On our half of the planet (and, who was Gerardus Mercator to tell us it's not the top half), we may not have easy access to a lot of customer support conferences and meetups, but there are plenty of us out there working in software companies and ecommerce sites and professional service firms.
Join APACAS and we can start to build our own community, while building our careers. And we can continue spell words correctly while we do it.
APACAS for customer support professionals
Whether you're a support veteran interested in knowing what's out there in the market, or someone looking to move into customer support, subscribe to the newsletter and you'll be the first to know when an opportunity arises.
You'll also find out about local conferences and meetups that don't require flying halfway around the planet, where you can meet with other people who do what you do.
APACAS for companies looking to hire
Selling products and services to people all over the world without leaving the land-heavy comforts of the northern hemisphere is easy enough. Supporting southern hemisphere customers, on the other hand, can be trickier. Do you just make them wait for your US business hours, or run an overnight shift? Hire vampires?
The obvious answer is to hire in Australia or New Zealand, choosing someone you can trust to work things out on their own for much of their work day. It's finding those people that's the tricky part.
That's why APACAS exists. Bringing together all of the talented, eager, local support people to help match them to the right companies.
If you're looking for your next (or your first!) APAC support hire, please let me know. I'll include relevant roles in our next newsletter, and might even be able to make a recommendation.
Who's behind this thing?
I'm Mat Patterson (AKA mrpatto or just patto). I joined Campaign Monitor as the first customer support person and built out that team over nearly a decade. For the last 8 years I've been with Help Scout, talking about online customer support in all sorts of forms.
I didn't know another SaaS support person until I met Sarah Hatter, who went on to start ElevateCX. I really know the benefits of a community of like-minded professionals. I have also received many, many requests from North American and European companies looking for help finding a great support person for their APAC teams.
There was never an easy answer for them. Let's make sure we have one now.