Outreach

The Challenge

The Outreach Technical Support team focuses its efforts on tracking bugs and getting them fixed. The challenge was to find a well-oiled process that would speed up bug reporting, troubleshooting and thus empower their Product and Engineering teams.

“Instead of writing out a huge long descriptive text answer, we show rather than tell.” – Andrew Mewborn, Team Lead

The Zight Solution

First step of Outreach’s bug reporting process is to log all bugs through Zendesk. Support Reps include details on the ticket by following this pre-established template:

• Steps to reproduction
• Date Reported
• Expected behavior
• Workaround (until the issue gets fixed)

‍During the ‘Steps to Reproduction’, they are asked to record a video of their screen to describe the issue. In case of any console errors, they also need to include CloudApp screenshots of those console errors.

After logging these issues in Zendesk, they will also push them to JIRA with steps to reproduce, expected behavior, and a required CloudApp video of the issue in action (if applicable). Engineers will take these issues in JIRA and prioritize them accordingly. When the Engineering team needs more information, Support Reps will send additional CloudApp videos or screenshots to clarify the situation.

These screen recordings from the Technical Support team also facilitate discussions with customers experiencing technical issues. It’s hard to describe an issue without the correct vocabulary. Using video made it faster and less frustrating for both sides.

The Results

Using Zight (formerly CloudApp) makes bug reporting faster and easier. It takes only a few seconds to record their ‘Steps to Reproduction,’ and it avoids any miscommunication. This clarity is also appreciated by their customers. In some cases sending quick and easy video recordings prevents Outreach’s support reps from having to hop on a call to explain something. It saves the team a lot of time and allows them to work on more strategic tasks.