How to Win as a Remote Team and Productivity Advice from Quire Community Manager

Quire is a modern collaborative project management software that helps thousands of dynamic teams achieve big milestones together. With the mission of connecting people and bringing success to businesses, Quire team spends a lot of time listening to users’ stories and learning more about how different teams use different methods to get things done.

Today we are going to sit down and talk with our Community Manager - the person who builds the bridge that connects Quire team and our users - Peggy, to understand more about how she uses Quire to navigate her work and communicate with Quire community.

1. What was your journey to becoming a Community Manager?

Back in college, I was studying Translation and Interpreting so naturally, I am drawn to the jobs that help to connect people. For a couple of years spending in a garment company as a purchaser, I decided to challenge myself with a more dynamic industry so I joined Quire as a Community Manager. I immediately felt in love with the tech world. It’s truly fascinating to see how a software is developed from scratch, not to mention being a part of the developing process.

Regularly as you are using a software, you would wonder how each feature was crafted and why exactly the developers know what users expect. Being a Community Manager lets me live in the both worlds, from developers’ end to users’ end. I listen to users’ stories shared in the Quire Feedbacks forum, via email communications or interviews so that we can learn more about how Quire can help users achieve their goals.

Being able to communicate with users directly and listen to their success stories with Quire inspire me a lot as a Community Manager. A lot of users have provided us with incredible insights and invaluable feedback on how we can improve Quire to better meet users’ needs to optimize their workflows. Sometimes, we also get to know which features users are having difficulties with.

As a Community Manager, I also lead the localization process for all of the 9 languages with 8 translators for Quire. My day-to-day work involves a lot of team communication and task management so Quire has been a great assistant from day one!

2. Tell us what a day is like in Quire community team?

My day usually starts with a cup of coffee on my desk! 😁 After the caffeine kicks in, I will read through all the feedback in Quire Forum, go through every users’ emails and from other channels such as Facebook, Youtube, Quire blog, Twitter, and Instagram. Social media is a great way to reach out and build relationships with our users so my team and I spend a lot of time going through users’ comments or tweets so that we can make sure we leave no one’s suggestions behind.

Every feedback and suggestion from Quire users will be listed as a task in our internal Quire project. Then I will categorize all of the tasks based on the severity of the issues and the priority level. Sometimes I use different sublists to better organize the tasks. For example, I will create a sublist that contains all of the tasks that are relevant for different teams and use the sublist as my personal view to keep track of what I care for.

Some days are great and breezy, while some other days need more than one cup of coffee. Those are the days when we experience quite a few glitches reported by our users. We need to immediately categorize the bugs and inform the Dev team. For every issue fixed, a task is completed in our collaborative project in Quire. Our Community team categorizes all of the bugs and feedback using one collaborative Kanban Board. Each column in the Kanban Board has a meaningful status or definition. For some critical issues that require immediate attention, we would create a board to track the progress our Dev Team has made to solve the issue so that we can inform our users on time.

"Some days seem a bit challenging, but at the end of the day, it’s all about building connections between the Quire team and our users and fostering engagement among Quire community members."

3. How about the localization team and what is so unique about Quire translators?

As a translator and interpreter myself, I’m always inspired by languages and exotic cultures. Last year, we managed to onboard 5 more translators to join the Quire localization team. The most incredible thing is, all of them are located in different countries and even before the unfortunate coronavirus situation, we all work together remotely using 9 different Quire projects.

We have never met in person, but we feel so close. Every translator works with me directly in their own Quire organization. We automate the localization process using Quire tasks and our daily communication is made through every comment in Quire and Skype calls.

When our Product team adds a new feature to Quire, there will be a lot of updates and newly added messages. Each of the new messages in Quire will be added to Quire as a new task and the translators will get notified about their new work. Since most of our translators do not have tech background or nor they are too familiar with SaaS platform, we will attach screenshots and embed as many UI photos to the description section to help our translators have a better understanding of the messages that need to be translated.

When the translators finish translating the message, they will complete the task and I will receive the notification. There’s no need to bombard our translators with reminder messages or aggressive notes. Case is closed when a task is completed!

Since our localization team is not a small scale team, it’s quite challenging to keep up with all of the existing projects. I use Smart Folder to create a bird’s-eye view to see all of the tasks from every translator. I am a heavy user of customized filters to create my own view to track the task lists.

Sometimes I kick off my day with My Tasks! I can view all of the tasks that are assigned to me, most of them are from the Community team and the Localization team! Whenever Quire translators have difficulty understanding the context of a message, they will assign the task to me and I will double check.

I am a firm believer that a better workflow creates better productivity, so I spend so much time on trying to figure out what the best way to communicate and collaborate with our remote localization team is. We adjust so many things as we continue working with a new translator. There’s no perfect workflow, we just try to find the flow that rhymes best with our team.

4. What does Quire’s mission mean to you?

Everyday I receive many suggestions and feedback from Quire users, all of them are very interesting and inspirational. Every user is a learning opportunity and a learning curve at the same time. Having the chance to interact and communicate with our users is the most rewarding part of my job. I've learned a lot from our users every day through their feedback and suggestions, both professionally and personally.

Every big dream needs a starting point. I would want to help each and every Quire user to achieve their missions and their goals. Start your dream with Quire. Don't hesitate to share your stories with us! We’re here to walk your dreams home!

Read more about how Quire is developed from a serial entrepreneur's viewpoint.

5. What is your mantra when it comes to productivity?

"It's okay to grow slow. Consistency is the key." Joining a tech company has taught me a lot about how everyday processes mean so much more than an end result. You need to break down your big goal into digestible small tasks so that you can start to work on your dream somewhere.

Software development is a continuous process, rather than a done-and-be-over-with. We understand that each of you is eager to see new updates or features on Quire. However, Quire is built with the philosophy of not becoming another all-in-one solution. We go through every feedback at our product meeting and discuss actively about how to add a new function or feature to Quire that doesn't break the existing workflow and still provide new values to users' workflow.

Quire grows together with our users. We have achieved so much as a team, and all of this is possible because of our community. There are endless opportunities to explore for Quire, and we can’t wait to achieve the next milestone with Quire community!