Support is central to Aplia and is something that we take great pride in providing. Our company is unique in that everyone, from management to engineering to sales, is dedicated to giving the best support possible to create an exceptional user experience for both instructors and students. We feel that this is essential in order to obtain our ultimate goal of enhancing student learning.
As customer support manager, I've been with Aplia since 2001, before we even had a product to sell to customers. Our first customers were the spring and summer testers of 2002; at this time, we had several hundred students and roughly 15 instructors using an early form of Aplia. In our early days, the foundations for providing personalized support were established. We focused on learning about the needs of our customers and how they used the Aplia site in their classes. We then designed training modules and processes to manage support requests to meet these needs. Today, we support tens of thousands of students and instructors on a daily basis.
As Aplia evolved and our customer base grew, our commitment to support has remained. When instructors adopt Aplia, they are truly part of the "Aplia Family." We genuinely care about each instructor, their students, and how their courses turn out. While our company as a whole is focused on support, our formal Aplia Support Team is a team of between three and twelve members, depending on the time of year. Our team shrinks during the summer and grows during peak support times. Most All of us love working directly with customers.
You'll get to know us on a first name basis, and we wouldn't have it any other way. We offer support via phone, email, and live chat to instructors who use Aplia. Students can contact us by emailing us or by chatting with us live. Our normal business hours are 8 AM – 5 PM Pacific Time on weekdays but we provide instructors with a number that can be used to reach us at any time of the day.
Our support includes walking instructors step-by-step through building Aplia courses and sharing experiences about how other instructors have integrated Aplia into their classrooms. Since support is a backbone of our product, we use a variety of dedicated tools and have numerous processes to efficiently and effectively train and assist our customers. These tools, such as our support system to handle requests, and Tank, our application used to access payments and student activity, provide the Support Team with a way to manage all incoming support requests.
Over the years, we have learned a great deal about how to better support students. We understand that students tend to complete their Aplia assignments in the evenings and on the weekends. During our peak support times, the beginning of each academic term, we extend our support hours into the evenings and respond to requests throughout the weekends.
