jalynndoessupport - Tumblr blog

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A simple intro to using Trello.

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A tutorial I made after I learned how to use Trello with Slack. I have a lot of boards in Trello so this was fun for me. 

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4 Reasons I Choose Help Scout:

Reason 1.Help Scout has been one of many training resources for me in my current support role.

I try not to “take work home” with me, but sometimes I need the time off the clock to properly think about a situation and what I’m trying to achieve with it. Doing some research on customer support topics online is what actually led me to discover Help Scout. From there I started reading articles and a lot of things started to click for me, because my current job doesn’t offer resources like this, even though we are support teams for many different clients. 

One of the main things that has been effecting the teams I work with has been getting them back connected to what customer support is and how they are not necessarily separate from the work they do. Currently, everything has become so focused on metrics that we are starting to really lose the human touch to things and the desire to learn has become dried like a husk instead of like juicy fruit, haha.

The main reason I took on my current position is because I wanted to share what I have learned with my teammates so that they can have an easier time on calls or writing emails and start to make their own path. Stumbling upon the articles from support pros on the Help Scout blog made it much easier to articulate concepts to my team. It also renewed my own energy for the task at hand. I’ve been able to create better tips, bring new creativity to the way I teach concepts, and even just giving fresh analogies during coaching sessions after a live-call. It’s all been for the better of the team.

Here are some of my favorite blog posts:

1. The 5 People You Meet In Support

2. 16 Customer Service Skills that Every Employee Needs

3. How to Communicate Ideas Effectively

4. Tone and Language Are Building Blocks to Customer Expectations

5. 12 Phrases to Improve Every Support Interaction

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2. I can see myself at Help Scout and you are continuing to make that a reality for all marginalized people.

One of the first things that stands out to me when I start researching a company is if I can easily find someone that looks like me in the team pictures. I’m serious. I look at them, search carefully, and then I sigh, because the representation on a physical level is not there.

I’m a Black woman and the first Black person that I tend to see is a Black man of a darker hue, and then, if I look really closely, I may be able to pick out a Black woman that’s racially ambiguous. And by that I mean, her skin tone is so light that she blends in seamlessly with most Asian and White people.

Help Scout is working against that, and I’m honestly thankful. Representation, like its partners diversity and inclusion, manifests talent and takes a companies to new heights on the wings of different perspectives. Thank you, Help Scout.

I really wanted to photoshop my face into this picture.

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3. The balance between work and life is a priority.

You understand that people shouldn’t have to spend their entire lives dedicating all of their energy to work. It creates resentment, unhappy homes, and it stifles everyone when it comes to doing their best work. You are dedicated to every employee being their best selves by giving them the reigns to work remotely (and that’s based on trust), paying them at the competitive market rates for their work, and even understanding that we’re all better for it when someone can take time off to recharge and avoid burnout. 

Plus, you make videos like this to clearly demonstrate that taking care of yourself is apart of your work culture. I’m thrilled that you are one of the many companies out there making sure to view your employees as humans and not just cogs in the overall company machine. 

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4. Customer Support as a fulfilling career is possible!

For a long time I thought that a support role was just where everyone came to dump their messes (people and problems). It’s not hailed as a glorious position or respected much at all. I also saw that support positions are usually advertised as low-paying jobs for the desperate and poor. Most call centers are packed with minority people or outsourced cheaply to other countries where the employees end up poorly trained or spending too much time being verbally abused for having a heavy accent. Or sometimes the rules and environment are just designed to discard people into an endless void after breaking down their mental health. There isn’t much that is fulfilling about the work and sometimes it draws people who are just trying to do what they have to do, but the job may not match what they are best at and that causes further issues in the role. 

Help Scout offers career paths for its employees that are about more than just the next six months or the next paycheck. You can grow here. You can develop yourself within the company in ways that could eventually take you beyond it. You can thrive and live a full life while working.

This is probably the thing I’m excited about the most, because along with it comes helping setting a standard for the true, human face of customer support. It all starts from the inside.

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What's your favorite and least favorite aspect of working directly with customers?

My favorite aspect of working directly with customers is when customers are happy to know that someone will take time with them. A lot of older customers express feeling sorry for taking up a lot of my time or they feel that they have to rush. I'm always glad to tell them that this is our time and I'm happy to guide them through things so they can learn and have their problem resolved.

My least favorite aspect of working directly with customers is when a customer is extremely upset and seemingly cannot be satisfied. I've done mostly phone support and that is when I've encountered this the most. Advice that I've seen has been about giving the customer space by not replying for a while, because replying too fast can escalate a situation. However, when you're in the thick of it on the phone, it comes down to positioning and allowing the customer to vent and express themselves. The other half of it is being an active listener to deduce the real issue the customer is having leading to the extreme reaction. This has worked for me, and many times customers have apologized, but I know not to take it personal. I think this is my least favorite, because on the phones it can be twice as draining.

