Adarna · Field notes
Volume 01 · August 2026
Playbooks, benchmarks, and operating notes from running structured Customer Support hires for UK founders. Written by the team that does the work.
10 entries
02
Hiring guides
Salary is about two thirds of it. The real number, once you add employer NI, pension, equipment, software and a recruiter, is closer to £35,600 in year one.
16 July 2026
8 min read
03
Hiring guides
Most support interview questions test how well someone interviews. These six test the job. What to ask, what a strong answer contains, and the three questions to stop asking.
16 July 2026
9 min read
04
Hiring guides
Most support job ads attract volume and select for nothing. Here is a template you can lift, plus the reasoning behind each line and the three phrases to delete on sight.
16 July 2026
7 min read
05
Hiring guides
No UK payroll, no local entity, and less paperwork than people expect. But three things do matter: classification, how you pay them, and the data protection step almost everyone misses.
16 July 2026
8 min read
06
Hiring guides
Honest numbers: monthly rates by experience level, the line items founders forget (night differential, 13th month, HMO), and a like-for-like comparison against a UK hire.
3 July 2026
9 min read
07
Hiring guides
The three ways UK startups actually get a Philippines-based support rep, what each genuinely costs, and the question that decides it: who owns the relationship?
3 July 2026
8 min read
08
Hiring guides
When the first customer ticket arrives at 2am, who picks it up? A field guide to making your first support hire the one that scales.
4 May 2026
8 min read
09
Operations
The seven-hour gap that founders worry about is a feature, not a bug. A close look at how PH-based Customer Support actually covers a UK workday.
21 April 2026
6 min read
10
Hiring guides
Eight measurable signals, drawn from hundreds of hires, that separate first-rate support reps from competent ones.
9 April 2026
7 min read
11
Operations
An honest map of what AI is actually good at in a support team, and the three places it makes things measurably worse.
28 March 2026
9 min read