Category: Marketing Automation

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In May, our entire team experimented with a 4-day workweek. The intention of this experiment was to help us all manage the stress and changes to routine caused by living through a global pandemic. We initially rolled out the 4-day work week experiment for only one month, with the main goal of reducing teammates’ stress. Happily, both survey results and anecdotal stories tell us that this was a success. After examining survey data and anecdotal feedback and chatting with the team, we’ve decided to conduct a long-term pilot of the 4-day workweek through the end of the year. Here’s more on how we came to that decision and our next steps.
The results from our 4-day workweek experiment
Our main goal with this experiment was to help the team manage stress and changes to their routine caused by COVID-19. To measure whether this effort was successful, we polled the team at the beginning and end of the month and asked about their autonomy, stress level, and overall work happiness.Here are the results from our team surveys showing differences between early May and late May:

We saw higher autonomy: 4.3 → 4.5
We saw lower stress levels: 3.3 → 2.7
We saw higher work happiness: 3.9 → 4.2

*These numbers are all out of 5. These results are only part of the picture. We also asked teammates for written feedback and anecdotal stories about their experience. We received lots of both that supported these results. One teammate shared that they felt this experiment was helping them feel focused:
This last month has been incredible when it comes to finding more time to look after myself. I feel a lot more productive when it comes to the work I do and the creeping feeling of burnout towards the end of the week has gone completely. If anything I find myself more focused than I’ve ever been.
And another shared feelings of motivation and more collaboration:General sense is that everyone has been feeling more motivated, energised and excited about the work we’re doing. We’ve also had more “ad-hoc improvements” with folx jumping in to add more monitoring, refactoring and improving our services. There was also more cross-team collaboration and more async activity on Threads and Slack.
It wasn’t completely smooth for all teammates, of course. We also heard a few challenges:
Since the biggest confusion to me was trying to remember/juggle who was off when, it would be great if we could decide on a particular day that we all take off.
Another challenge was around holidays (more on that below):Due to a lot of public holidays during May, it meant that week to week it would often change as to who was taking what day off.  Folx appreciated having some flexibility in what day to take off, but it did result in a lot of deviations from the planned Wednesday off.
Because the 4-day workweek experiment was designed to give temporary relief to teammates during an especially hard time, we did not set goals around productivity or results during the one-month trial. In fact, we expected a tangible drop in productivity due to reduced hours.So we were happily surprised when many teammates shared that they felt their weekly productivity was not all that different, and that their quality of work was higher due to increased rest and extra focus.The one unique case here was our Customer Advocacy team. Because their style of work is heavily based on responding to customer queries, they may be an exception to the idea that fewer hours could result in similar productivity. Our VP of Customer Advocacy is leading separate discussions with this team around productivity and wellbeing in a 4-day model to see how they can make this shift work longer-term.
Why we decided on a 6-month pilot
Based on the results of the trial, we decided to start a more thorough pilot of a 4-day work week that focuses not just on teammate well-being but also on Buffer’s long-term success. As a company we have a history of bold experiments, like being 100% distributed, having transparent salaries, and trying self-management. When testing out these new and bold ideas, we ask ourselves whether we are able to set and reach ambitious goals, deliver a high-quality experience for customers, grow our revenue, and make our mark on the world.Some of those big experiments, like transparent salaries and remote work, have been a success because the answer to those questions was a resounding yes. For others, like self-management, the answer was no, and so we pivoted away from the experiment. We’d like to seriously consider moving to a 4-day work week long term, so shifting to a 6-month pilot gives our team enough time to truly adapt to the concept so we can get more data on how this impacts team productivity and well-being in the long-term.
Next steps for this pilot
In order to truly evaluate whether a 4-day work week can be a success long-term, we need to measure productivity as well as individual well-being. Teammate well-being was our end goal for May. Whether that continues, and equally importantly, whether it translates into customer and company results, will be an exciting hypothesis to test.We’re also keen to iterate on our current format and develop a more consistent approach. For the past six weeks, the 4-day concept has been implemented differently across teams and even individuals. Some teams took Wednesdays off and some took Fridays or Mondays off. This was fine for a short time, but in this longer experiment will likely feel a bit chaotic. We’ll be asking our teammates to help us define what a reduced-hours workweek looks like across a distributed team. We also still have several elements to figure out.

