Angrubonto the benefits of annually closing Buffer during the last week of the year offers valuable insights and practical strategies for businesses. Since its initiation in 2016, this practice has provided our team an annual reset and time to recharge. Sharing our approach sheds light on this impactful strategy, as we often receive inquiries on how Buffer continues to function during this downtime.
Given the challenges some small businesses and creators face working through holidays, communicating our strategy becomes especially relevant. In this post, we’ll explore what it means for a business like Buffer to pause during a week when customers remain active, why we do this, and how our key teams manage this temporary closure while maintaining customer care and product stability.
Let’s delve into the details!
Understanding the Week-Long Closure Strategy
Each year, Buffer takes a collective pause during the final week. While the specifics of “closing down” can differ among companies, it generally includes halting most operations or specific departments. This approach provides everyone with the rest they need and ensures that no one will miss critical updates or projects during the break because we’re all offline. Historically, our summer shutdowns over extended weekends have deeply invigorated our team.
Closing the curtain on our business activities means no new product launches, no blog updates, and importantly, intentional rest. For our company that develops tools for small businesses and creators building their online presence, this period naturally coincides with a slower time, unlike other sectors that might amp up over the festive season, allowing us to fully embrace this rest period.
Implementing the Closure in Practice
For most of Buffer’s teams, the holiday closure involves a full disconnect. Our largest departments, Engineering and Customer Advocacy, need to find the balance between serving customers and ensuring Buffer’s operations continue smoothly while maximizing rest. Here’s an insight into how these teams manage the week-long break.
Maintaining Customer Care During Closure
The Advocacy team excels in customer service, responding to over 50,000 requests and generating more than 105,000 replies throughout this year, maintaining a first response time of just four hours and 38 minutes during business hours. Over time, they’ve perfected a balance to sustain customer support while granting their team members necessary downtime.
Visibility is key; we prominently convey our holiday shutdown across all major customer communication platforms, including in-app banners, auto-reply emails, and a pinned tweet. Our communication reads:
The Buffer team is observing a company-wide holiday shutdown from December 25 to January 1.
Though response times may be slightly delayed, our Customer Advocates work diligently to address queries swiftly. Happy Holidays ✨
Each advocate contributes by working either a full day or two half days, staggered throughout the closure to handle peak days effectively. This year’s skeleton crew ensures coverage on December 24, limited support on December 25, and availability on January 1. Post-holiday, all members commit to full weeks to start the year with a clean inbox and prompt assistance for our customers.
The Advocacy team operates under a predefined schedule with clear guidelines for emergency responses, ensuring everyone understands priorities when online.
Engineering Team Readiness During the Closure
Engineering takes a slightly different approach by implementing an on-call system. This setup ensures immediate response capability should technical issues arise, without requiring the entire team to remain online.
Seniors and specialized engineers form the core on-call team, supplemented by volunteers from the wider team, allowing the work to be spread thin across fewer hands. By maintaining this structure, we can respond promptly to any setbacks during this period.
Unveiling Customer Reactions and Business Impact
We’ve generally experienced positive feedback and minimal frustration regarding our yearly closure plan. Transparency across our communication mediums proves integral, ensuring our customers remain informed. When unexpected issues arise, Adjustments to our strategy follow, incorporating learnings for continuous improvement.
There’s been no notable impact on our bottom line, as we tactically align our break with low-demand periods, assuring minimal disruption. The team’s vigilant presence during the shutdown allows us to promptly address urgent matters, safeguarding customer support and satisfaction.
Benefits and Positive Impacts on Employees
The primary advantage of our annual closure is the refreshed vigor it instills in our team. It’s an investment in collective rest, contrasting with sporadic breaks throughout the year, fostering elevated energy and enthusiasm as the new year begins.
Unifying the break promotes relaxation since no team member needs to fret about progressing projects or missing internal communications. Our unified downtime contributes positively to our collective output and customer satisfaction.
What about you? Do you take intentional breaks from your work or business? We’re eager to hear your approaches and experiences on platforms like Bluesky or Discord.
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