My support philosophy is simple: approach everyone with love. There are no situations in which love is not appropriate, and it is always beneficial to all concerned. There are times when a person does not reflect love back at you, but to me, that just means that they need the love that much more.

Stop right there, you might be thinking. That’s just a little too “woo” for me. I need a support tech, not some wishy-washy chick who is going to go all New Age and try to “get in touch” with the customers instead of resolving their technical issues!

Bear with me, though. True love is a verb, a choice, not just a feeling. I don’t think anyone would argue that love takes dedication, empathy, communication, integrity, and flexibility. Those are the same qualities that are found in the best support agents, because great support is also a choice, and the very best support techs approach their customers with love.

Dedication

To be a really great support agent, you need to be dedicated to resolving clients’ problems as effectively as possible. You have to be committed to staying on top of your game technically and otherwise, by staying in touch with company communications, reading industry news, improving your skills, and tending to your self-care so that you are able to keep on giving to customers and co-workers.

Empathy

Empathy is a key marker of the really special support people. They can hear the question past the question, the real issue at the root of the customer’s decision to contact support. Empathy gives a tech the understanding that sometimes a client is just having a bad day, or that the technical problem is causing so much stress that they don’t know how to cope without taking out their frustrations on somebody. Sometimes the end-user just needs to know that they’ve been heard, and sometimes they need some comforting. The great tech is able to handle the customer’s frustrations without taking them personally.

Communication

Your best agents will have wonderful communication skills. They will pay attention to what the customer is saying, and meet the customer at their comfort level to answer questions. If the customer talks about “the little pictures on the screen” instead of “icons,” a good agent will call those things “the little pictures on the screen.” If a customer clearly wants a purely technical, no-nonsense answer, the agent won’t fill an email response with emoji. But when responding to a long-time customer who is known to the tech, a good agent will take time to personalize the answer a little more than normal. And when dealing with an uncertain customer, your best people will take time for some reassurance and a little guided learning.

Integrity

Integrity encompasses honesty, but it’s more than that. It also means to be ethical, decent, and sincere. An honest person will tell a customer the truth in response to a query (“Yes, you can do it that way”) but a decent, ethical one will give the customer the benefit of wisdom as well (“but you probably don’t want to do that, because doing so often leads to corruption. May I suggest that you do it this way instead?”) And sometimes, acting with integrity means saying “no,” even if you try to avoid using that particular word in your support organization (some people do, I know).

Flexibility

A great support tech is flexible. If a customer doesn’t understand the way the tech explained something, the tech doesn’t just repeat themselves, they find another way to express the same concept — or even another, simpler way to accomplish the same task. If it isn’t possible to resolve a customer’s problem one way, the agent finds another way to do it.

So give it a try. Rethink your definition of love, and your approach to support. I promise that you won’t be sorry.

(Originally published at cynarmistead.com)

I’m an Older Woman. My 50th birthday is fast approaching. No matter what I do with my résumé, it is pretty obvious that I’m not a millennial. That is who is truly desired, it seems, by the tech startups that I prefer to work with.

Oh, the job postings don’t come out and say that they don’t want old people, but the keywords are there . “Fast-paced,” “high energy,” and “dynamic!” They all whisper, at least, that “we only want young people!”

This isn’t just my impression, but the consensus among various people I’ve spoken with. It probably isn’t intentional, but the bias is there and the ageism is felt. So I want to address some things that seem to be missed by the “we want young people!” folks.

First, there are plenty of mature workers who can keep up with that “fast pace” you describe. We know ourselves, our bodies and our other commitments. We have the experience it takes to judge whether or not we can commit to startup life. I’ll be honest: I don’t think many young people can match that level of self-knowledge. I know that when I first worked for a startup, back in 1995, I didn’t have any idea how much dedication it would require.

Second, older workers bring a lifetime of experience in many different areas, and that experience is brought to bear in our working lives in ways that younger workers simply cannot match. For instance, I don’t have the administrative work I did decades ago on my résumé, as it isn’t directly relevant now. However, that experience shaped me and gives me the ability to better relate to non-technical people as a support professional.Younger people don’t have that kind of added value.

The average older worker has been out of school and their parents’ homes for a long time, meaning that they have experience managing their own finances and households independently (or with life partners). That gives us a certain respect for the value of money and time that nothing else does. How much of that experience does someone right out of school have?

Most older workers are also post-parenting. Their kids are grown and reasonably independent (whether out of the house or not), so they aren’t going to be juggling pregnancies, soccer practices, and music lessons that will impact their work lives. Grandchildren? Yes, some of us have them. Being a grandparent is, however, a far less time-consuming commitment for most people than being a parent.

Finally, there’s nothing else that beats maturity for giving you a calm temperament. Some people are born with them, but on average, it’s easier for someone with 30 years of professional experience to put one bad day into perspective than it is for someone with a few months or years of working under their belts. (I know there are exceptions to this, as to every rule, but Donald Trump probably isn’t applying to work at your startup.)

The next time you get a résumé or application from a Baby Boomer or Gen X’er, then, please take these factors into account. Consider their technical skills, certainly (and don’t assume that they’ll be outdated) but weigh their maturity on the positive side of the scale, for a change.