At most company offices, it is typical to see departments clumped together. This makes sense as sometimes you need to tap on your manager or teammates for questions or help with tricky situations.
Being able to literally turn to someone on your team for help, to commiserate, or even embolden each other to work hard and achieve team goals makes sense not just logistically, but to boost camaraderie as well.
However, what happens if you have different teams working that way between each other? By combining both sets of skills and expertise, you not only get exemplary customer service but updates to services and products that make the most sense.
At No-IP, our Customer Support and Product Development teams work together multiple times a day and thus resulting in some major impacts.
Our headquarters in Reno, Nevada, nestled by the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains, is a pretty ordinary and modern workspace. Inside, our Customer Support team sits together in an office. These members are not simply picking up the phone and reading a corporate standard script – These are carefully selected individuals that not only care about customer success but are incredibly knowledgeable about No-IP’s services and products.
Many of the Customer Support members have achieved a number of professional coursework and certificates in areas such as Programming, Leadership, and Management. You can take a look at the various things our Customer Support team members are working on and accomplishing from our 2022 win list here. There are even a few members that are a blend of Customer and Technical Support with their additional expertise.
Around the corner from the Customer Support team is our Product Development team. As we mentioned in our last blog, our US-based Customer Support team has many advantages when it comes to user experience and success. But what also sets ours apart from many companies is the hand-in-hand communication and teamwork they get to have with the Product Development or “Dev” team.
A combination of the Product team and Development team, these members include Product Specialists, Software and Systems Engineers. Everyone involved is constantly working together on all the cool new features our users get to enjoy whenever there is a release.
With their in-depth knowledge of the backend of the product, they are an incredibly valuable asset to the Customer Support team whenever they are stumped on technical issues or can help resolve issues immediately.
It is definitely a two-way street: Customer Support is not the only one reaching out for help. In fact, our Dev team regularly calls on them for feedback or questions whenever they are working on any changes or updates to No-IP’s products. Furthermore, all those changes and updates go through a rigorous testing process that the Customer Support team is heavily involved in. Since they are the ones that work the closest with our users, their user knowledge is very valuable and respected, especially when it comes to testing. This is to ensure that whatever the Dev team builds will be met with the best possible experience in new releases.
Plus, members from the Customer Support team are included in regular bi-weekly inter-department meetings to ensure that the Dev team is on track allocating time and energy to features that matter the most to customers.
Collaboration is a key component of our success at No-IP and this has proven extremely effective in many ways. While it creates an exemplary user experience, it in turn boosts morale. By working together and having such positive results, everyone in the company feels accomplished.