Customer Support Leaders

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Week 1 Topic: Empathy in Support    We round out this week’s topic with Ash Rhodes. How much weight should we place on empathy when we’re hiring for support? And Ash pulls some very funny faces (entirely for my benefit). Support the show

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Week 79 Topic: Building a Team from Scratch When is a full-time job not a full-time job? When it’s a two-person job! It’s been a while since Matt Dale built a team from scratch, but nonetheless, he returns to round out this week with his own wisdom and perspectives from further on in the journey. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Week 79 Topic: Building a Team from Scratch Ashley returns to tell us how she prioritised early definition of ‘Operating Principles’ for her nascent team, and how they’re essentially still holding strong 4 years on. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Week 78 Topic: Knowledge Management Simone Secci rebuilt a knowledge base from scratch, banking on being able to show its value much further down the road. It worked! From zero to knowledge hero, Simone talks about his journey. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Specials: Fireside 46 Ethan and I discuss the relative merits of our favourite approaches to tagging support conversations. Neither of us is a fan of fluidity when it comes to this opportunity to carry Voice of Customer through into our organisations. Structure all the way! Support the show

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Week 78 Topic: Knowledge Management Cynthia Ng describes how GitLab approach all their knowledge with a ‘Handbook First’ ethos, and how their value of Transparency informs everything they do.  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Week 78 Topic: Knowledge Management Aprill Allen, a Knowledge Management Consultant & KCS Specialist at Knowledge Bird, helps support teams stop being so overloaded with solving the same problems over and over, and start using their knowledge as the lever it really is. How do we even get started on our Knowledge Management journey in Support? Support the sho...

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Specials: Fireside 26 According to “Zee” (if I could only say it), we’re doing CX wrong! Nicholas Zeisler joins again to tell us why we’re doing it wrong, and how to get it right. A man after my own heart, he says it hinges on the process! But how do you leverage process, prove ROI for your Customer Office, and truly develop a customer-centric culture?  Support...

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Specials: Fireside 25 What a conversation! Ash comes on the podcast to talk about job hunting in Customer Support Leadership, but we only get there via comparing consulting notes and his insulting the average British meat pie. Honestly. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Specials: Fireside 17 Ethan explains how we can apply a scientific approach - semiotic theory - when trying to understand our customers context, and therefore meet them where they are. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Week 67 Topic: Managing Change Lauren joins me for two milestones: the 200th episode of the podcast, and my birthday! It’s always an interesting chat with Lauren, and her academic background in human genetics and social behaviours.  Here, she brings her expertise to bear in helping us manage change. Always hard, Lauren brings advice on making it easier. Support...

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Week 67 Topic: Managing Change Lauren, a previous panelist, returns to the podcast for our first one-to-one chat, where we pick up our conversation on managing change. Lauren believes that providing training on this difficult aspect of leadership shouldn’t be a single course or workshop.  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Week 66 Topic: The Perfect Support Email Ethan Walfish is a former panelist (take a listen to our discussion on Support Leadership 2.0 back in episode 105 ), and joins me today to discuss that most convenient and most misused communication - email! How do we approach getting this ‘just right’. Ethan believes there are 6 distinct elements to the perfect email, an...

Send us Fan Mail Specials: Fireside 45 Val discusses using a personality type such as Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies   to help you pull a team together, and work with each other. Also, here’s 101 things you didn’t know about Val ! Support the show

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Specials: Fireside 16 Valentina Thoerner is a Empress in the support world, and, having moved from a support lead role at Automattic, now heads up Product at Klaus . Her official title is "Empress of Product", hence the tiara (though she assures me the truth is the other way round).  She describes herself thus: “At Klaus, I am the Empress of Product, m...

Send us Fan Mail Specials: Fireside 44 Matt and I have no complaints. Plenty of other people do, though: customers! How do we deal with those complaining customers, whether we agree with them or not? Support the show

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Specials: Fireside 13 Tadas Labudis comes on the show to talk about ticket tagging taxonomies and tactics! Then we wrap up the show but the conversation continued - so I’ve included the bonus tip, too! Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Specials: Fireside 43 Vaishali Dialani is Head of Customer Experience at NOW Money , a fintech company with a unique customer base and on a mission to ensure everyone has instant access to financial services they can, and want, to use - no matter who they are, where they are from, or how much they earn. Vaishali and I talk about the specific challenges in supporting these customer...

Send us Fan Mail Two guests for the price of one today as Whitney Brittingham and Aakrit Prasad join me to discuss the relationship between Product Led Growth and Support Driven Growth. Whitney has been in Support for over 8 years, and is currently the Director of Customer Success and Support at AptEdge , an enterprise software company backed by top VCs on a mission to transform customer support i...

Send us Fan Mail Specials: Fireside 41 Andrew Ou is a UX Strategist/Designer and joins me to discuss the role UX plays in CX, and specifically in Customer Support. He also has a free guide for listeners, giving you 5 ways UX can help SaaS companies can increase revenue and profitability , which is something we all want to know! Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Specials: Fireside 40 Reagan Helms and I discuss what when you have experienced folks who do not want to step into leadership. How do you develop them in other ways once they bump up against the proverbial glass ceiling? Support the show

Send us Fan Mail From The Archives: Specials: Fireside 11 Sandra Thompson comes to share her significant expertise on Emotional Intelligence and its importance in our ability to serve customers.   We break EI away from Empathy, and talk about some of the elements of EI. After we finished recording, Sandra also mentioned a workshop she runs using Riders and Elephants , a brilliant resource to help...

Send us Fan Mail Specials: Fireside 39 Craig and I share similarly long tenures in Support - and may even have encountered each other in the wild at one point in the early 2000s! Today, we talk about the evolution of support channels. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Specials: Fireside 38 Sam Semuhin returns today to talk about how we can empower our teams to achieve their best selves, deliver their best work, and hire the best! Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Specials: Fireside 37 Sophie Heller joins me from Outschool , which, as you might expect, experienced serious hypergrowth in the wake of COVID-19!  Sophie explores how those first days and months unfolded, and reflects on her feelings about the experience now. Support the show