In the "My Day at Granite" series, we introduce different roles at Granite by taking the reader along to experience a normal workday in that particular role. The series kicks off with the role of a Customer Success Specialist working in Granite’s customer support.

Here's how Viivi describes her typical workday in Granite's customer support:

I usually start my day no later than nine in the morning. Since I mainly work from home, my commute from the breakfast table to my workspace is a short one. Sometimes I have a quick bite and my morning coffee or energy drink at my desk if I’ve not gotten up earlier to make myself proper breakfast. Often at this point my hair is still uncombed, and I'm wearing pajama bottoms when I first open my work laptop and monitor.

The first thing I do is check my work emails and glance through Slack channels. It's good to check them first in case there's any urgent internal communication that support should be aware of. At the same time, I open our customer support ticketing system and scan for any incoming inquiries that might require immediate attention, and I address those first.

The morning typically goes by quickly, with most new customer inquiries coming in during the morning hours. I often have to remind myself to take a lunch break, which might not take place until midday. Before that, I try to take at least one shorter break to go outside with my dog for some fresh air (while he sniffs around for his daily news around the neighborhood).

My day involves various types of inquiries from end users as well as our clients' representatives. Consequently, some messages can be replied to on the spot, resulting in quick resolutions from start to finish, but others require some internal investigation and perhaps consultation with our product or technology teams. Throughout the day, I also stay in close contact with colleagues working in different teams via Slack as needed. I also keep an eye on what we call "pending" matters, such as updates on tickets waiting for resolution from previous days or bug fix schedules, so I can inform our customers as soon as I have more information on those.

There may be various kind of meetings during the day, but not daily. On Fridays we have a weekly team meeting with our customer team, which is always the highlight of the week. We have a great team and always have a good time together, so Friday afternoons guarantee some laughs and a fun wrap-up to the week. We mostly hold our meetings remotely, unless we happen to be in the office at the same time for some other reason.

I'm also part of the occupational safety committee and our recreational committee, so there are occasional meeting invitations related to these matters as well. Last time, we discussed company-specific improvement measures among the Occupational Safety Committee based on the responses from the autumn staff survey and team-specific compilations. Such meetings provide a nice break in the typical workday in the customer support.

Some days might be busier than others, and if I happen to have some extra time in support, I often use it for various content creation tasks, such as writing blog posts for our career pages or updating our Instagram account. The afternoon is usually quieter in customer support, so on quieter days after lunch, I tackle these additional tasks.

You could say my job description and my workdays are quite varied, and I have a significant influence on how my day unfolds. The joy of success comes from solving more challenging issues or finding good solutions to our customers' needs. It's really nice that the day often doesn't just revolve around typing emails but also involves exploring Granite's tools, testing, communicating between different teams, and engaging in those mentioned "side tasks" related to content creation and social media.

In the afternoon, my dog reminds me that the end of the workday is approaching by jumping on my chair with a toy in his mouth or wagging his tail, and usually, that's a good time to shut down the computer and go for a walk. If there's still something to be done that day, I might leave the computer on, take a walk for some fresh air, and return with fresher thoughts to tackle a few more messages. However, I try to structure my day so that work-related matters are left untouched in the evening. It's nice to have flexible working hours so that I can take care of personal errands or take a creative break if I feel like I'm struggling with a certain issue during the workday.