is unnecessary at this time.
Vote:
“Yes” to fund the Customer Support workstream 221,520 USD for 4 months and support 12 full-time FOXes in delighting our customers…
“No” if you do not want to fund the Customer Support workstream 221,520 USD for 4 months and support 12 full-time FOXes in delighting our customers.