123: Freelancing in Support with Andrei Kamarouski

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 123 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. This week we're talking about freelancing in customer support, so stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I would like to welcome to the podcast today, Andre Kamarouski. I hope I've pronounced that correctly, Andre, and thank you for joining me. Um we're talking this week about freelancing in customer support. And you've first of all, I'd like you to introduce yourself, but but maybe in as part of that introduction, you could tell me a little about how long you've been freelancing, because I know you've been doing this for quite some time, haven't you?

Andrei Kamarouski: 0:57

Yeah, exactly. Yes. First of all, thank you for having this podcast with you. So uh it's my first one, so uh very yeah, interesting too. So I'm I started my freelancer track just about eight years ago, or just even more. My initial background is actually academic science, so I'm a sociologist, I have PhD, but I just for yeah, being a practical man started doing freelancing. It was not customer service initially, it was more research, online marketing, reputation management, sales. Uh but around 2013 I started more and more projects in customer service. Uh from 2017 I'm working mainly on up via upwork. So I implemented implementing Zendesk as a it's a main my my main uh system I'm focused on, and hundreds of jobs, so a lot of experience here. And today I have more than 60 open jobs, uh writing jobs, but around 10, 15 projects in active phase. I mainly do Zendesk implementations or optimizations as well as different workflows, customer service procedures, et cetera. So like outsourced admin and manager sometimes.

Charlotte Ward: 2:27

Wow, that's that's a lot of Zendesk experience in one person. Yeah, yeah. So I guess I I I guess um there's two parts to this, I think, for me. Um one is um how are you finding upwork as a platform and your experience of it? Because I know there's a lot of mixed feelings about upwork as a a platform for freelancing. Um but but also uh like just your experience, having that quantity of work on the go, particularly when I'm guessing I I mean, I know support across a lot of companies, there are some common threads. There's definitely some things all companies do the same, but there is it's also quite different from organization to organization as well. Um, so let's let's tackle both sides of that from my point of view, perhaps. One is one is like super briefly, what do you think of Upwork?

Andrei Kamarouski: 3:22

I think Upwork is pretty good. Uh some time ago there are some questions, but today uh it's a good place to for remote work for lensing. And it's like they in my domain, there are more SB companies, sometimes enterprises. I would say there is more than enough work. There are around 10 people in my domain again, so Zendex experts we are competing against each other all the time. So, but yeah, it's uh the quality of clients there is pretty high, I would say. It's not just like people who students or whatever. Yeah, no, it's a really major businesses, and they really sometimes I see a lot of companies who spend thousands of dollars on our work already and hired a lot of different positions there. So I think it's a pretty good place to work.

Charlotte Ward: 4:19

That's amazing. So it's quite mature as a platform and uh trust in one of the leadings on the world, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh that's good. There's such a marketplace for such specific skills, right? Um, and and so the second part of my question really was just like having that quantity of work um in progress at once and having that quantity of clients that you talked about. Um do you find that there's a lot of a lot of repeat um work that you do? Do you have you been able to make efficiencies? Have you what have you been your major learnings about having that that quantity of work and managing it in this field?

Andrei Kamarouski: 4:57

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, really um more or less I do three kinds of jobs there. Again, it's uh Xandesk implementations, yeah. So from fresh setups, when customer client doesn't have something or want has something but want to start with Zandesk or migrate from existing system to Zandesk. Uh and second is about optimizations, so making better, uh, making more transparent structure. And third one is more about like reporting and different things related to reporting. So pretty often people want to understand the efficiency of how they perform, how teams perform, how managers, and yeah, what should be the support strategy they execute. And yeah, pretty pretty similar jobs from from my perspective, but each company is pretty unique. You have something, you see something different, how organization uh culture is like functioning there, or just different domains. It's all always very interesting to meet new people, to new meet new businesses across the globe. And I really have just very, I would say templated but well-structured procedures how I as a consultant work. I usually work via Google Docs, I have a lot of templates for different use cases, starting from exploration, business analysis to implementing different, different workflows again, different things inside Xenas that I do. That makes me personally efficient in being able to work with multiple companies at the same time, but also having less routine and being able to focus more on more productive, unique challenges that those companies have. And as a quick note here, um yeah, um maybe last two years, I was I I have understood that I do almost the same things and I should automate my own efforts there. So have in mind some ideas of doing these, uh, like Zandesk apps for um guided setup automation. But also we with my partner we started um EI company which automates different things inside Zandesk, and we do already some of them. I will can tell you more about this later.

