Communication

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Zesty Tools for Communication

Communication is made all the more important with a remote team. Along with expectations around which tools and how we use them. This is our list of tools and processes we have to support communication internally and with customers.

Company Wide

These are tips and guidelines for company wide tools & processes.

Video Calls

  • Every call should have an agenda. This helps folks be prepared and set expectations around what's being discussed.

Tip: When creating an event in Google Calendar quickly jot down a list of items to discuss.

  • Please turn on your camera so others can see you.

    • It's perfectly okay to have pets, children, family members, etc. in the background. It can put a smile on each other's faces and lets us connect in a human way.

Slack

  • Avoid direct DMs as much as possible so everyone can participate and learn.

  • Consider using threads especially in rooms with a large number of participants. It creates a central point for a topic which can be deep linked to.

  • No decision on slack. This is extremely important to ensure we are as inclusive as possible to everyone who may not be available during the time the topic is being discussed.

Tip: Create an issue for the topic to discuss, announce it in slack or team call to draw attention to the conversation.

  • Please make sure to set your notification and ‘do not disturb’ so your personal time is not interrupted when you are not working.

  • For escalations and on-call please follow your team process for how you will be notified should an issue arise.

  • Slack is for short term topics. Think of it this way, if you go on vacation for a week or leave for multiple weeks, the expectation can not be that you need to catch up on all slack conversations.

  • There is no expectation for immediate response in slack.

    • If there is a need for immediate response please make sure that is handled in the proper way (i.e. Incident on-call process). See the responsible product owner.

@ mentions

  • Slack is very chatty. If you need to get someone’s attention make sure you ‘@’ them in the channel.
  • Avoid @here and @channel.
    • These are appropriate for company/team wide announcements that you need people to be aware of. Otherwise a simple post will suffice.
    • Product/Service announcements that customers need to be aware of. Use @here/@channel extremely judiciously in our community chat. We do not want to lose our customers attention and trust with these as it's critical they notice when we post service status information.
  • When a customer @ mentions a team member avoid re-pinging them, especially off thread.
    • This creates unnecessary places for the @ mentioned team member to track.
    • Creates a perception that the team member is unresponsive.
    • If the team member has not responded within the hour a DM to the team member to check their availability would be appropriate. If no response within 2 hours a response on the original customer thread to let them know the request is being tracked would be appropriate.

Email

You should have a company assigned email [email protected] If you do not, please contact your manager ASAP. Email is best avoided when possible. These are a few examples of when it's an appropriate medium.

  • Documenting important internal conversations.

  • E.g. Vacation approval, reporting HR issues, career discussions, etc.

  • Customers who prefer email. Many enterprise customers will use email for all communication to ensure all conversations are documented. We are here to service our customers and as such should follow

  • Conversations which have legal implications. Both external and internal conversations.

Support Requests

Our support service is https://zestysupport.zendesk.com/ All customer support requests should be funneled there. By tracking all support requests in Zendesk we can do a look back of how much time and effort support takes. Letting us understand what customers require support and the value we provide offering this.

  • If a support request is raised in another tool (e.g. Slack) a Zendesk ticket should be created for that user with their email address. This will ensure they are at the forefront of the conversation and allows us to track enterprise support requests.
  • If an enterprise (private customer channel) Slack support request is not solvable day of it should be transferred to Zendesk to ensure it's tracked and not lost in Slack.

Note: In the future we'll be exploring automating the process of sending slack conversations to support ticketing

Bugs/Features

Our bug and feature tracking software is https://github.com/zesty-io

Add issues to the respective services' repository.

Engineering

These are tips for processes specific to the engineering team.

Pull Requests & Code Review

  • PRs should include an explanation of what a feature introduces or bug being fixed.

Tip: Avoid code explanation. Instead of describing what the code is doing, describe what is being solved.

  • All review requests should be completed within 24 hours.

Weekly Sync

Engineering has a weekly sync on Monday at 11:30am pst. This time frame is chosen specifically to allow team members uninterrupted time to get deep focus work done. By positioning it close to pre-lunch for west coast and post-lunch for east coast we are trying to time it during the natural concentration change lunch provides us.

Do's

  • 30 minute video call

  • connect on the priorities for the week

  • uncover any blockers.

Don't

  • Discussion on implementation details.

Inspired by the VPE at Netlify