Barn2 is a well-established WordPress plugin company with an experienced support team of four Support Engineers providing Tier 1 and 2 customer support. Currently, the support team has a lot of WordPress knowledge but little development experience, and their role is to verify bugs before escalating them to the lead developer. As a result, we are looking to bridge the gap between our support team and plugin developers by recruiting a ‘Tier 3’ Support Engineer with development experience.
As well as supporting Tier 1 and 2 Support Engineers, you will research and develop solutions to new or unknown issues. You will take the lead in the most complex support tickets, and will be responsible for deciding which issues to escalate to the lead developer for each plugin.
The role may also include other tasks such as formal plugin testing and involvement in the Barn2 websites.
Purpose of the role - key deliverables
- Improve customer satisfaction through more tailored and advanced support.
- Reduce the average number of customer interactions per ticket.
- Reduce refund requests.
- Improve plugin quality by acting as a link with the lead developers.
- Improve the overall reputation of Barn2 as a company who looks after their customers.
- Increase the capacity of the support team, and therefore improve overall response rates.
- Reduce the need to refer customers to hire a third party developer, for example for theme conflicts or minor customizations.
- Save lead developers time investigating and identifying bugs, and theme/plugin conflicts.
Things you’ll be doing
Technical support:
- Providing customer support via Helpscout tickets and live chat (no phone support is required).
- Troubleshooting and resolving the most difficult (highest complexity) support tickets.
- Proactively reviewing support tickets and identifying issues/concerns which may have not been resolved efficiently and stepping in to find a solution more quickly.
- Verifying and identifying the exact source of bugs, and advising the lead developer on implementing a fix.
- Providing temporary fixes (e.g. code snippets) for customers’ sites until a permanent fix is added to the plugin.
- Providing minor customizations, both with styling changes, theme fixes and minor functionality changes (including liaising with the lead developer where an appropriate hook or filter is not available in the plugin).
- Identify when more significant customizations are beyond the scope of reasonable plugin support. Signpost and advise the customer if it is realistic for a third party developer to do the requested changes;or inform them if it is beyond what we would responsibly recommend or not possible.
- Proactively identifying, recommending and implementing opportunities to improve customer support processes.
Additional responsibilities:
While support will always be the primary focus of the role, depending on your capacity, you may have the opportunity to be involved in the following:
- Plugin testing.
- Working with Barn2’s Web Developer to ensure the smooth running and maintenance of all Barn2 websites.
- Making content changes to the Barn2 website.
- Running automated tests using Ghost Inspector, investigating any failed tests, updating tests, and working with the lead developer to resolve any issues with the website or plugins.
You will need
- Excellent native-sounding written English.
- Experience of working in a customer service role.
- Advanced experience of building and working with WordPress sites.
- 2+ years WordPress development experience including PHP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
- Advanced experience with WooCommerce.
- Excellent communication skills, and the ability to respond quickly to communication and keep others appraised of your progress.
- Proven track record of working independently without direct supervision.
- The ability to work within Barn2’s existing support processes, while also knowing when to suggest improvements.
- A positive and friendly attitude.
Nice to have:
- Experience working with Helpscout.
- Experience developing WordPress themes and plugins.
- Experience diagnosing and improving website performance.
- Experience of automated testing.
You’ll report to
Your direct line manager will be Katie, the Operations Director. However, you will report to the Head of Support on a day-to-day basis, and will work collaboratively with colleagues at all levels. We will work with you to make sure you have everything you need to be successful in this role.
Working arrangements
- Full time position, approximately 40 hours per week.
- Fully remote working.
- Working with a minimum 3 hours overlap with Central European Summer Time - the more overlap, the better.
Benefits
We are offering a flexible benefits package. The exact details will depend on your location.
- Generous salary based on location and experience.
- Remote working with a flexible work schedule.
- Yearly training budget of $1,000 and access to ongoing off-site training/conferences
- Minimum 25 days holiday.
- Performance-related bonus.
- Plenty of scope for personal and professional development.