This is the fifth in a series of posts showing how we use Campfire as our virtual office. All screenshots shown are from real usage and were taken during one week in September.

CampfireWe use a separate room within Campfire to discuss customer support issues. This helps us keep all these related conversations in one place and keeps the main room (fairly) distraction-free. Again, the ability to quickly share screens is a killer feature here. Let’s take a look…

Turn a customer support query into a site change
Jamis deals with an admin setting problem and Ryan suggests a confirmation dialog change. Jamis plugs it in and Subversion reports the update. one week in CF

Upload a problem screen submitted by a customer
Sarah Hatter helps out on a lot of support queries these days. Here she uploads a screen sent in by a customer and asks for advice on how to solve the issue. (Skitch is a helpful tool for marking up and sharing screenshots quickly.) one week in CF

Get help tracking down a lost link
David wants to know where the “how to” links for using OpenID are located. Jason finds them and links them up. one week in CF

Solve a customer support issue by sharing screens and files
Jeremy and Sam discuss a customer’s problem exporting contacts from Highrise. Sam logs in as the customer, shows Jeremy the resulting export screen, and uploads the resulting file. Since it works fine on our end, Jeremy asks the customer to try the export on another browser or computer in order to isolate the problem. one week in CF

Chatting with customers inside Campfire
Although we don’t use it this way, some companies use Campfire to offer customer support directly. At the product blog, we recently discussed how Geezeo uses Campfire for live chat and customer support:

Most customers have questions that can be handled in real time and since our team is in Campfire all the time anyhow, this extra customer facing room is great for our visitors. Having this real-time interaction also creates a great opportunity to talk to visitors that might be ‘on the fence’ about signing up. Once they get to see the team in there and we can address any questions they might have, they are very likely to have a greater comfort level about becoming a Geezeo user.

Other “Behind the scenes at 37signals” posts
Design
Coding
Sysadmin and development
Copywriting