155: Year in Review: Leadership Careers

Charlotte Ward: 0:12

Hello, and welcome to episode one hundred and fifty-five of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. I begin a year in review. I've always been frustrated by the all-too common attitude that tech support is not a career in its own right. In my experience, many people just starting out in their professional/slash technical life view support as a stepping stone. You start there to learn about the product before you transition to engineering, or you start there to learn about the customers before you move to a consulting role or customer success. Or even you start there to learn the basics before you move into training. These prevailing opinions have historically damaged the reputation of support, I think. It's seen as entry level in most organizations and a cost centre. A necessary burden full of the unglamorous or unambitious, something of an organizational backwater. But those thinkers are oh so wrong. Here's what I say to them. Technical support people are, in my experience, some of the smartest, most technically adept people I've ever met. Their minds need to be agile, up to the challenge of constant learning, and able to task switch on a dime. Then in support, you need to know how to relate to other people. Whatever certifications or qualifications or product knowledge you have, you need to also embody huge empathy skills and have the patience of a saint. You need to be able to put yourself in the shoes of another human and understand how they perceive your actions and those of your organization. If you're pursuing technical support in the early stages of your career, it's actually a great entry-level role. You'll be surrounded by people willing to help and will, in fact, quite quickly get to a level of self-sufficiency that means you can get some quick wins. For most roles, the learning curve to that first stage is relatively low. Having said that, in the role organization, the growth opportunities can be limited. You need to find yourself in an organization that places value in support. They're increasing in number. Companies who put the customer first will also put their support team front and center. Find a decent organisation and you'll get significant personal investment and growth opportunities. Challenges beyond the traditional call centre catch and dispatch roles are abundant if you're willing to grab every technical opportunity that comes your way. And then career opportunities are wide open beyond your first role. If your first step did happen to be into engineering, the chances are that you'll remain in some sort of product development. But in support, if you're intentional and creative, you can pretty much decide what direction you want to take. A support career can lead to a role as a technical or product guru, an operations specialist, customer success and account management, training, technical writing, development and engineering, consultancy, knowledge management, change management, or of course leadership. You choose your own adventure. And finally, I would say that support is stepping out of the shadows. Organisations who fail to shine the limelight on an enthusiastic and well-compensated and empathic front line will be overshadowed by those companies who have already realized that support is the key to their business growth. I've been in support and leading support teams for 25 years. The day I walked into my first role, I knew it was the place for me, and in support I planned to stay. I asked some of my podcast guests earlier this year about their own particular journeys to leadership, and also for some advice on making that move from doing the work to leading the work.

Ash Rhodes: 4:37

There was basically no internal training at that time. They had internal training when you were coming in, but actually like management training or leadership training, anything like that, nothing. Like absolutely nothing.

Charlotte Ward: 4:50

So onboarding was there, but once once you were in the promotion cycle, there was nothing.

Ash Rhodes: 4:54

Absolutely nothing. So it was it was a fascinating, fascinating experience. Like I I learned a lot of things, but most of it was how not to lead.

Charlotte Ward: 5:06

I want you to tell your twin set story. Um did that desire to be more involved in the business and to learn more on the business side come only once you had started that journey in customer support, or did you have earlier aspirations?

Natalie Ruhl: 5:22

You're really pushing for that story.

Charlotte Ward: 5:25

So I know the story.

Natalie Ruhl: 5:27

That's what thinking back to this, like my early aspirations of being in the workforce were just really organized. I wanted to be an organized person that does something that is helpful to others and that kind of like get things in order. And so, yes, this person in my head was wearing a twin set, and they and like my biggest wish for my sixth or eighth birthday was to get a clipboard and a briefcase. That's what I really wanted because I, you know, it helped to like keep track of things and write lists, which I love. And the thing about that role in hindsight is that that role didn't have any power, you know, it's more of like a oh, a problem, gonna go there, fix it so that nobody is bothered. It was it was more of like a of a role of like a fixer.

Charlotte Ward: 6:15

I want to Yeah, like like you said, you said to me once, you know, it was perhaps the assistant to the CEO that you were perhaps picturing some sort of Doris Day in an office who really who really has everything organized, but that's not necessarily necessarily any of the real decision making. You are right. I did want this story, and um, it's a shame our listeners can't see how much I'm trying to stifle a giggle because I know you told me this story on three separate occasions, but I just wanted them to have it as well because I think it's hilarious.

