Support the right way: taking support to the next level

At Tyk we’re trusted by a huge number of clients to maintain their mission critical systems and we don’t let them down. Our customer support is a key part of this – making sure our clients know that when they need us, we’re there, and we’ll do everything to help them as fast as possible.

Clients such as Sephora and Hotelbeds trusted a challenger like Tyk due to the strength of our support and our commitment to their success. We get feedback like this on a weekly basis:

“You guys have the best support I have ever seen. Not just in the industry, but just anywhere. Best support I’ve ever experienced” – Anonymous Tyk User, 2019 

 

And it’s not just anecdotal. We scored 5 out of 5 for customer support and service in recent Gartner reviews, our CSAT is 97% on average and we haven’t had a complaint in customer support, ever. 

Our support isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. We have room to learn and grow, we have areas of improvement like any other business – but support and service is something which sets us apart and our customers love about us, and frankly we’re really good at it.

So what’s the deal with support at Tyk then?

Here’s how we take support to the next level at Tyk.

Every time a Tyk customer raises a support request at least 25 people are going to see it.

We’re a remote-first business by default, meaning that our team can work from wherever they want, whatever times they want. You might think that in itself is counterintuitive to good customer support, because we have response times to hit, we need some kind of guarantee we’ll meet SLAs. However, we find that by empowering and instilling our value of radical responsibility, we don’t have any issues meeting response times. Our teams all own the customer journey and experience, are happy to pitch in, and we rarely miss an SLA. 

We have an average response time of 35 minutes, 18 seconds for 2020 so far and our ability to meet that level of service is consistent. We have SLA clients, but everyone who signs up to Tyk gets our standard support offering – we don’t discriminate as to who we support based on how much money they spend with us, but of course SLA will take priority. 

We always reply quickly, even if we don’t have the answer right away. We want our clients to know we’ve seen their issue and we’re reviewing it – there’s nothing worse than submitting a support request and then sitting in the dark waiting for a reply while your environments are on fire. 

We are truly a 24/7 global business. There are Tyklings in 24 countries on 6 continents (and counting) and we’re never more than a couple of hours away from a client. We are everywhere, we’re always open and the quality of our support doesn’t change whether you raise a ticket in Singapore or Paris.

Whatever it takes

Every client we have has different needs and requirements, but they all need great support. We strive to become an extended part of our client’s team. We want our clients to know we’ve got their back when the going gets tough – and they do know it. 

We’ll jump on a zoom call if it helps the client get an issue resolved easier and we will work obsessively until their issue is resolved. We’ve even flown a team out to a client to help with a support issue. (Although most issues can be resolved in a much simpler way!)

We have support engineers now, but they are not ‘first-line’ support. Our product is very technically advanced, so there’s little to no point in us hiring people to check boxes and escalate every single issue to the next line. 

Instead, we’ve chosen to hire some very experienced engineers who have a plethora of knowledge about our stack. They now handle customer support which was originally handled 100% by our product development team. This allows us to give some time back to product development to keep building and innovating for our clients, and means our support team can focus on delivering great experiences and value to our customers.

Think like your client

There’s no checkbox approach, and no bullshit with us. Every ticket is treated with the priority it deserves and it’s always routed to someone who knows how to deal with it. Our fantastic product team still helps with support regularly and you may even see our CEO dipping into tickets. (He can’t resist!)

Customer focus is driven from the top down in Tyk – everything we do is with the customer in mind. From designing and engineering our product, to consulting sessions, to a support ticket – we see everything as an opportunity to improve our customer experience.

Support will be critical to the success of your plans, and using APIs to achieve your vision. Talk to us about where you’re trying to get to and we can tell you more about how we can help.