Atlassian Support – The Legend Continues

_Atlassian recently reached $100 million in all time revenue. We’ve asked some of our employees to give us their take on how they’ve seen the company grow. First up, Support Diva, Donna McGahan:_
November 29, 2005– my first day in the newly opened Atlassian San Francisco office. It was really starting to come together– four desks, one phone, and a ratty Nerf soccer ball. Jeffrey Walker (el jefe), Jim Conaty (customer advocate extraordinaire) and one Atlassian Founder, my new office companions.
As a former customer, I was thrilled to begin my new gig as an Atlassian support engineer. I was already an Atlassian fan-girl but the fact that the company used Fight Club characters for user accounts in the documentation told me this nerd love ran deeper than most. This was the kind of company I could settle-down and support some more products with.
That said, I was also a bit terrified. I would have only two days of training with Scott (yes CEO Scott) before I became the sole U.S. support engineer for Atlassian. Granted, that was back in the day when we only had two products, but still! Those already providing support out of the Sydney office (like Jeff Turner) had already set a high support service bar. How was a girl, newly arrived from the east coast, to maintain the legendary status quo? Thankfully, my support mentors from across the pond helped bring me up to speed in record time.
How “legendary” support times have changed over the past 3 years! Our San Francisco support office now stands at 11 strong, not to mention our support offices in Sydney, newly opened Amsterdam and, thanks to our partner Customware, Kuala Lumpur for a total of 40 support staff, including global support manager (Andrew Rallings).
Atlassian support has changed a lot from the early days. Back then, Atlassian used e-mail for all customer support requests. We were so 90’s! Our mail server was located under Jeff Turner’s desk in the Sydney office and provided a rather uncomfortable foot rest, or so the story goes. Years later, a decision was made to move to a JIRA-only approach. This resulted in the creation of the jira-toolkit plugin. A plugin to help Jira be a more “support-friendly” product. Now, not only do we eat our own Jira dog food for monitoring and responding to customer support (http://support.atlassian.com) requests but we also provide live chat and screen sharing (when deemed necessary).
In addition our focus on faster response times and customer satisfaction, which have always been a priority, have taken a more formal approach. If you have submitted a support issue recently, you may have already received one of our monthly customer satisfaction surveys. Please respond, we want your feedback! In addition, look for more public information regarding support response times and supported environments coming soon to a web page near you!
Me? I decided to swim across the pond to pursue my love of Confluence architecture and now manage the Sydney Jira support team (long story). My love of Atlassian support has definitely grown over the years. As a high maintenance support diva, I’m glad to say support still seems fond of me as well. Don’t tell, but I think it’s getting serious!