Hello friends,
It’s time for another update. My apologies for the delay between updates this time around as we’ve had our hands full.
As we approach the end of Batch processing for Framework Laptop 13 (AMD Ryzen 7040 Series), we reflect back on the absolutely insane ride it has been. It’s clear that our planning and assumptions went right out the window, given that this shipping season did not follow any historical precedence whatsoever. Our demographic has shifted dramatically since adding the AMD variant into the Framework fold and we’re starting to see more of a mainstream audience embrace Framework, our mission, and our products. This, of course, is amazing news for us, and we’re over the moon, but that also means that expectations are different, and we’re having to adjust, adapt, and evolve in numerous areas across the business, including Support.
We are preparing to enter the next chapter for Framework with the upcoming shipping launch of Framework Laptop 16, our most ambitious engineering project to-date. Just as we saw with Framework Laptop 13 (AMD Ryzen 7040 Series), we expect an even more dramatic shift in customer expectations. As such, we’re re-evaluating how we deliver support across a number of surfaces, including our core ticketing platform, social media, and via our self-help educational resources (Knowledge Base and Guides). Some updates will be instant, while others require additional resources and development, resulting in a more staged rollout over time.
We know our responses have been delayed in Support, and being transparent, as of the time of this post, the oldest ticket in the Tier 1 queue that has not yet been responded to is 6 days old (4 tickets away from 5 days old). As we’ve broken both sales and shipping records for Framework, and Batch shipping got faster and faster, with batches starting to overlap pretty significantly, the demand for support simply grew beyond our resourcing, and our output was unable to outpace the inbound. We already received the approvals to add additional support team members, but to source, hire, train, nest, shadow, and move to production-ready, delivering at the quality bar that Framework has set, takes time. Our newest team members have finished training and are responding to tickets (with supervision) as we speak, and we’re pleased with the progress we’ve seen in the accelerated timeline we’re striving to hit. In addition to simply adding headcount, we’ve had to implement smarter business rules, new queues and routing, enhanced workflows, and more. As the Head of Global Customer Experience, accountable for multiple verticals, I was (and am) handling Tier 1 tickets, scouting ahead in the queue, moving urgent tickets into priority queues, handling order modification requests, internal escalations, and more, alongside our Customer Operations Lead. We all roll up our sleeves and do the work that needs to be done as a startup of 45 full-time employees, total, globally. You can see every person hired, in every role, located here (one not posted yet, but hired, and starting in the new year): Framework | About Framework. We’ve also started the interview process for a Community Support Manager to join the Framework CX (Customer Experience) team, starting with an applicant pool of over 600, filtering down to 13 amazing candidates, and ultimately to 1. This person will be responsible for building out what comes next for Framework on our social surfaces, working with our awesome Volunteer Moderation crew, and bringing your voice to the right teams internally to improve and enhance the customer experience and our products.
Without your support, we wouldn’t be talking about what comes next, we just wouldn’t exist. You’ve believed in our mission, our vision, and honestly, us. We know we’ve missed expectations as far as speed of response in Support, and we can only communicate and promise that we aren’t resting on laurels behind the scenes, and that real work is being done to drive improvements and streamline internal processes to shorten wait times. What I can’t, and won’t do, is tell you that everything will magically get better, or that we’ll just hire 100 people to brute force contact volume, as that’s a perfect way to kill a Startup and our mission. We honestly don’t know what we’ll see for Framework Laptop 16 launch as it’s the first generation of this new Framework product, and once it gets into the wild, we’ll quickly find out how we need to adapt or pivot. What I WILL promise is that we remain focused on learning, listening, and scaling intelligently, to ensure that we continue our mission to show the consumer electronics industry, and the world, that there is a better way.