Customer empathy that scales
The soft skill that closes tickets and keeps customers. Calm under pressure, patient in long threads, sharp at translating a technical fix into the words a Monday-morning user can actually act on.
WordPress Product & Support
Helping people get unstuck with the WordPress they already love.
I'm Rafiz Sejim, a product & support specialist with seven years across Gravity Forms, Dokan, Directorist, FormGent, HappyAddons, WP Legal Pages and the plugins your team depends on. I read code, reproduce the weird bugs, and translate the fix into something the customer actually feels.
- Years in WP support
- 0
- Plugins shipped or supported
- 0+
- Tickets resolved (est.)
- 0+
- Top products supported
- Directorist Dokan · HappyAddons FormGent · HelpGent
Most days I sit between customers, developers, UX, and product. A ticket lands. I read it twice, reproduce it on a clean install, read the PHP, follow the hooks and filters, find the conflict, then I write the answer the way I'd want to read on a Monday morning.
At SovWare I helped turn a recurring Directorist support pattern into a dashboard that became one of our top premium extensions. I've shipped three plugins of my own on .org (NarrativeForms, SimpleBoards, GF Directory) using PHP, GFAddOn, REST routes, custom tables and Gutenberg blocks, and supported Dokan, HappyAddons, FormGent and WP Legal Pages through thousands of tickets.
Right now I'm looking for a team where support is treated as product work, where repeated questions become better docs, better UX, and quieter inboxes. If that sounds like you, the kettle's on.
How I help
Six things I do well.
A specialist in the seam between a customer who is stuck and the product that should already be working for them. Calm, technical, product-minded.
Turning support into product wins
Repeated tickets are a roadmap. At SovWare I helped lead a Directorist dashboard and notification flow that became one of our most successful premium extensions, lifted engagement, and quieted the inbox.
Technical troubleshooting that ships fixes
Reproduce on a clean install. Isolate the offender. Write the bug report a developer can actually act on, with steps, environment, screenshots, and customer context.
Docs that prevent the next ticket
Rewriting documentation around the question the customer is actually typing, not the feature name. Onboarding flows tuned by what support sees every week.
Pre-sales that converts
Honest fit explanations. Improved conversion at SovWare and weDevs by helping prospects see whether a product was the right answer for their use case, instead of pushing the close.
AI-assisted, judgment-led
I use Claude and Cursor to draft replies, write documentation, group recurring feedback, and read code faster, always with human review. Empathy and responsibility don't outsource. Technical depth gets faster; customer trust still has to be earned one ticket at a time.
Featured project
GF Directory
GF Directory
A Gravity Forms add-on, built the right way.
Approved Gravity Forms entries become a frontend directory: cards, filters, search, saved listings, a logged-in dashboard, single-entry pages, a Gutenberg block, shortcode rendering and REST routes. All without touching core.
Open source · WordPress
Entries, made into a directory customers can actually use.
Per-form settings let admins map fields to title, image, price, rating, badge, meta, CTA, features. Shortcode and block share one render path. Caching is versioned. Output is escaped and nonced. Theme overrides live in /gf-directory/.
- Extends GFAddOn. No Gravity Forms core files modified, ever.
- Server-rendered Gutenberg block reuses the shortcode render path.
- Saved listings via custom table + REST routes with proper nonces.
- Versioned transient caching and page-aware asset loading.
- Sanitized input, escaped output, field blocklists, domain checks.
Selected work
Things I have shipped, supported, or shaped.
Hover any row for a glance. Each one taught me how form-driven WordPress products break, scale, and quietly delight.
01
Directorist
SovWare · directory plugin family
02
Dokan
weDevs · multi-vendor marketplace
03
HappyAddons
SovWare-supported · Elementor add-on suite
04
FormGent
SovWare · Gutenberg-native form builder
05
HelpGent
SovWare · async customer messaging
06
GF Directory add-on
Author · Gravity Forms add-on
07
WP User Frontend
weDevs · frontend post submission
08
NarrativeForms
Author · WordPress form plugin (approved on .org)
09
SimpleBoards
Author · roadmap & feedback plugin (approved on .org)
-
2022 → NOW
Product Officer · WordPress Product & Support Specialist
SovWare · Directorist, HelpGent, FormGent, HappyAddons, WP Legal Pages
- Owned support patterns end-to-end: issue, bug report, fix, docs, product change.
- Helped lead a Directorist dashboard & notification flow that became one of our top premium extensions.
- Shaped FormGent product behaviour and support readiness from the inside.
- Wired GA4 into Directorist to ground product decisions in actual user behaviour.
-
2020 → 2022
Head of Support
SovWare · multi-product WordPress support
- Ran support across HelpScout, live chat and email for plugins used by beginners through agencies.
- Built bug report templates devs trusted: repro steps, environment, screenshots, customer context.
- Improved pre-sales conversion by explaining product fit honestly, not aggressively.
-
2019 → 2020
Support Engineer
weDevs · Dokan, WP User Frontend, WooCommerce
- Handled high-volume tickets and live chat for free and paid users.
- Investigated plugin/theme conflicts, frontend submission breaks and WooCommerce edge cases.
-
2016 → 2018
IT Support Specialist · Business Analyst Intern
Minnesota State University, USA
- Supported students, faculty and staff across software, accounts and access.
- Earned recognition for solving issues that needed research beyond the SOP.
How I think about it
In the age of AI, technical knowledge is easier to access. Empathy, customer trust, and good judgment still matter, and that is where I bring value.
Rafiz · on support work- Years in support
- 0+
- CSAT, last role
- 0%
- GF add-ons authored
- 0 (and counting)
- Plugins on .org
- 0+
Writing
Notes from the support desk and the editor.
Short essays on Gravity Forms, plugin support, customer empathy, and the strange place where support meets product.
W
WordPress Hook Firing Order: Why Your Code Did Not Run
A practical guide to the WordPress request lifecycle and the hooks that fire along the way. This is the lesson that retires the most…
Read note
W
WordPress Hooks: The Override Superpower
A practical guide to actions and filters for anyone moving from “I install plugins” to “I extend and fix plugins.” This guide is useful…
Read note- Open to
- Senior support roles · plugin support engineer · product manager
- Based in
- Narayanganj · GMT +6
- Elsewhere
- GitHub · LinkedIn · rafizsejim.com