Follow The Sun Support

What in the world is the “Follow-the-Sun” support model?

The "Follow-the-Sun" support model is a structured model that works best for service desks that work around the clock. It’s a model that provides support for clients at all times of the day or night, every day. Because of this, our "Customer Lobby" is available 24/7 for prospects, customers, and partners, and it has definitely played an instrumental key in our support success.

Here’s the kicker: we never intentionally structured our "Follow-the-Sun" support model. We just happened to fall into it.

You might be wondering how we fell into such a system. Here’s how:

We had a number of support teams located all over the world. At first, client calls went to whoever was able to receive them - regardless of where in the world they were. This was chaos at first; some calls got routed to teams already offline, while some teams got no calls when they were online.

Eventually, we realized that we could route our customers who awoke to the Sun in New York to our San Francisco location. We sent any international customer email that our support teams received to our US Service Desk as well.

As the sun started to slip away San Francisco and head towards Australia, the service desk function would be picked up by our support teams in Southeast Asia. All leads and emails would be handled by each team in the same process - following the sun as it moves towards India and Sri Lanka.

Hence the model name - “Follow the Sun”.

Heading into our 15th year at Cazoomi, our service desk has become more efficient than ever. Our SyncApps software support, along with our Project teams, now collaborate together using Slack, making sure that someone is available to answer any questions at all hours of the day.

While “Follow the Sun” works best for large-scale organizations with offices spread across the globe, we here at SyncApps have proven that it’s possible to apply the support model for much smaller teams. There’s no reason not to try it out, even with just over 5+ people at any given time providing support and services from home.

The “Follow the Sun” support model may not seem as cost-effective immediately, because it requires a dedicated management team - we’re aware of this concern as well. However, Cazoomi has a flat organization structure, where each team lead is responsible for their service desk’s pulse. “Follow the Sun” has become deeply ingrained in our support teams’ culture and is how we live, work, and play at Cazoomi.

It’s because resiliency is the biggest advantage of this model. If any of our team leads are not able to take an issue email or deal with a client, we can have another team take over, eliminating any single point of support failure in the support service we provide our global clients. Our team leads are also free to choose when and where they work weekends - and many often do, because the “Follow the Sun” model is as versatile as it is steady.

All in all, the “Follow the Sun” model fit us well and good here at Cazoomi for the past 15 years. It allowed us to offer 24-hour support, 7 days a week, to our global clients, without compromising our support teams’ health or quality of living. It’s a win-win all around.

Now, since the pandemic, our global 24/7 support teams, consolidated in the Philippines, is able to thrive even more without the time zones conflict of the past in the "Follow the Sun" model.

So try it today - Follow the Sun or come to the Philippines to consolidate your own support teams today.

We are around to guide you on both paths as our company has thrived using them both!