Click here to watch Making Support Fun and Profitable.

After the site launches and the project is over, there are two paths: developers and project managers can shake client's hands, pat backs, and all head our separate ways. Or we can continue to build a relationship - continue being a part of our client's success. Strong long-term relationships benefit clients by providing trust and security, like a familiar mechanic or the barber we have had since we were a kid. As merchants, we also benefit. Happy clients mean referrals and recurring income.

Offering support is a different type of commitment, requiring a different strategy. A dev shop becomes a different type of service provider, and needs to prepare for great execution. This session will cover the why, how, and when of offering support, as well as exchange ideas about the many aspects: selling, marketing, staffing, delivering and monitoring support for Drupal.

Appealing to both the technical and non-technical, topics include:

• How to determine what type of support your clients need
• Organizing support requests, working within budgets and architecting timelines
• Workflow tactics and tools we love
• How to audit a site, understand it, and help it grow
• Best practices for your support development workflow
• Developer notes from the trenches- what you should know and look for

Come hear different perspectives on support and join the conversation!

About the Presenters:

Meghan Sweet - Drupal Mechanic at Chapter Three

Meghan works with Chapter Three's support clients to maintain websites and help them evolve. She started working with Drupal in 2008 when helping a social justice organization convert to Drupal. After attending her first DrupalCon in 2009, she was hooked. Prior to joining Chapter Three, Meghan worked with various non-profits and social enterprises, helping them harness the power of Drupal for their unique needs. She love working with the awesome team of Drupal thought leaders at Chapter Three.

Anne Stefanyk - Director of Support & Training at Chapter Three

Anne works with Chapter Three's support and training clients. She takes care of everything client side and manages the support queue. She starting working with Drupal in 2008 as a client when working at a marketing agency. She then worked with a large Drupal shop in Canada, growing both a web agency and an accredited college that offered a Drupal diploma program. She has worked on all sizes of clients and have seen the most challenging Drupal requests. We encourage you to call or email Anne with your Drupal Support or Training needs!

Michelle Krejci - Developer AT Promet Source

Michelle Krejci discovered Drupal in graduate school when searching for a solution for managing the workflow of her department's academic journal. Excited by Drupal's potential to aid and enhance many of academia's processes and projects, Michelle decided that her first move after graduate school was to move from project owner to developer. Michelle has been working for Chicago's Promet Source since then, responsible for auditing new clients, initiating new clients into Drupal-speak, and tackling the more technical issues that arise from the Support Desk. Michelle has been passionate about advocating for incorporating continuous integration practices into Drupal development to heed off problems that arise in support before they start.

Scott Massey - Customer Success Manager at Pantheon

Scott Massey's path down the road of Customer Success started as a sales manager, where he created training programs and clinics for music sequencing, digital audio, and hard disk recording. After a stint in accounting, he jumped fully into tech as a member, later manager, of an IT department for a large retailer in Chicago. This role required coding, server administration, web development and lead him to other work in IT consulting. Scott moved into Managed Support as the service manager for a distributed IT support team in Chicago. This support experience led him into the Drupal world, as support manager at Promet, a Drupal shop in Chicago. Most recently, he is bringing his experience in service design and delivery as Customer Success Manager at Pantheon, a San Francisco company which delivers a platform for building fast and stable Drupal sites.