It's Groundhog Day in the Queue, Again
How long did Phil Connors spend reliving the same Groundhog Day? It depends who you ask, but certainly long enough for him to map out in detail the daily motions of the Punxsutawney residents.
At first the repetition is baffling, then exciting, then existentially dreadful, before he is ultimately able to escape through the learning of a moral lesson (and a whole lot of piano practice).
Raise your hand if you have ever had Groundhog Day flash into your mind during a particularly grinding day in the support queue; my hand is up. I imagine yours is raised too, friend. It’s unavoidable, unless perhaps you’re young enough that your cultural reference for time loops is Palm Springs or Russian Doll. Those works express something about how it feels to face a Sisyphean future.
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Support work is by nature repetitive, in the way that many jobs are, but much of the time support isn’t Groundhog-Day-repetitive. There are so many different elements to customer support, new things to learn, new challenges to face, new and exciting ways for things to break. Usually.
When online support work is at its hardest are the moments when change is the hardest to see. When it feels like every customer is complaining about the same thing. You work so hard to explain and soothe and care for one person, but the next conversation takes you right back to the start.
It’s emotionally exhausting in a way that is difficult to understand for anyone who hasn’t experienced it themselves. It’s not about hard work, which certainly can be tiring and challenging. It’s hard work which feels like it isn’t achieving anything. Like driving along the Eyre Highway, 146 km (90 mi) of dead-straight road with no trees, nothing to see, no way to judge your progress.
The truth is that you are making progress. Every customer you help has a better day because of you…but it doesn’t feel like enough. If that’s how you feel right now, then what could help? When you see your week stretching out ahead of you, looking exactly like today, what can make it enjoyable? Or at least bearable?
Don’t go looking for a silver bullet — there isn’t one. We’re going to need to attack this from multiple angles, ironically like we’re filming bullet time.
From your leaders, you’ll need clarity. An understanding of why things are the way they are. Is it a necessary phase of transition? A shift in strategy that requires a lot of explanation to customers? Knowing the purpose of the pain can make it more bearable. Ultimately, you need leaders to listen, empathise, and take what action they can to help.
From your direct manager, ask for some way of measuring progress. Sign posts that show you how far you’ve come, and rest stops where you can pause, check the map, and plot your path. Perhaps a rotation through different roles to keep the journey more engaging. Is there a product roadmap, a release schedule, a report showing how many customers you’ve worked through…is there a timeline to the hope of relief?
For yourself, find ways to use whatever agency you have. Share your feelings with your colleagues, and trade ideas on how to cope. Look for people doing something in a different way and adopt or adapt their approach. Refer to the resources you do have to remind yourself of the why and the when of this current phase.
Sometimes support really does mean a long march through a very samey queue, but that doesn’t mean it has to be miserable. Having a perspective of progress, seeing the light approaching ever so slowly, customer by customer, can make the work feel effective and worth the effort.
We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh no! We’ve got to go through it!