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My Current Personal Goals

1. Get settled in working with my Aspire mentor from the Support Driven group.

2. Deepening my industry knowledge for customer support. 

3. I want to be able to finally balance my life and spend more time with my family. After my brother passed away it has been a priority amongst my siblings and I to be in my nephew's life, but work makes it difficult for us all.

Note: the photos below are my parents, 2 of 6 of my siblings and my nephew. My brother was in Korea helping out on a fieldtrip. I don't know how when his job is accounting! :)

4. Continue working with my career/accountability to land my next support job, but also start reaching my goals of producing my own support content.

5. Finally getting my passport to travel the world. I want to do with customer support what Anthony Bourdain did with food. 

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4 Reasons to choose me!

Reason 1: I’m no stranger to fun videos!

This video is from when I was a student at Booker T. Washington Magnet High ( for the performing and creative arts). What a mouthful! You can catch me (in the pink shirt) at the 2:38 mark. 

It was my idea to have all the girls throw paper at our classmate and give him the class flirt role. It was easy to get him to go along with since his older brother and I are close friends.

I wish I could share our magnet’s Sketch Show, but our school recently burned down and the footage was lost. :(

Disclaimer: No hearts were broken in the making of this video!

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Reason 2: "Oh, baby bring it all (your questions) to me” 

I get a rush from helping people. You have a need for a resource? I probably have it bookmarked on Twitter. You need something to help you organize your resume and you’re trying to be a software engineer? I know whose website has great templates and happen to contribute to blogs for developers so there’s great advice to be found, too. You want to work remotely, but don’t know how to ask your boss? I got you! I’ll gather some advice from people doing it and give you links to a webinar on designing remotely and, to top it off, a link to a blog post that features templates and advice.

I love doing this. So, it’s no wonder I found myself working in support roles. The problem is, though, a lot of people don’t see value in support teams. However, like onions in most meals, the support team is the backbone of many companies. Let me be a layer in your onion.

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Reason 3: I challenge myself constantly.

In my life the greatest rewards have come from me challenging myself and taking a chance on me and the things I’ve learned. Just like in the Pokémon theme song, I want to be the very best that no one ever was! 

My initial problem was that as a child I thought I was supposed to be more on the shy side, and for years I held back. I didn’t want to be too loud, too noticeable, too anything that drew attention. However, when you’ve got it, you just got it and it can’t be tamed. And so, I found myself in the spotlight many times anyway.

In daycare I wanted to be a princess in a parade. I made my wishes known to my parents and a handful of other adults and went right to work learning to wave properly. 

Years later in high school I leaned into my desire to be editor-in-chief of the literary magazine my magnet program produced every year.

I threw myself into everything we did, even the projects I hated and found boring. Looking back, those projects gave me the skills I use the most today. I’ll never tell my teacher he was right about that being the case, though. 

By my Senior year I achieved my desired role with unanimous votes. They were big and floppy shoes to fill, but I’d made it.

A year ago when i joined Conduent I remember telling my trainer that I wasn’t sure I could absorb all the material and pass our skills test. I was honest with him about my fears and then I did something about them, because I wanted to pass despite fear telling me that I couldn’t. I made sure when he was teaching I spoke up about questions I had or asked if we could go over a concept a different way because of my learning style. He told me after I passed his class that everyone that voices the same fears I had always ended up doing the best in the class. I passed with a 96.

Since then I’ve passed several harder tests and moved up to my current position. Now I teach others how to get past their fears, especially after something goes wrong. I even spend time on Twitter denouncing the wave of people letting Imposter Syndrome become a personality trait instead of a fleeting feeling. 

 I’m ready to bring that kind of ambitious and dedicated energy to Help Scout.

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Reason 4: I’m a writer.

I’m a writer.

Writing started out as a way for me to express myself to myself. I think a lot and sometimes I have so many thoughts going on that I have to write them out to make sense of every feeling, idea, or thought. Some are feelings and ideas that I need to act on right at that moment, and others are thoughts I shelve for another day when I need inspiration.

On that same note, people say that the way you talk to yourself shapes a lot about how you move through life and interact with others. I believe it.  Writing is a human thing like that. That’s why when I talk to customers I do my best to take my time, think about how I would want to treat me, and then I treat someone else to that kindness and helpfulness. It’s simple math: you get what you give and vice versa.

Now that I spend a lot of my time writing for others I’ve also found myself reading for others, too. What I mean is that reading keeps me sharp and keeps up my analyzation skills, because when I’m reading an email from a customer I have to quickly determine what it is they really need or don’t understand. And when I have to write a reply that answers their questions, clarifies, and meets them where they are. I have to read articles on approaches to these things to give me better ideas on how to approach it from my own communication style. It’s not always an on-the-clock thing, but actually something I enjoy when I’m off, too. I find I can apply these skills to my family as well.

