I’m a Happiness Engineer again!

I’ve had a black Happiness Engineer T-shirt hanging in my closet the past two years. The Editorial team at Automattic sent it to me in a thank you package for working on a project with them in early 2014, when I was a blogger using WordPress.com, before I even knew Automattic existed (Automattic is the maker of WordPress.com). I thought the T-shirt was so cool, but I didn’t feel right wearing it because I wasn’t actually a Happiness Engineer. I didn’t even know what a Happiness Engineer was. So I looked it up. I followed the breadcrumbs from the care package to Automattic’s Work With Us page.

And my life totally changed.

Here was a company dedicated to democratizing publishing. Here was the company that had made it easy for me to share my writing with the world, without having to go through the gatekeeper of a publishing house…

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On the Freshdesk blog: How WordPress.com handles over 2000 support requests each day

After reading recent posts about my daily and weekly routines as lead of a distributed support team at Automattic, Arun Sathiya reached out to ask me more about WordPress.com support for the Freshdesk blog's "Secret Sauce to Customer Support" series. I was happy to spend a Saturday afternoon chatting with him via Slack. On top … Continue reading On the Freshdesk blog: How WordPress.com handles over 2000 support requests each day →

Weekly routines of a Distributed Support Team Lead

Earlier this week, I wrote about my daily routines as the lead of a distributed customer support team. While I do have rituals and routines in my daily work, as a lead I've found it is the weekly routines that empower me to be productive and make sure I follow through on expectations and commitments. … Continue reading Weekly routines of a Distributed Support Team Lead →

Daily Routines of a Distributed Support Team Lead

My name is Andrea Badgley, and I lead a distributed team of 12 Happiness Engineers (customer support professionals) at Automattic, the maker of WordPress.com, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. I am based in Virginia in the eastern US, and my 11 teammates are based in Canada, the US, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, and wherever they happen to be … Continue reading Daily Routines of a Distributed Support Team Lead →

A day in the life of a live chat Happiness Engineer

I lead a WordPress.com live chat team at Automattic, and as we expand our live chat offering into the weekends, I work a couple of weekend days each month. Today is one of those weekend workdays for me. On weekends I do more customer-facing-support and less team-lead stuff than I do during the week, and I'm … Continue reading A day in the life of a live chat Happiness Engineer →

The power of self-demand

People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they place on themselves... If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they will grow to giant stature. -- Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive I'm spending the morning under a blanket, transcribing … Continue reading The power of self-demand →

Tools I use for task and time management

This week's SupportDriven writing challenge focuses on tools, and specifically on the tools we use for time and task management. When I moved into a leadership role this summer, my day-to-day work changed significantly, and in any given week I'm trying 2 or 3 different tools to find an effective combination that helps me get the right work … Continue reading Tools I use for task and time management →