Don’t take too many ongoing tickets.
For starters don’t bite more than you can chew, there is such thing as too much support in a day. There are 8 hours in a standard work day, 1 hour is for breaks, 2-3 hours is usually the time where you have a good focus or high productivity, and the remaining 4 hours is low productivity, well in my case at least but it’s quite a good rule if I say so myself. There is no way in hell a person or a human can have 8 hours of pure productivity, if they do then they are likely a robot or some sort of alien.
Don’t take too much time on a ticket or issue
Okay hear me out, don’t spend too much time on a single ticket. I know you might be thinking “but jeff… It’s my job I’m supposed to solve it”, well yeah it is our job. Noticed how I bolded our job part? You’re not alone(likely not alone), ask your team members or other departments that have good knowledge of the product your company sells. Still not convinced? Here’s a scenario
You: Encountered a bug or customer issue that’s taking you 30+ minutes. Coincidentally you have 10 ongoing tickets and some of them are as bad as the one you have now. You then take another 30 minutes to finally find the cause and provide the appropriate solution. That’s roughly 1 hour to solve 1 issue. Does this ring a bell?
My approach: If the ticket is taking more than 15+ minutes to solve, ask my team members if they encountered the issue before or have an idea of what’s causing it. If they encountered it before or have a solution for it great, you can move on more smoothly. If there’s no appropriate solution, just skip it for the time being and go to the easier tickets.
Pro tip: Sometimes it’s a bug so you might want the dev team to take a look.
Take a holiday or short vacation
We all need a little break. Maybe plan a week off, or just take a couple of days off. You’ll feel much better afterward. I’m guilty of sometimes not taking any breaks but I don’t work 24/7, actually, I don’t think about anything on my weekends and do not overwork myself on workdays. That’s why sometimes I don’t need to take breaks.
Pro tip: Ask the company if the not used paid leave will be carried on the next year. Cause damn, if not bloody use it or you’ll just not get any time off.
Create your most productive routine.
I work from home so it’s great, to spend more time in my house is super chill. Anyway here’s my routine or my secret to not feeling overburdened from work. I take short 10-15 minutes break after every hour, it’s the best like seriously. It just gives me more breathing room for my sanity. Though you might think if it hurts my productivity? Well no, in fact, my employers/managers say I do my tickets quite fast.
I don’t sit 8 hours straight doing work stuff, do some stretching, watch some memes or play with your doggos. Heck, do a powernap if you want just do something to take your mind away from work for a brief moment.
Don’t be stressed
I know this work can be stressful, especially when those super friendly customers reach out to you. Ruins everyone’s mood, don’t lie now saying you don’t feel pissed reading those friendly emails. I always feel like ignoring the prick but sadly you can’t cuz you know, it’s work you gotta deal with it. Take a breather and put yourself in your customer’s shoes, why are they saying those things what’s their issue.
Believe me, I got a couple of replies apologizing to me after solving their issues. They might be running a special promotion in a couple of days, and an issue or bug can be devastating so they latch out to the support team.
Sometimes these friendly emails can act as an improvement for the software your company has.
Focus on the easy tickets
Go smash the easy questions like presale or how to set up scenarios. It takes less than 10 minutes to answer and it reduces that number on your backlogs, it just feels nice to see your backlog or inbox not have many open tickets.
That’s about it, that’s how I keep myself afloat and productivity in a very face-paced IT industry.