Loving Luke: Social Support
Hello, everyone, I’m Luke originally from Cornwall, in the South of England. I was living in Edinburgh, until very recently, and I’ve just made the move to Amsterdam to work for PLANETROMEO. I started my new job here as Social Media Support Agent on the 1st of October.
My first few weeks have been really amazing. I live in Almere, about 20 minutes from Amsterdam and I am settling into Dutch culture pretty quickly. I’ve lived abroad before. During my studies, I spent 6 months in Siberia where I improved my spoken Russian a lot. I also lived in Italy working on a farm and learning Italian. I speak a few languages and am enjoying learning Dutch too.
A typical day for me at the PLANETROMEO office begins with checking the support tickets that have come in during the night. A support ticket is what we call support requests from users. They range from people who have difficulty logging in, to users having trouble uploading pictures and so on. I’m very new in the role, so I appreciate the wisdom and knowledge available to me from the rest of the Support Team.
When my first task of answering the support tickets is complete, I then move on to the ‘Wishlist’. This is something I love about PLANETROMEO. It really is user-driven and the ‘Wishlist’ is a great example of that. Basically, you create an account on the Wishlist and you can add requests or suggestions on how to improve PLANETROMEO. Everyone involved gets to vote on the ideas. Management will then review them, and the most popular ones might end up becoming a reality.
If we think a wish will improve the overall user experience, we will do everything we can to try and make it happen. Recently, we’ve had many requests to enhance the way you can block annoying or troublesome users. Currently, if you block them, they may still pop up on a user search, or you might see them on the grid. In the future, when you block a user, they won’t appear in your grid or search results anymore.
Sometimes we get a request for a feature or service that we were already working on – for example, a swipe function. Currently, when you log in to PLANETROMEO Beta and on the App, you see a grid of all the guys in your area. You can tap on one you like to enlarge it and get a closer look. At this point, you have to close the profile you are looking at to see the full grid again. With the swipe function you will no longer have to close the profile, you can just swipe or scroll to the next one. This will definitely improve the overall user experience and is one wish we are very happy to grant. It should be a reality early next year.
After the ‘Wishlist’, I move on to supporting other areas of the PLANETROMEO community. We spend a lot of time checking the legitimacy of user profiles. For example, if a user looks particularly young, we may ask them to provide ID. We are a caring company and we want to make sure that everyone on here is an adult and free to interact with all our other members. Sometimes we might ask for a user’s ID who looks very young, and are surprised to learn they are actually 24. It’s always best to be certain, and we’ll check if there is any doubt. Most guys don’t mind and are happy to cooperate.
That’s just a sample of the kinds of things I am working on at the moment. I’m looking forward to the feedback about our newest addition, the ‘Travel Feature’ and I’m very excited to see how PLANETROMEO Beta develops. It’s such a nice feeling to work for a company that is growing with its users.
The move here really has been very smooth and I am enjoying being part of the team. Everyone has made me feel so welcome. I do, of course, miss my boyfriend, but luckily I get to see him, a fair bit on the weekends. Either he’ll come here or I’ll go see him in Edinburgh most weekends. Maybe he will relocate one day too, who knows?
As my role Social Media Support Agent grows, we hope to offer even better, more personal support through Facebook and Twitter. You can always email support@planetromeo.com but don’t be afraid to say hello to me on Facebook, that’s what I’m here for.