Greetings from lovely Richmond, Virginia! On behalf of the entire Tumblr Support team here, welcome to our new blog!

Our team already has the privilege of interacting with numerous Tumblr users one-on-one, as we respond to more than 2,000 emails every day. But, we’re excited to also have a blog where we can communicate with the Tumblr community as a whole. This will be a place for tips and tutorials as well as a way for you to learn about the people in Support and what we all do.

The Support team has been helping Tumblr users since December of 2007. We started with one person working part-time and have grown to 30 people. We provide support seven days a week in nine languages and counting. The team prides itself on responding to most user emails within a day while still managing to have fun.

We’ve recently moved into our amazing new office. This has included installing essentials and, of course, eating icon cupcakes. While the Tumblr office in New York may have the cutest mascot, we think our mascot in Richmond has a certain sense of style.

We hope you’ll follow this blog to get updates from our team. Most importantly, know that we are here when you need help.

So what happens when you send an email to [email protected] – as thousands of Tumblr users do every day?

When your email arrives, it’s converted into a ticket with ZenDesk, our help desk system. Your email is assigned a ticket number and is placed in our queue. (Quick tip: Send your support email from the address registered with your Tumblr account … this saves time for everyone.)

Tumblr Support staff work through these requests in the order they are received. Generally, you’ll receive a response within a day. During times of high ticket volume, it may take a bit longer. We don’t compromise quality for speed, so we appreciate your patience if it takes us a little longer than both of us would like.

We are committed to treating each user as a person. This can be a challenge when dealing with the number of requests received each day, so we’ve developed a system that strikes a balance between efficiency and care. TextExpander, a typing shortcut utility, houses an ever-evolving set of “snippets” that address the user emails we get each day. These snippets make it easy to get important information out to you while giving us time review your account history and blog settings to be sure we fully understand your situation.

Our success as a team relies heavily on how effectively we communicate with each other. In the Support office, we use HipChat and shared Google Docs to coordinate our work and track the issues you report. These tools also make it simpler for the Richmond and New York offices to communicate quickly and efficiently with each other.  It’s amazing to peek into a room where engineers and support ambassadors are troubleshooting in real time – you really get a sense for how virtual spaces have revolutionized the way teams of specialists tackle common problems in a coordinated way.

When in full swing, the Support office hosts a sea of mostly silent Support Ambassadors with headphone-cupped ears, bumping beats while their monitors cascade windows full of tickets under review, account information, reference materials, and constant chat check-ins for group opinions. An occasional wave of chuckles probably signifies a meme bomb detonating in a common chatroom.

Our Ambassadors love our Tumblr community, and we are honored to serve you. So each time you hit that send button, you can trust that a real live sympathetic human being is waiting patiently for your message to arrive.

What was a giant, curved and blank wall in the Tumblr Support Office is currently becoming a tribute to both the historic and modern landscape of Richmond, Virginia.

 Final product soon…