Spotlight on support: Elastic's support team treats one another—and its customers—like humans

Support teams are a company’s backbone—they’re the unsung heroes who keep the customers happy and help them to get the most out of a product. We pride ourselves on our team of support engineers who marry excellent customer service skills with product expertise. 

Our support engineers have to be analytical, detail oriented, and manage different personalities in order to solve the problem, says Julie Rudd, VP of Global Support at Elastic. 

François Conil, Senior Support Engineer, sees his role as a customer advocate. “It’s not just answering questions, you wear so many hats,” he says. You can have the best product but if you have no one to support it, then you will lose it all.”

Kesia Milesi, Support Engineer, says she helps customers achieve the best they can from Elastic’s product suite. 

“We work on handling fires everywhere,” she says. “Whether it’s solving issues or answering questions, we’re here for customers so they get the most from the tools.”

Danny Gibbons, Support Engineer, added that it’s a lot of troubleshooting. 

“We run the gamut of helping customers when they’re first getting started, to optimizing, to being there for them when the sky is falling,” he says. 

Humanity first

For Kesia, working on Elastic’s support team means working on a team that cares. 

“How can companies think about employees and customers?,” she says. “I didn’t know that was possible until I joined Elastic.”

François-Clément Brossard attributes the culture at Elastic to feeling part of the team right away and he encourages others to reach out and not feel shy. 

“The thing I appreciate about the team is everyone asks how you’re doing,” he says. “I think the biggest thing, especially being distributed, is to reach out and not stay in your corner.”

This ethos can all be traced back to the foundation setup by our founder and CTO Shay Banon. 

Pius Fung, Senior Principal Support Engineer who has been at Elastic for more than 8 years, says the company has always viewed support as a crucial part of the company. 

“Shay made it clear that support is an important team for the company,” Pius says. “He understands it’s a tough job that requires both technical and customer skills.”

Having been in support most of his career, Pius likes the challenge and appreciates the open lines of communication between the support and development teams. 

“This is a place where we value the support team and the devs appreciate what we do,” he says. “That sets the tone.”

Insuk Cho, Principal Support Engineer, agrees. 

“The beauty of Elastic support and the whole company is we don’t have silos,” Insuk says. “We all feel free to talk to anyone, ask anything. People are friendly and want to help others to be more effective."

Working as a global team

The team is spread out around the world, with support engineers in EMEA, the Americas, and APJ. To stay connected, discuss situations, ask for help, and hand off projects, they use a shared Slack channel. 

Jan Doberstein, Senior Support Engineer, says the support team’s superpower is that everyone helps each other out. For example, if you’re in a situation where you have a problem you can’t answer or you’re stuck in an emergency call, you’re encouraged to ask for help.

“There is always a person to jump in,” he says. “I’ve never experienced that before.” 

Pius continues, “If anyone is overloaded they’re encouraged to speak up. It’s not a weakness, if anything, it’s a strength.”

Danny Gibbons feels the same way. Everybody wants you to succeed, he says. 

“96% of folks will answer you in a thread and take the time to guide you or join you on a call,”' he says. “They’re imparting knowledge and sharing so I am learning and growing, so next time I can pop into a thread and get started.”

And the same goes for when you need flexibility to take care of things outside of work. While this is written into our Source Code, flexibility looks a bit different for the support team who work shifts. But, while there are core working hours, it’s possible to arrange a specific schedule with your manager. That also means we had to get creative on how to best ensure our support team gets Shut It Down days like all other Elasticians— they get theirs as flex days. 

“They let you work the hours that are most convenient,” Pius explains. “It’s all part of making sure that you’re not consumed by work.”

“They actually care about everyone,” Danny continues. “We’re getting these days off for mental health and well-being and I try not to take it for granted.”

Want to join a team that treats its members and customers like humans? We’re hiring.