So, hey, like I said before, writing is human. Sometimes, being human means being angry about the results of issues, being happy about learning something new, and being hopeful about what can be achieved in the moment. The funny thing about all of this is that this sums up customer support. It’s an endeavor to meet the call to action from humanity in various times of need. It’s teaching the world something new.

Writing has allowed me to meet myself, but it’s also opened doors for me to meet others. I’ve met doctors who run children’s hospitals, a D.J. who’s still going strong after an accident left her disabled, and just a guy that was willing to introduce me to Monster Cat for workout music. Those have been some of my favorite moments with customers, but there has also been the impact on my family. We’re all lifelong learners, and the things I’ve learned from customer support have helped us change some of the way we communicate and interact. It’s a positive impact all around. I said it before: you get what you give.

Below are some things I’ve written about my own experiences with companies, about art a friend has released into the wold, and just some people I couldn’t stop myself from helping while I scrolled away on Twitter.

Hundred5 and Toggl

High & Mighty album

Helping out around Twitter Part 1

Helping out around Twitter Part 2

I also can write a nice meme/joke combination

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Email #1

Help! We get a ton of emails with the subject line 'Order Shipped', and we’ve been manually adding the tag ‘order-email’ to each of those conversations so we can track them. Is there a way we can automate this? We’re so tired of tagging.

Hey, Monica! We can help get you set up with automated tagging. You can start with these steps:

Go to Settings in your mailbox and then click Workflows.

Name your workflow “order-email” and then select Automatic.

Since your workflow is going to be automatic, add the necessary conditions to it by selecting the appropriate operator function.

On the Actions page you can decide what you want your workflow to do when matching conversations are found.

Finally, you can review your workflow on the summary page, and activate it!

As a bonus, you can add previous emails to this workflow by toggling Apply to Previous during setup. For more advanced features, like adding multiple conditions to your workflow,  you can take a look at our help doc!

Jalynn S.

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Email #2

I got this bounceback message from an email I sent to a customer from Help Scout. I don't understand what it means - can you help? See the content of the email at this URL: http://c.hlp.sc/nNPH

Thanks for reaching out, Tonya! It looks like that email address is expired or not correct. The status portion of a bounce-back message can usually give us a clue as to what went wrong.

Here are some things you can try to send your email:

Check the spelling in the email address for extra or missing letters

Check that the email address is attached to the correct domain ( @gmail, @yahoo, etc.)

If you can, contact the person you are trying to send an email to to confirm that email address isn’t expired.

I hope this helps! Jalynn S.

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Email #3

I'm trying to set up a custom domain for my Docs site. Godaddy is requesting an IP address to set up the subdomain: http://c.hlp.sc/47e739d0e1ed I cannot find one anywhere on Help Scout. Help!

Hey, Deon! I'd be more than happy to help you with this.

For custom domains with your Docs site we recommend setting them up using a CNAME. To do this with GoDaddy do the following:

Click where it says Type and choose CNAME from the dropdown.

The host box will have your desired custom domain name in it.

You will fill in the box that says Points to with yoursitename.helpscoutdocs.com

You can find an animation of these steps from GoDaddy here. You can also find our guide on setting up a custom domain using a CNAME with us here.

I hope this helps! Feel free to reach out to us again if you're still having trouble.

Jalynn S.

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Hello, Help Scout!

I’m Jalynn (pronounced Jay-Lynn) and I’m happy you made it here. Here’s a quick breakdown of me:

Hometown: Montgomery, AL

College: University of Alabama (on hiatus, but studying Advertising) Roll Tide 🐘🅰️

Likes: reading, customer support 😉, when the horses are in the back 🐎, roller skating, dogs, and not being able to find a food that I don’t like!

Dislikes: Not being prepared ☹️, wet socks, and being cold.

House: Slytherin House, baby!

Favorite Movies: Becoming Jane, Rory O’Shea Was Here, Malificent, Cadillac Records, The Temptations, The Prestige, Interstellar, Wanted, Deadpool, and so many more!

Favorite Books: Their Eyes Were Watching God, Harry Potter series, anything by Cassandra Clare (I actually interviewed one of the artists, Val Freire, for her book series in high school), and many many more. I inhale books.

Fun Fact: I was apart of UA’s first Leadershape session and last Yell Crew team.

Bonus: I used to be a Girl Scout. So why not be a HELP Scout?

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Here’s your intro! I made this after watching Apple’s June 2019 Keynote and being inspired by the way they unveiled the new features for Ani/Memojis. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: the very generic cover letter just leads back here. This IS my cover letter.