In our initial iteration of the experiment, we didn’t account well for holidays. We eventually decided that if a holiday already makes it a 4-day workweek, then the rest of that week can be considered a normal week. We’ve since heard that this could be disruptive for teammates. Some teams had Wednesdays off but if there was a holiday on a Monday they had a Monday off instead. We aren’t sure yet what our solution will be to this long term, and it’s something we’re keen to figure out.
We also need to figure out how a 4-day workweek can be a success for our Customer Advocacy team. As much of their work revolves around interacting with customers and resolving tickets, taking additional days off has impacted both their productivity and the volume in our customer service inboxes.

We have an all-hands meeting at the end of this month where we’ll host breakout sessions asking teammates to help brainstorm how we can make the 4-day work week successful long-term, with a particular lens for what the Advocacy team is experiencing.

This is just the beginning of a fun new journey for us. We’re excited to share what’s next and what we learn as we test the boundaries of how work happens.

In May, our entire team experimented with a 4-day workweek. After examining survey data & anecdotal stories, we’ve decided to conduct a long-term pilot of the 4-day workweek for the rest of 2020.Here’s more on how we came to that decision & next steps: https://t.co/L73FpsgZv1— Buffer (@buffer) June 16, 2020

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As April comes to a close, and we look ahead to another month where our global team is living in various forms of lockdown and isolation, I decided that for the month of May, Buffer will operate under a 4-day workweek (at full pay) across the whole 89-person team.We’re in a period of time where there’s a layer of added anxiety and stress in all of our lives. At Buffer, we’ve been encouraging taking time off, and relaxing productivity expectations, in addition to shifting internal deadlines, but we decided it’s time for us to put some real team-wide changes in place to back up these adjustments.This 4-day workweek period is about well-being, mental health, and placing us as humans and our families first. It’s about being able to pick a good time to go and do the groceries, now that it’s a significantly larger task. It’s about parents having more time with kids now that they’re having to take on their education. This isn’t about us trying to get the same productivity in fewer days.One of my goals as CEO for this period of time is to put people over profit and to do all I can to get Buffer through this as unscathed as possible. An extension of this, I’ve decided, is ensuring that we accrue the least debt possible during this time so that we can emerge from COVID-19 and have some great months for customers and Buffer. One debt that is likely growing within companies right now, is burnout. This is a key initiative we’re putting in place to reduce that impact.
How we came to this decision
Our People team did a few quick surveys with our team during our April All Hands and the feedback we received validated our theory that that in addition to the general anxiety many of us are facing right now, teammates are struggling with not always feeling comfortable or able to take time off.
Here are the results from our All Hands survey:
And our results from polling parents at Buffer:
One thing that has been top of mind for us is that this month of trying a 4-day workweek isn’t about pushing everyone’s anxiety or distraction into a single day and expecting the other workdays to be “back to normal.” We know many Buffer teammates will still have caregiving and other responsibilities on some or all of the working days, and flexibility is still supported and encouraged. This day off is to augment that flexibility and give everyone a coordinated break where they won’t feel like they’re behind or catching up when they return.
What our 4-day workweek schedule looks like
We asked each area to choose which typical workday will become an “off day” for May, all members of an area will take the same day off, and some areas (like Engineering and Product) coordinated this together. The chosen day remains consistent for the full 4-week period of the new working schedule. We hope that doing this by area helps with the feeling of needing to ‘catch up’ from a day off. For our Customer Advocacy team, we did things slightly differently to ensure coverage for our customers. Our Advocates have alternating Wednesdays and Fridays off. If they have Wednesday off in Week One, then they’ll have Friday off in Week Two, and vice versa. This was done because having Wednesdays off ensures we are available for early week volume spikes and feels restorative as a midweek option as team members will only have two days back-to-back work on those weeks. We also normally have lower volume on Friday and team members can enjoy a longer weekend on those weeks. Our Advocacy leads are keeping an eye on any increase in inbox volume to ensure this doesn’t lead to added stress. We’re keen to balance team wellbeing with delivering a great customer support experience.
What happens after May?
We’re getting feedback from the team on the impact of this change using TinyPulse and taking stock of how things feel overall. Depending on the results and outcomes, we could possibly see a 4-day workweek continue for another month or longer, or we could return to a more typical workweek.We’ll follow up after this month-long period to share more about how the 4-day workweek has gone for us. During this time, we’re not necessarily making permanent policies or setting precedent. Instead, the goal here is to be nimble and adaptive in discovering what is the best setup at Buffer for our customers, teammates, and the company right now.

