Support

Here's a stat that'll knock your socks off: The Pixel Union support team resolved 64,665 tickets in 2018.

Assuming each ticket takes at least a handful of emails to resolve, we're firing off hundreds of emails every day—emails about product variants and page templates, app integrations and theme customizations, wholesale pricing and newsletter popups—the list goes on.

And while the main thing is coming up with solutions to the various problems merchants are having, it's also important that we provide a support experience that's consistent with certain conventions and values. Primarily, the ones laid out in this guide! 🙃

That said, communicating directly with customers is different from writing a documentation article or a Facebook post. This section will address some of those differences, and (hopefully) tell you what you need to know to resolve even the gnarliest of tickets.

Voice and tone

The Pixel Union voice is clear, friendly, and helpful. This remains the same throughout our written communications, whether we're composing a tooltip or writing a support email.

Tone, however, changes. It adapts to emotions—both our own and others'—as well as the situations in which we find ourselves. When emailing with someone who's clearly angry, don't respond with sarcasm. Take a sympathetic, conciliatory tone. But if they're excited? Then bring the energy.

One thing we don't ever want our tone to be is hostile, aggressive, or accusatory. We've been on the receiving end of enough fury and vitriol to know how it feels, so when things get heated, it's all about staying cool, calm, and collected.

Language and style

This guide covers a lot of ground when it comes to language and style, and if you have the time, we highly recommend reading it all. But if the support queue is burning up and you just want a quick list of things to pay attention to in your writing, well, we have that, too. 😘

• Use the active voice.

• Avoid jargon and tech speak.

• Short words > Long words (Same goes for short sentences and paragraphs).

• All caps is never appropriate. Use bold or italics to emphasize.

• Use emoji deliberately and sparingly.

• Use screenshots to add context and make content easier to understand.

• Don't make assumptions or generalizations based on age, gender, race, or anything else.

• Clarity and humanity (your own and the recipient's) above all else.

Words to avoid:

• Crazy, insane, and any synonyms that contribute to stigmas around disabilities or mental illness

• Bandwidth, churn, dialogue, ideate or other highfalutin tech jargon

• Internets, interwebs, or any other variation of the word “internet” that isn't "internet"

• Killing it, crushing it, or any other unnecessarily aggressive/bro-y turns of phrase

Words to be careful with:

• Sorry, unfortunately, alas, and other apology words

• Problem, trouble, issue, and other pathology words

• Soon, ASAP, momentarily, and other time frame/commitment words (unless we are 110% sure we can make good on our promises)

Greetings and closings

We generally take a fairly informal tone with customers, and that starts with the greetings we use. “Hey” and other familiar openings work well for customers we've dealt with in the past and who are familiar with our brand. For customers we don't know, we try to keep greetings more standard, or match how they've addressed us.

• Greetings, Portia!

• Hello Gerald,

• Hi Mathilda,

• Hey Jeremy,

For closings, we often invite further clarification or questions.

• Please let me know if any of this is unclear or if you have other questions.

• Be sure to let me know if there's anything else I can help with.

We use first names in sign-offs and automated signatures that include first and last names, position, and company.

• Declan Hughes Customer Success · Pixel Union

Instructions

A lot of the time when we're working with merchants, we're giving instructions or describing a process. Here are a few best practices that will save everyone time and energy.

• Explain things chronologically. Start with step one and go from there. As Groove says, "There’s a designated circle of hell for support agents who let you go through several steps and then notify you that there was something else you were supposed to do beforehand."

• If there's no obvious chronological order, organize by complexity. In other words, make the first tasks the easiest ones. Getting hung up on the very first task greatly decreases the likelihood that a merchant finish or even follow your advice.

• Avoid distractions. Structure instructions in a way that keeps the merchant focused on the tasks at hand and won't interrupt their workflow. For example, related materials (links to documentation, Shopify articles) should come at the end of a message, not mixed in with the main instructions. That said, if there's a knowledge base article that answers their question, just link them to that and don't add any excess information in the email.

• Use bullet points and/or subheadings to organize long processes into digestible sections. You'll make everyone's life easier by structuring information in a way that's easy to read and follow. The bit you're reading now is in a list format. Nice, isn't it?

• Use bold text to orient users to specific in-app/theme links, buttons and menu items. Replicate the same capitalization conventions used in the app/theme. Do not use quotation marks.

  • To preview your published popup, click the Preview button on the popup’s card below the Performance window.

• Use the greater-than symbol (">") to denote a click-through process.

  • To change the font color, go to Customize > Theme settings > Colors.

Screenshots and GIFs

Images add context and make content easier to understand. Crop screenshots tightly around the action, or use CloudApp's annotation feature to draw attention to a specific area.

GIFs are great for demonstrating multi-step processes. Use them sparingly, but don't shy away from adding one if it's helpful.