All-hands support is an Olark institution. We’ve been sharing responsibility for chat and email support across everyone on our team — everyone, including developers, designers, marketers, and our CEO — since our company was founded in 2009. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s always been worth it. How have we made it work?
Can you believe 2017 is almost over?
…
Let's try that again.
Can you believe 2018 is almost over?
As we scaled our startup, we knew we needed more than just a mission statement to focus our team, improve our hiring practices, and keep communications issues in the workplace at a minimum. In 2012 Olarkers began formulating a list of values to do just that.
Olark Essentials, Making Business Human, Remote Work
Olark Company Retreat 2018. Where are the Olarkers?
You’ve probably heard that Olark is a 100% remote company, and that we have some cool ways to connect virtually. Once a year, we get the whole crew (and families) together for an annual retreat. Retreat 2018 starts tomorrow, Saturday August 25.
Customer Support, Making Business Human, Chat Tips
Seven quick tips to help you breeze through chats
One of the primary benefits of live chat over other methods of sales or support like email or the phone is the ability to help multiple people quickly and efficiently. Here are seven tips to help make chatting a breezy, pleasant experience for you and your customers!
What I’ve learned journeying from the Olark support department to our engineering team in 22 months.
Making Business Human, Remote Work
Managing a successful customer service team: When it all goes wrong
This is the fourth post in Rhoda’s Tips from a Farmer series. Read her first post on working smarter, not harder, her second on Prioritizing like a farmer, and third on Getting Help.
Running a small business is just like running any other business, right?
Er, well, not always. We get it — Olark is a small, bootstrapped company, so we know that while working with a small team can be incredibly rewarding, it’s also quite challenging at times.
Self care is a critical component of mental health. Because it’s so important, we’ve put the value of Chill at the top of our list of values. The wonderful thing about caring for yourself is that you get to choose what works best for you!
If you work in sales or support, you know the importance of empathizing with your customers and leads. You may also be familiar with that fatigued feeling at the end of the day (or sometimes by 9am!) of expending all your empathy on others and having very little left for yourself. Building a simple kit based on the 5 senses will help you recover and prepare for the next interaction before you can calculate the cost of a 2 week trip to Bali.