Many companies have a regular All Hands meeting. Generally, this is a company-wide gathering for all employees (‘all hands on deck’) to hear from the organization’s leaders and discuss the state of the company.
At Buffer, the All Hands meeting is a key element of our communication and culture. As we grow, there’s an increased need to hear regularly from our CEO and leadership team and get on the same page about strategy and direction.
Every month we alternate between a presentation-based All Hands and a concept we call “Town Hall” that’s like an All Hands, but specifically for Q&A. That way we’re communicating as a team at least a once a month.
But as a remote team where everything is happening on a video call, it’s an extra challenge to keep the All Hands streamlined, engaging, and focused.
At Buffer, we refuse to accept that our monthly All Hands meetings have to be typical. Each time we meet, we try to add in a new element or experiment to keep things fun, fresh, and surprising.
Here are a few of the things that have worked (and a few that haven’t!) for us when it comes to the All Hands meeting. We hope they might give you some ideas to make your next All Hands more memorable!
The structure and sections of our All Hands
We generally reserve an hour and a half for our All Hands (and often go a few minutes over!)
When it comes to the speakers and content, there are a handful of cornerstone elements:

Icebreaker question while we’re gathering: We share a light and fun icebreaker question ahead of time, so teammates can jump in and start chatting, avoiding the “Zoom silence.” We’ve also experimented with having a teammate play music during this gathering time!

Celebrations: We kick off every All Hands with about 10 minutes of celebration of all we’ve accomplished since the last sync. We also celebrate teammates’ new homes, new pets, engagements, marriages, Bufferversaries and more! Beginning on a positive note sets the tone and builds energy right away.

CEO update: This is often the most substantial section of the sync, generally at least 15 minutes and often up to 30 or more. It’s the team’s opportunity to hear what’s on the mind of our CEO and where Buffer is headed.

Area highlights: Every area of Buffer gets 3-5 minutes to share something new or remarkable within their department, or update the full team on their projects or initiatives.

Breakouts/team-building: We’ll often take at least 5-10 minutes for breakout chats in smaller groups

