The loneliest role in SaaS

SaaS companies have a very distinct impression. SF bridges, team photos on LinkedIn, massive billboards calling you in. An inviting and inclusive space, where everybody belongs, no matter what time zone you’re in. The kind of place where everyone's always grabbing coffee together. Oh right, matcha too. 

Behind the scenes, things get a little different. You’re scaling up, with bigger teams, more customers, more features. A lot more work gets added onto your plate. You're growing. Great. Everybody's celebrating.

But hiding behind the screens is one person. They know more about your product than almost anyone on the team. Every edge case, every workaround, every feature that broke two releases ago. They're probably the only people doing what they do. And nobody mentioned their work in the last standup.

They're handling support.

We've spoken to dozens of Support and Knowledge managers this year. These include people from companies across different stages and locations. The one thing that comes up in almost every conversation isn't about software.

"It was just me for the longest time."

  Knowledge lead, sales enablement company

The reality at most startups and a lot of mid-stage SaaS companies is this. They usually have  one person running the help center. This same person probably answers tickets. And this same person also knows why that one feature breaks for customers on the legacy plan.

The part that nobody talks about

When you're the only person doing what you do, there's no one to check in with. No peer who's in your shoes. No one to look at and say "hey, does this article make sense?" Your manager probably doesn't fully understand what you do. Your team is lovely, but they have their own stuff. And the customers who are annoyed on the other side of the screen have the last thing but empathy for what you're going through.

"Help center is never mentioned in standups... it's always considered as this add-on task." 

— Support lead, legal tech company

It's the kind of work that, when done well, gets even less attention. Nobody's celebrating that you updated forty articles after the last release. When things work, who's going to notice them? (This isn't my petition for you to slack off at work, although I wouldn't blame you if you did.)

One support lead told us her CEO came to her and said she couldn't continue running a one-person team forever. She replied: "I know. But I don't really have a case for you for growing us at this point."

She knows she needs help. But proving it looks different in support. Sales can show pipeline. Engineering can point to shipped features. Good support shows up in things that didn't happen - the ticket that didn't escalate, the churn that didn't occur, the customer who found the answer on their own. Hard to put that in a slide deck.

When help does show up

Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get one other person who gets it. A fairy godmother, if you will. 

"Super lean team on the content front... God bless, she is an amazing content mind as well. So she kind of dips in and helps us so we don't absolutely sink."

— Content manager, consumer fintech

Not wanting to sink has been set as the bar, and that's common for overstretched teams with less help. But this is where smaller SaaS teams surprise you. Someone dips in. Someone notices. And sometimes, that's enough.

Wanting to leave something behind

There was one line from a conversation that stuck with us more than the others.

"We closed the Series B. I want us to stay lean. I don't want support to be a big massive lift... because I wanna be able to leave one day." 

Support lead, creative operations platform

Not leave as in quit. Leave as in, build something that doesn't fall apart without her presence. Build a system that is capable of functioning without her constant supervision. She wants to grow into something else, maybe lead a team, maybe move on entirely. But right now, if she leaves, the whole thing collapses.

Sadly, there’s no one neat solution to this problem. This is a systemic problem, and has a lot to do with the broader meaning of someone in support. If you're the person holding it all together at your company, be it the help center, the tickets, the product knowledge that lives in your head and nowhere else, we wanted you to know that it came up in almost every conversation we had. You're not the only one doing this alone. And for what it's worth, everyone loves what they do. 

Even on days when it feels like too much.

"I am the knowledge content manager. I've been that since I started, and it's really fun. I love it." "I feel like the standards are even higher for help center docs, maybe possibly because it's my passion."

It's not that they want out. They just want it to be sustainable. And for someone to mention their contributions in the standup once in a while.

Image Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington