Team profile: Josh McLain, Head of Support
Josh McLain has been working for Sourcefabric from our Toronto office for a good while now and has been integral in setting up our support team. You may already know him from an email or a Live Chat conversation. We managed to catch up with him, and hear some of the projects he's helped on over the years and how his new role as the Head of Support has developed.
You've been with Sourcefabric for a few years now. Can you tell us a bit about your history?
I started in October 2011 right before Sourcecamp. Originally I was on a series of short term contracts, doing sales and a bit of marketing for Airtime, which was going to be launched as Airtime Pro shortly. I spent my first couple months cold-calling college radio stations, doing sales and market research. We didn't sell much of anything, but the calls helped shape the development road map for the next few releases. When we launched Airtime Pro, we needed someone in North America to do chat and ticket support, so I took that on in addition to other side projects I had.
From there I just did whatever was needed. I set up our Amazon store to sell pre-configured installations of Sourcefabric products that Micz [Flor, director of business] put together. I did project management for our Booktype Pro launch and tutorials on Airtime, Booktype and Liveblog. Now I'm mostly working with the support team and helping out wherever I can.
You're currently heading up the Support team. What's happening there?
For me the most exciting thing is redundancy. We currently have five people doing support -- only two full time -- on three continents. We've got enough people now to cover 24 hours, so someone is always keeping an eye on things.
What do you see as the next goals for support?
We're currently most heavily involved in Airtime support and do a bit for Booktype. I'd like us to be able to help more with Newscoop issues and work more with Live Blog users. I think both of those things are going to be happening in the next six months.
What's it like supporting Sourcefabric's community?
The coolest story I have is about one of our Airtime Pro users who is doing business development for us now because he's so passionate about the project. I spent a lot of time with him when he first signed up, showing him around, and I like to think that the support he got early on is one of the reasons he's so loyal to us.
What changes have you seen in the community over the years?
Seeing our forum community grow has been great, especially for Airtime. We've got a great community there that's incredibly supportive and helps get a lot of projects off the ground. Seeing our Newscoop users grow so much since I've started has been really exciting, too. Sourcefabric has been involved in a lot of exciting media organizations all over the world, and seeing the finished work of our implementations team has been great.
What are some fundamental principles for good software support?
Always be honest and set expectations appropriately. Sometimes outages happen. I've found that, as long as we communicate what's going on, what we're doing to fix it, and when we expect things to be better, folks are incredibly understanding. I think the other important thing is to always try to put yourself in the shoes of the person you're helping. For many of our users, this is their business. They depend on us for stability and help. If we're there for them, they'll continue to support us.