The order and flow of these sections depends a little on the overall tone we’re trying to achieve (intense updates, or are things light and more celebratory?) and what worked or didn’t work last time.
Behind-the-scenes prep: Coordinating, planning and practicing
A lot of behind-the-scenes work goes into a seamless feeling All Hands event! Here’s our process.
We build a collaborative agenda in Paper
Weeks before each All Hands, we gather ideas and start to build an agenda in Dropbox Paper.
As the showrunner for the All Hands meeting, I create a rough schedule and provide guidelines as to how long each section should be and who “hands the microphone” off to the next person.
Here’s an example from February:
Since we hear from all areas of Buffer during an All Hands meeting, there are a lot of folks involved in making the event smooth and successful. All speakers use this document to plan their portion and to refer to during the event.
We try to send this around to presenters at least two weeks ahead of the All Hands, so they know the general flow and what we need from them. We also ask a different teammate every time to be our host and emcee, so this document becomes a loose “script” for them to use.
We hold a Zoom trial run
Zoom is where we meet for the All Hands – it’s also handy for recording the event for anyone who might have missed it and for later reference.
We’ll also often host a pre-show run-through for anyone who will be screen-sharing or speaking during the All Hands. The event has a lot of moving pieces, so it’s useful to do a short trial run where everyone tests their wifi, screensharing, and any audio or video files they might play.
This practice run also gives presenters an early deadline to have some idea of what they’re going to share, which creates a much smoother experience overall.
We coordinate in real-time via Slack
We also use Slack for coordinating things behind the scenes during the All Hands meeting Our behind-the-scenes Slack channel #all-hands-logistics keeps us on the same page and we can discuss how the All Hands is going in real time, if we need to speed up to keep on schedule and also to celebrate a meeting well done.
Adding extra engagement in All Hands
We want every teammate to leave each All Hands with a heightened sense of purpose and a greater understanding of what’s happening all around Buffer. We also want them to have a bit of fun!
Humans have a finite attention span – that’s why TED Talks are never longer than 18 minutes. So to break up the stream of information coming in during the All Hands, here are some of the extra elements we add for more engagement and dimension.
Think multi-media
Most recently, we challenged our leaders and scheduled presenters to go beyond what could be shared in a written note to the team and to think more multi-media. We ended up with a creative mix of product demos, special projects, and pre-recorded updates from teammates all across Buffer. This gave us fresh new voices and much more engaging content.
Meditate or stretch together
One activity that has become a staple for our All Hands is a small break between heavier sections for meditation or gentle stretching. We’re lucky to have some very talented and generous teammates lead these. Here’s a recent example from Dave:
We keep each break at a brief 3-5 minutes and find it really helpful for replenishing energy and focus.
Learn something new with Lightning Talks
A lightning talk is a very short presentation lasting only a few minutes, and we’ve found they’re a great way to learn from Buffer teammates! We’ve had 3-minute lightning talks on:

productivity tips
how to talk to reporters
discussing the history of a side project
decision journaling
copywriting and positioning
and more!

Some of these relate to work at Buffer, and some didn’t. Either way, they’re a great opportunity for teammates to share interests and practice public speaking.
Fire up the group chat
In a large-group Zoom call, it is generally good practice to mute yourself unless you’re speaking. But we still want to encourage comments, questions, and virtual applause!
So we leave the chat function on throughout the All Hands, and the emojis, questions and encouragements certainly fly!
A bonus feature is that the chat is exported after the meeting and included when the meeting is recorded, so those watching later can still feel the live commentary.
Break out for smaller chat sessions
Since our team is spread across many cities and time zones, we sometimes slot in some time for small-group breakouts to help folks get and stay connected.
Sometimes the breakout groups will discuss topics relating to updates shared in the All Hands or on a related item happening in the world or company.  Sometimes it’s a bit more free-form!
We find breakouts of 3-5 teammates to be ideal for both extroverts and introverts. We provide conversation-starter questions so each group has a few prompts if conversation doesn’t flow (but generally we find these to be energizing and engaging!)
Using Zoom’s breakout rooms, we can control the number of people per room (which will show how many groups there are total.)
Poll the team
Another fun and interactive way to break up longer sections of speakers or presentations is to do some polls. Zoom makes this really easy, even allowing you to prep your questions ahead of time.
We’ve used polls to get useful feedback, for example on how we can improve our pair call process:
It can be just for fun, too. An activity we call “This or That?” asks teammates a series of questions where they choose between two options — “Apple or PC?” “Coffee or tea?” “Beach or mountains?”
We gave folks 15-20 seconds to answer each one, shared the results and went to the next question. It was enlightening to see that in most cases, our team was pretty evenly split.
Over to You
Have you taken part in an All Hands meeting? Have you planned one before? What have you found that works or doesn’t work to create an engaging event? Share your suggestions in the comments; we’d love to try your ideas!

