Remote work: Sales and Support on being customer-centric while working remotely

Remote-First Relationships: Lessons from GitHub’s Sales and Support Teams

GitHub’s Sales and Support teams were already largely remote before the COVID-19 pandemic. What has changed is that the in-person touchpoints they once relied on—company summits, regional onsites, conferences, and physical customer visits—have disappeared. Sue Morris, VP of Global Support, and Matthew McCullough, VP of Field Services, have spent the last several months adapting their remote-working practices to a world where every customer interaction is virtual. Their experience offers a practical look at how to manage support and sales engineering teams when the office is no longer an option.

What the Shift to Full-Time Remote Changed

For Morris’s Support team, the loss of in-person gatherings was the hardest adjustment. Even though the team was fully distributed before the outbreak, annual meetups and regional events provided essential opportunities for learning and relationship-building. “You don’t realize how much you miss those opportunities for personal interaction until they’re gone,” she notes.

McCullough’s Solutions Engineering team faced a different challenge. Previously, a proof of concept project often required a physical visit to the customer’s site, where his team would work through project plans, set up technical environments, and present to decision-makers in person. Some customers were skeptical that a virtual process could capture their culture and needs.

The pandemic leveled the playing field. With travel restrictions in place, McCullough recently completed a virtual decision-making meeting with a customer who had always insisted on in-person presentations. Attendees on both sides admitted it was more efficient and effective than comparable in-person meetings. “It makes me wonder if we’ll ever go back to that stodgier ‘must-be-in-person’ state,” he says, adding that the shared experience of the pandemic has made the world more digital-collaboration-ready.

Support work has similarly shifted. With hands-on guidance at a customer’s computer no longer feasible, his team has turned to screen sharing and virtual workarounds to explore support situations collaboratively.

Rethinking the Value of the Office

More than 80 percent of McCullough’s Solutions Engineering team was already remote before the crisis, with only a small group of Inside Solution Engineers based at GitHub’s San Francisco headquarters. That group was the exception: they had formal office access and, with it, more natural opportunities for collaboration and coaching.

That line has now blurred. As the distinction between Inside Sales and Field Sales roles fades, those headquarters-based engineers have organically become remote workers—a shift McCullough says is unlikely to fully reverse. The mindset has changed from being “in the office” to being “experts out in the field,” even when the field is a video conference call rather than an airplane ride. The result, he argues, is that they can deliver precise technical information to customers more quickly than before.

Managing Support and Sales Teams Remotely

Morris’s advice centers on empathy and flexibility. Managers need to acknowledge the human challenges their team members are facing and allow for a supportive working environment. Her team’s ticket-based support model makes this easier: it gives each person control over their working hours, which is critical across a global team spread across multiple time zones.

Practical measures matter as much as philosophy. Training sessions have been made more flexible for international participants. All-hands and regular team meetings are run twice to accommodate the team’s time-zone spread, and meetings are recorded for anyone who cannot attend. This approach, Morris says, gives the team control of their schedules while ensuring timely service to customers.

McCullough emphasizes explicit communication. Status updates that once happened organically in the office now require deliberate checkpoints, written down and given a URL. This not only keeps remote participants in other time zones informed but also increases the perceived size of the team working on any given challenge. He also highlights creativity in recreating informal interaction. His Solutions Engineering team built chatops tools that list who has joined a perpetual “Watercooler” video conference room. If the room is empty, a team member can @mention colleagues on chat and start a five-minute catch-up. The process is short, low-maintenance, and, as McCullough describes it, akin to grabbing coffee and doughnuts in the breakroom—minus the chore feeling.

Will Remote Persist After the Pandemic?

Both leaders expect lasting change. McCullough anticipates that his team will default to shorter, virtual checkpoints with customers. He suggests that six half-hour meetings may be more consistent and beneficial than one three-hour session. Even if total meeting time stays the same, the granularity of frequent touchpoints leads to faster completion and steadier progress. Given that humans are imperfect communicators, he argues, more verification points are better for ensuring everyone is headed in the right direction.

Morris points to a structural advantage of remote work: access to a broader talent pool. By not restricting where or how people work, GitHub can cast a wide net to find people who love developers and the platform. She notes that working from home has real benefits for a support organization and that the team culture remains strong. Still, she acknowledges the human desire for connection: “Someday soon we can’t wait to meet up with our colleagues and give everybody a big hug.”