Humans of Cliniko: Jasmin from customer support

Whether it’s our customer support, software development, or content creation, we’re a group of humans working hard to make Cliniko the best it can be. In this series, we’d like to introduce you to some of the faces on the team who make it all happen.

Our support team (or “supps” as we call them) are a group of 23 dedicated people around the globe who are on hand to answer your Cliniko questions almost anytime. These folks come from varied backgrounds and bring a whole range of diverse knowledge to the team, but the one thing that’s consistent is that they’re friendly, able to put themselves in your shoes, and genuinely keen to help.

Meet Jasmin

If you’ve ever written to us wanting help with Cliniko, you might’ve chatted to Jasmin. She’s usually based in Adelaide, Australia, though she has been known to hop around the globe in search of sunny weather—running shoes and a stack of books in tow.

Before joining the team in 2023, Jasmin spent six years in the South Australian police force. “We all know how good shift work is for your body,” she jokes. “It's really nice to have a routine and my circadian rhythm not totally played with.” And while she acknowledges that working at Cliniko is very different to the day-to-day experience of being a cop, she enjoys the feeling of being useful. “I know it's a bit cliché, but coming from a background of helping people, it’s lovely to be able to still do that at Cliniko,” she says.

A typical workday for Jasmin

Cliniko’s work culture has a strong emphasis on flexible hours. For an early bird like Jasmin, this typically means an early start and an early finish. “In summer, because the sun rises a lot earlier, I'll usually get up and go for a beach walk, get a coffee, and then I'm home in time for a 7.30am start. I tend to work in a block, so I'll work until 1.30pm, then I have my afternoon free to do whatever I want. I feel like I still have a whole day to do things after work. Depending on the weather, I'll finish up and either go to the gym, for a run or a walk, or read my book, then see friends or organise dinner. It's pretty good.”

As we’re a fully remote company, there’s no office to be at and this means that the team can work from anywhere. This is something that Jasmin also appreciates. “On days when the weather is sunny, I'm not spending all day inside,” she says. “Today I'm working from the beach because it's a glorious day and I can!”

What happens behind the scenes when you write in

So what occurs on our end when you write in with a question? Intercom is the software that we use for customer support and when someone writes in, their query (or “ticket”) lands in a big inbox that all the support team can access. “From there, everyone can look at the one ticket or one person can look at it, but we’ll slowly filter through responding,” Jasmin explains. “I’ll read a customer’s query and either start answering or ask them questions if I’m not entirely sure what they mean.”

Sometimes members of the team who are in the same time zone will jump onto a group call or a “huddle” to use Slack’s terminology (Slack is our team’s communication platform) just to chat while they work. “We’re not talking the whole time,” Jasmin says. “But if a tricky ticket comes in, we’ll discuss it and at least you’re talking, not just typing the whole time.” Having social elements in the workday helps a lot for an online company like ours.

Tickets can vary. While there are some issues that frequently arise, like people forgetting their password (pssst, get yourself a password manager like LastPass or 1Password, folks!) sometimes a customer’s problem can be a bit unusual. “There can be some odd ones as well,” Jasmin says. For example, on occasion something as seemingly simple as using a different browser can impact a customer’s experience with Cliniko, which means that the supps are always thinking on their feet and trying to solve problems quickly and efficiently.

Sometimes, however, an issue requires our software developers’ input to resolve it. “That's the hardest part of the job,” Jasmin admits. “When you've got something that's tricky and you’ve tried troubleshooting so many different things and then you have to tell the customer they’ll need to wait for our developers to have a look into it. It's never what you want to say.”

What does she love about the job?

Luckily, the job has more gratifying moments than demoralising ones. “It's definitely the most rewarding when you can help someone who is really stressed,” Jasmin shares. “Most of the time that happens when people can't log in—which is why we get back to them the quickest, because we know they need access to Cliniko. It feels really meaningful to be able to help.”

“But it's always the most fun when you get a bit of back and forth with the customer. I know they’re working, and I am too, but it's great when someone cracks a joke, or I do, and then they keep responding. It makes my day better, and I hope it makes theirs a bit better as well. We’re communicating online, so it’s a nice reminder that we’re all human. It’s not like I'm talking to a robot either—I'm talking to a real human in their clinic. It makes a big difference, having human connection.”

And that sentiment is at the heart of how we approach everything at Cliniko. Whether it’s trying to make the world a slightly better place through our charitable donations, investing in our human team rather than outsourcing jobs to AI, or our approach to customer service, we strongly believe in the value of the human.