“When spring comes, snow melts first at the periphery, because that is where it is most exposed”Andy Grove
This quote comes from Andy Grove, Intel’s former CEO, and which I was reminded of in the most recent book I finished reading, Seeing Around Corners by Rita McGrath. The idea is that snow melts first from the edges, at the periphery. This is where the first changes occur and are evident. This “snow melting” idea is powerful and very true within a business context, too.When market changes are happening, the first people within Buffer to know it are generally those who are at the edges of the organization. Those who are talking directly with customers, most likely within our Advocacy or Marketing teams. Some members of those teams have found that when we eventually get around to making changes, those changes are things they’ve been wishing to see us implement for weeks or months. “Finally!”, they might think.When I read the chapter with this title in Seeing Around Corners, it set off a light bulb in my mind. I found myself thinking about how many individual contributors within Advocacy, or within Marketing, or other areas such as Engineering, I’ve spoken with recently. The answer? Not many at all.One of my fondest memories of the past month was a town hall that I did with the members of our team in the APAC region. Our regular Town Hall was in the middle of the night for most of them so we arranged a time where I could chat with that smaller group of Buffer teammates separately at a time that worked for their time zone. In this casual and smaller group setting, we were able to have an informal chat and after a while, the ideas, questions, and comments really started flowing. I learned a ton and was left feeling energized.It was in the APAC Town Hall meeting that Mel, a Customer Advocate on our team, asked me whether we had established a clear stance for how much we can help customers throughout COVID-19. This really got me thinking. The next day I spoke with Åsa, our VP of Customer Advocacy, on the topic and we immediately put in place our first couple of customer relief efforts. And those initial steps have now turned into our COVID-19 Customer Relief Program. A lot of this was already starting to happen, but this direct contact with Mel was powerful for me and spurred me to put more of my attention and weight behind the initiatives.Since being reminded of this concept, and feeling a few first-hand experiences, I’ve started to question the balance of how much time I spend working directly with Buffer’s leadership team, versus how much time I spend interacting with the teammates who interact directly with customers. I’ve also found myself wanting to get back to answering customer emails from time to time.When I’m shaping our overall strategy, it’s essential that I have regular contact with folks from all different parts of the organization. I’ve realized, therefore, that spending time with people I don’t regularly work with is a vital part of my role, now and always. It’s a way to recognize upcoming inflection points sooner and to act on them earlier. In a sense, by spending time at the edges, I develop an ability to “see the future”.I’m currently implementing snowmelt meetings with Buffer teammates and am looking forward to speaking with more of the team more regularly over the coming months.
This blog post was originally published on joel.is, read it here.

Last Updated on June 23, 2020 by Rakesh Gupta Join Virtual Dreamin to experience a 24hrs extravaganza! The Event starts at 10:00 AM EST  16th May 2020 with keynotes by Leah McGowen-Hare & Peter Chittum. This treat will be followed by another feat – … Continue reading →