Charlotte Ward: 7:26

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'd love you to come back another time and tell me more about that for sure. Um I know we we talked very briefly the other day. One thing that you mentioned was although you're working with such a variety of companies, um, and that there is this kind of efficiency that you're building into your work, you touched on it there. There's still also that's quite quite unique to each organization as well. Um But also you touched on the other day how you really felt like uh an employee quite often, like like you you felt kind of you built strong relationships with your clients, right?

Andrei Kamarouski: 8:02

Yeah, yeah. There are some not too many because it's more or less for lensing, yeah, but there are some clients I'm working for years, and we have like friendly calls uh almost each week, and all the time just Slack or different uh text communications, and this feels me like I'm a pretty part of the company. But again, I'm more doing really remote work um in terms of uh being Xandesk admin. Um only big companies they may hire the entire um body for being Xandesk admin. Yeah, in most cases, SMBs is just a function which customer or operations manager do every day and they will just for doing this perfectly hire somebody like me. So it it's my strategy not to tie to to to uh not to build too strong relationship, I would say, in the in that matter, because uh since you are paying too much attention on specific clients, it's different to work with multiples. Yeah. Like I don't I'm not so involved in managing support agents directly. Like I can guide the manager on about reporting and uh see you, hey, please look at this, this, this, this is KPI, this is framework you follow, and you can like observe the performance. But training, coaching, everyday work, it's not my duty there.

Charlotte Ward: 9:49

Yeah, yeah, not something you want to do. And that that's a very valid point here, isn't it? That by by doing what you do, it gives you the the opportunity to really specialise, but also it takes the pressure off those companies who hire you because quite often the support manager or the head of sport or whatever is is already doing 14 other things, not least of which is managing those agents and doing the coaching and and the scheduling and the training and the expertise and everything else. And the last thing sometimes, and quite often the thing that's hurried, as I'm sure you'll uh you'll have come across is just the actual attention to the implementation and the attention to the way things are done in in Zendesk as a tool. So quite often things are thrown together as they're needed without a great deal of thought.

Andrei Kamarouski: 10:44

Yeah, exactly. And here, like I have specific methodology, it's customer-centric, it's based on customer journey idea. Um, and having these, I'm trying to build out the support environment, uh, like inside Xandit, which educates the agents itself how to be customer-centric in terms, in namings, in workflows, in yeah, different parts. And it again it allows me like to build a rocket and letting it fly. So the system with this approach may scale more or less stable and uh up until some point when yeah, when company receives hundreds of requests daily, but it's another story uh with thousands or much more. Yeah, yeah, it's organizationally evolving, it's evolving in the complexity of workflows. But the initial kickoff I usually give the company it's lasts for years. How this is scalable in terms of you don't get into chaotic Zandesk or chaotic customer support system in a year or two when you uh add different settings without system. So I'm my duty is to explain this system to the manager to set these initially up in different parts of Zandesk, ticketing, knowledge base, and reporting, etc., and just observing a little bit more weeks or months, how it goes and if those procedures principles are really executed and are really working well. It's really important to establish a proper culture, customer-centric here culture, and everyday procedures, how people are working. Because once done, it's it will it lives like like institutions, it lives like the its own life, and people just follow the rules. They don't think of what the rules was coming from, it's just the rule, and they followed it.

Charlotte Ward: 12:51

Yeah, that makes sense. Have the system drive people as much as possible, or at least not drive people, but simplify things for them, right? I think that's the key, isn't it? Rather than rather than when they're having to think of everything else, also have to think about how they how they kind of battle the tool. It's not how you want them to be spending their day. That's awesome. Will you come back and talk to me another time about your customer journey idea? Yeah, sure.

Andrei Kamarouski: 13:19

Awesome. Great.

Charlotte Ward: 13:20

Lovely. Thank you so much, Andre. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash one two three for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.