The purpose of the OPS Guide is to provide information for you, the Support Rep, that is not already in the Jackrabbit Help Center. If the answer you are looking for is in the Help Center, you will not likely find it here. However, if it is a procedure you must do for the customer, or perhaps a "tip" that will help you answer the customer, this is your place to look.

We have also included some Company Info that will be helpful in understanding how Jackrabbit operates and where to find certain answers that are not specific to Support.

If at any time you cannot find something you are looking for, please let Laken Flamders or Susan Lyerly know. We want this to be an accurate, up-to-date, helpful resource. If you are new to Jackrabbit, you may not be using the same "terms" that we use. That's ok and you will learn the correct terms in time. In the mean time, let us know what "keyword searches" would be helpful for you to find what you are looking for.

This is a "living" document and we will do our best to keep it current. If there is something we have not included that you feel would be helpful, let us know.


History of Support

As a company, starting out around 2005, Jackrabbit’s support was done by Mark Mahoney. With a handful of clients Mark set the tone that Jackrabbit clients would be provided the tools to become self-sufficient and knowledgeable by playing a role in their own Jackrabbit Education. This paved the way for our support model with initial contact being through the support button and responses provided through detailed, visually explained (images), referenced (user guides & videos) answers.

Once Jackrabbit began to grow, Christy Carper took over support and created many of the standardized formats that are in place today. Free Trial Responses, Order Responses, Research standards, to name a few were all modeled after Christy’s eye for detail. At this same time, new resources were added to assist the customers in learning Jackrabbit and finding the answers on their own. The User Guide was developed, videos explaining common questions and procedures were made (By Mark) and the website fully described to any new clients our functioning model of support. As Christy’s billing responsibilities grew, 3 part time “friends” were hired to help spread the work and still allow family to be first in the Carper household. Jorine Jones, Cheryl Leonard, and Christie Foster all joined as part time Support Reps. For a year, Support was done purely by part time employees and all standards were kept at the highest level. At that time, there were no “support hours” – shifts were done till the tickets stopped and the next person came on shift. There were approximately 500 clients of Jackrabbit at this time.

With an increasing customer base, Christy Carper stepped aside as Customer Support manager to focus on the ever increasing billing. Mark took the helm. A desire for consistency amongst the part timers prevailed and our first full time “bunny” was hired. Christina Deen was hired as our first full time 8-5 Jackrabbit Support person. While the part timers still carried and had priority over what shifts they wanted, Christina stepped in and graciously took on all remaining shifts and coverage. Her entire focus was answering support requests. All during this time, Jackrabbit’s support was always praised, always respected, and helped make Jackrabbit an industry leader.

Support functioned with our one full time and three part time bunnies for a couple of years. In early 2010 Susan Lyerly was hired part time to help with Imports and Website Integration. (This was the “last” support part-timer to be hired). Mark managed the team. Many of the part timers wanted consistent days of the week that were part time only and the load was too much for just one full time person. Mark was playing a role in other departments and Jorine stepped in as Support Manager. With increasing volume, 2 new full time support staff were brought on: Janet Bartlett and Heather Mueller. Soon after they were trained, Cheryl and Christie, our two original part timers, moved to Billing to maintain a more predictable schedule.

Only a few months later with summer approaching, another Bunny, Melanie Ulman joined the team. Only a few months later Ann Binns joined. Both Melanie and Ann came from our client base and had experience with Jackrabbit as users. They received fast and furious training!

In the summer of 2011, Jackrabbit support was the busiest it had ever been. Conferences, vacations and sheer support ticket volume left the team ONLY doing support. This was not the goal. As an owner, Mark fully recognizes that the easiest way to burn out support is through long hours on support, bad software and/or awful clients. We want to have none of these!!

In order to prepare for the next year and have a strong support team in place, Debbie Near and Gretchen Mann were brought on and braced for the summer ahead. Gretchen began to focus purely on our new “EZCare” venture. At this time, Melanie stepped aside from support and went to our Development group.

With our client base growing and West Coast clients 3 hours behind, Jackrabbit wanted to support and keep our reputation high. Sandi Olson was hired as our West Coast “experiment” (an in house joke on her hire to see if she was needed as badly as we knew she was!) Christina Deen also left Support (went to Development then eventually to Bank of America).

The next batch of hires was the fall of 2012. We brought on Karen White, Kristi Deese, and Jan Nielsen. Jan lived in Maryland but agreed to “west coast hours”. She was also a previous Jackrabbit user so this was a great fit.

Over this time our other departments were growing too!. Kristi, Karen, and Heather all left Support and went to new roles in Development.

As Support continued to grow, we hired 6 in late 2013: Graham Bingham (our first GUY!), and Cay Carlson (both in Vancouver); then Jennifer Cantelmo, Kathryn Maddox, Donna Martinelli, and Gwen StPierre. Gwen was from a local client and she took on the “EZCare Specialist” role that was vacated when Gretchen Mann left Jackrabbit several months earlier. Deanna Miltz was added in early 2014 then she decided to go to a new Sales position.

In late 2014 it was obvious that a Team Lead was needed. Susan Lyerly went from part-time to full-time to take on this new Lead Role in early 2015. Susan began to run more of the day to day operations to relieve Jorine. About the same time, Ann Binns went to Development.

Jackrabbit continued to grow and by now we had over 4000 clients (organizations!). Our ticket volume increased with our growth. In early 2015, we hired 4 more bunnies: locals Teresa Wilson and Lisa Schuette; and in Vancouver - Lynda Vigor and Carla Streifel.

Also job positions were becoming more established – a person doing Help Console, a person doing eCommerce, a person doing Training, etc combined with our Imports team and Integration Team. As our database became more specialized, we learned that we all couldn’t know it all and people began to have niche knowledge of certain features and modules of Jackrabbit.

In summer 2015 we introduced live CHAT, and our ticket volume reached a high of over 4000 tickets in the month of August 2015. Time again to grow! In Dec 2015 we welcomed Tami Colvin, Paula Beyer, Amber Smith, and Lori English to our fantastic Support team. Jennifer ended up moving to do QA for our Development team. In April, Laken Flanders was hired as well!

Also in early 2016 Jorine added two more LEADS: Lynda took over as the Lead of Implementation (setup, jumpstart calls, etc), and Graham took over as the Lead of Education (Help Center, videos, training, etc). Our team was so large and diverse that we needed the specialization and focus. Our ticket volume, combined with Chats, continued to grow. August 2016 alone we handled over 4200 tickets.

By the end of 2016 Mark had decided to combine our JR Sales department with our Implementation team, creating a new department called “Onboarding” and Lynda Vigor was announced as the new Manager. Although it is now a separate department than Support, we still use the same ticketing system and share many responsibilities. At this time we are nearing 5000 Clients. Debbie Near and Lori English left Support to help Lynda get the new Onboarding team up and running. Around this same time Gwen left Support and went to a PA role.

In spring 2017 we hired 3 new Support Reps: Melissa Keller, Bethany Mahn, and Talina Bath.   By now, the Education team under Graham had grown to include Sandi (Help Center), Tami (Training) and Talina (Videos).  As we come into 2018, Amber is going to be joining the Education team soon, and Lisa is joining Janet in Client Success initiatives.   Jan and Paula focus on our growing eCommerce initiatives.

March 2018 we welcomed Linda Petry, Patricia Rushmeier, Laura Bruck, Ed Murray, and Marie Baldwin! Training 5 new Reps was challenging but they all picked it up and were ready for August! By the end of 2018, Jackrabbit had approximately 5,600 organizations as Clients.

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Page Last Updated: 2/12/2019 11:01 AM
Jackrabbit Technologies