In 2015, we made Buffer’s most significant acquisition and acquired Respondly, which became Reply, our solution to help businesses deliver fast and responsive customer support on social media.
We originally acquired it intending to diversify Buffer’s core product offerings. While it served that purpose, it has become clear over time that Reply is better suited for larger organizations and is not the best product for Buffer’s core customer base, small businesses.
For that reason, that we are sunsetting Reply as of June 1st, 2020.
Our decision to sunset Reply is enabling us to build out a dedicated social media engagement solution, which will eventually be available to all Buffer customers.
Continue reading for more information on why we made this decision, what we’re building next, and what this means for the future of Buffer.
Why we’re sunsetting Reply
At its core, Reply is a very different product from anything else we offer at Buffer. Reply has always been a customer support tool while Buffer focuses on helping small businesses build their brands and grow their businesses on social media.
When we acquired Reply, we were doing our best to anticipate how the market would shift. Twitter was building out customer service features and there was this idea that customer service could shift onto social media in a big way. We were also uniquely using social media as a customer service platform to grow our own brand and saw an opportunity to enable others to do this.
While Twitter is still used by some brands and consumers for customer service, the idea has remained niche, more an exception than the rule. We don’t believe customer service did shift to social media in the way we had thought, which is one of the reasons we’ve come to this decision.
Another thing we’ve come to realize is that small businesses don’t use social media for customer support in the same way as larger organizations. With scale, comes a whole new set of problems, which aren’t felt by small businesses. We felt these pains ourselves, as we uniquely have high social volume as a small company. The result was that while most Buffer customers overall are small businesses, most of our Reply customers have been larger organizations.
This led to several obstacles when building and growing Reply over the years.
Often the people using Reply were very different from those using our other Buffer solutions. They usually weren’t even in the same department at a given company. This difference meant connecting core product loops, like answering support tickets on social media and creating new social campaigns, even more challenging.
Another obstacle was that the strategy that helped us grow Buffer, and the strengths and skillset of our team, are different than what was needed to grow Reply. We’re a product and marketing-led organization rather than a sales-led one. Our most successful times growing Reply were also the times that our Product Manager on that team was leaning into sales and more direct customer onboarding. We’re a team of 89 people at Buffer, and we don’t have the resources to run two very different strategies.
Our team size also impacted the product experience for our customers. We have been slow to fix issues and add new features, and we saw how this negatively affected our customer’s team’s operations. Reply is that a high-quality customer support tool requires more than our team can provide, and our customers deserve better than that.
Ultimately, continuing to build and support Reply is not the way for us to have the most impact for our customers in the long term. This was a tough decision to make but we feel it’ll be best for both Buffer and our customers down the line. I’m grateful for all of the people within Buffer who had these conversations, as well as the incredible folks who have been Reply customers over the years.
What we’re building next
Reply hasn’t been a good fit for the majority of Buffer customers. To make this more tangible, we had only 500 customers using Reply, while we have over 70,000 paying customers using Buffer. As we look ahead from here, we’re focused on building something that will be both valuable to, and available for, a much larger percentage of our customers.
Through research, we’ve come to the clarity that what our small business customers need is a dedicated social media engagement solution. That’s what our team is now focused on building as we gradually sunset Reply.
This new social media engagement solution will aim to better connect our customers to their communities on social media. We’ll be starting by supporting Instagram and surfacing all Instagram comments in one place, and we’re looking to expand to support more social networks from there.
While Reply was only available to customers who individually signed up for it, this social media engagement solution will become available and accessible to all Buffer customers in the future. We feel we can help a lot more people by making this engagement solution widely available from the outset and this is a strategy we will be expanding across the rest of our offering at Buffer in the future as well.
While this has been a tough call to make, we’re excited to be re-focusing and fully committing to small businesses. We’re looking forward to taking this new approach, adding a huge amount of value, and ensuring the majority of these improvements are accessible by all customers.

If you’ve been a Reply customer I want to thank you for having been on this journey with us.
If you are looking for a tool to replace Reply, we’ve partnered with the social support tools below and they have created offers to make a move more manageable. We’ve been in touch with all Reply customers to pass along these offers.

Sparkcentral — Sparkcentral enables social engagement teams to deliver frictionless customer service on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more, making digital engagement with your brand memorable

Zoho Desk — is an award-winning context-aware customer service software that helps support teams deliver timely help to their customers across channels like email, phone, chat, social media, and more

Zendesk — Allows your business to have natural conversations with your customers, without letting them feel what’s going on behind the scenes. It’s sophisticated enough to meet complex needs and simple enough to let you get up and running immediately.

If you have media inquiries related to this post, please reach out to Hailley at press@buffer.com.

Last Updated on June 23, 2020 by Rakesh Gupta Across the globe, organizations of all shapes and sizes are faced with unprecedented challenges. The current situation has caused us all to react quickly and decisively…from mandating work-from-home policies and restricting … Continue reading →