Top 3 Approaches to Office Hours

Well, hello everybody. It’s Cynthia Boone, your On-Demand Workfront CSM. I’m here to talk today about approaches for office hours. This one comes up a lot in our sessions, and so many people ask this question. We figured we’d start the conversation. Those of you that are out there that have great ideas will hopefully add to this post. Top three approaches to office hours. No, number three is be consistent.

First thing before I start showing screenshots, pick a day, pick a time, keep it. It doesn’t matter if people show up. You may spend a lot of office hours. I spent several office hours just sitting by myself working on Workfront things. But just be consistent in the way people can reach you, including how they put in tickets. That’s the first thing here that I’ve got here is ask for Workfront help, route them through Workfront to get to you to ask their questions. Hey, there’s a little baby that needs help. That’s a fun little approach. What do they need and keep that language simple and easy to understand.

Keep it consistent.

The number two way to go about it is be transparent. I cannot stress this one enough. Transparency is absolutely sharing what other people are requesting, or asking, or saying about Workfront, but also honesty about how hard it can be to do all the things that they’re asking, or where you are, and what your other job roles are. In terms of transparency, the reporting is fantastic. It’s here’s everything, look, everything’s in red that I have here. But these are everything that comes through that queue that I just mentioned. Everyone can see them and you can share them out regularly. Hopefully, during your office hour, you’ve got this up and you’re sharing. Also, transparently track every single thing that people are asking you to do. There’s a backlog project, there’s training projects, there’s layout template updates, there’s whatever. So literally being transparent about all the things that people are asking you for, but also the effort that it’s going to take to build this new report that they’re asking for and keeping it tracked. I cannot stress this enough, sharing it and communicating it out. So the number one thing that if you-all know me is to be fun, to be fun and to be flexible. So before I show you some fun things, let’s talk about flexibility.

Not everyone wants to share what they’re struggling with in front of a group of people, whether that’s in the office, on a web conference meeting.

Some people need one-on-one, and I’m going to recommend that you offer that to them. They’re going to need that connection to feel safe, to say, I don’t get this, I don’t understand what we’re supposed to be doing. Because if you can make that connection with that person and get their understanding of what they’re struggling with, you’re going to have a bunch of people that are struggling with the same things and you’re going to solve that problem like that. So that’s the flexibility. So let’s get to the fun part though. So Leslie and I did an expert insights video and I will definitely link it, but it’s got some great screenshots. So one of the things is super fun is if you’re going to do an office hour, don’t forget to mention the successes. Don’t forget to mention the champion, like all the things that people do in Workfront that just are amazing and wonderful. So of course, we have this example of badges. We have examples of newsletters, but this is the kind of content that you could share in an office hour, whether it be an in-person office hour, whether it be online, do not underestimate the draw of a contest. If you’re in-person, the draw of candy and snacks. So when you’re doing office hours, I highly recommend that you approach them a bunch of different ways, but just keep that consistent and keep trying. I’ll see you next time on top three. Bye everybody.