Kristina King: 6:45

Becoming a senior manager and getting involved in more of the planning conversations and things like that. It's wow, um, our our leadership really does have everybody's, you know, interests in mind. And so I didn't realize that they talked about us so much. I mean, I guess it's like, oh, we're just support, nobody cares about us. You know, everybody in support feels like that at some point in time. Um, but but knowing that they're like, you know, who do you think would want to manage? And and that kind of of discussions, like knowing that those are going on, really crystallized for me how important it is that people do let their manager know that they're interested in leading for even just like, oh, I'm interested in taking on more projects, even if you're not ready for it, even if there isn't the space where it'll at that moment, yeah, just having them ready to give you those opportunities when they come along, or you know, applying for those opportunities when they come along. It puts you in a good in a good space. And so now that I know that, I've I've made an effort to ask people specifically in one-on-ones like, is this something you're interested in? Are you more interested in pursuing the technical route? Like, I mean, you don't have to know right now, I'm just curious.

Chris Taylor: 8:01

Even as a manager, a leader, you're constantly developing yourself. And I think if you're not, you're not managing right because there's always something to learn, a new way of coaching your team or looking at the data, or myriad of trends that come out about customer experience every year, what's coming up in 2020, how do we adapt to that? I think one of the key skills for a manager is to be receptive to change and not only that, to be able to communicate change effectively to their team and get their buy-in.

Charlotte Ward: 8:25

I think that's really important to be continually receptive to change. I'm with you on that one. It's hard enough when you're an agent being told what things are going to look like tomorrow and how different they're gonna be three weeks from now as well, which we know is is how it can be sometimes. What would be the piece of advice that you'd give them rather than concert being too concerned about the small things like which particular communication tool to choose first, those kind of things? What would be your bigger piece of advice?

Simone Secci: 8:54

The biggest will be to have a clear plan from the beginning, have a vision and stick to it. And and you know, have a core vision. Of course, we we're bound to change our mind and and to get suggestions from other people, right? But like it's more useful to confront yourself with people outside of your company that do the same job rather than confront yourself with people within your company that don't do support because they might lead you astray. Uh and then you find yourself uh sort of like going away from your original plan.

Charlotte Ward: 9:30

I think you're right, particularly for smaller companies where you may well be the only support lead, right? I I think in big, well-established companies there's probably a a clearer path and a clearer plan, and and maybe you have a smaller place in that plan anyway. But when you are talking to all those other components of a small organization, everyone, all the all those other leaders have their own measures of success and their own KPIs, right? So it's kind of how much how much you're you're willing to let yourself be swayed by those. And you're right. I think you I think you you do need to have a clear plan, but also be firm about it, I think.

Ash Rhodes: 10:06

Yeah. Support week was that every person that first came on, but then throughout the year, every person through their career um had to spend a each year had to spend a week doing customer support. It is by far the best. Like every person who did that would have such greater empathy for customer support, uh absolutely, but also for the customer in general, for the customer plight. Weirdly, developers all of a sudden went from being like, whatever, the customer can do what we say, to being like, yeah, the customer totally needs this. We definitely need to change this flow or what have you. Because when you are not dealing directly with the customer, answering their questions, uh seeing things from their point of view, you forget, you forget why we do these things. And so that's why I think we should always be doing queue work and why we think other people should why I think other people should be doing it as as much as you can.

Natalie Ruhl: 11:18

I hadn't realized so much that like I started stepping out of the queue at a point. It was a moment of like understanding of like, oh hey, yeah, I haven't been in the queue for like quite a few days now. And it's fine. And I'm a control freak. I I will I will admit that. That's that's absolutely who I am. So delegating work hasn't really come supernatural to me. I felt for a long time that I was like, you know, quite a structured person and um easy to to talk to, and also I felt that any kind of thing that I talked about about about was like incredibly clear and easy to understand and easy to follow. So, you know, people should have just could just do that, and then they would come back to me and what I had in mind would be done. Uh, not really how it works, um, not really always so clear, not really always made my expectations that clear, it turns out. Uh, because what people understand and what you say are always two different things, and that's something that I had to like learn very early on when becoming a leader. Um, stepping out of the queue was like this process, not always second guessing somebody else's work, trusting someone that they'd done the work, and and if they maybe couldn't do the work, more looking at like seeing like how which could you empower them to do the work next time? And and that's kind of like how I moved out of the queue. The strategy for that in hindsight, really, I feel, is about building that trust so that it allows me to like be out of the queue and and do the other work that needs doing.

Matt Dale: 12:53

I think there's a few schools of thought. I've I've talked to some folks that are like, you 100% should never be completely out of the queue. You need to make sure you stay grounded and doing the work. And and you know, if if you get away from that, then you're not going to understand what the frontline agents are feeling and experiencing. In my experience, it's been a little different. Um, my world, you know, as a VP of support, my role is very much interacting with um with the other teams here in the company and making sure that support is being represented well in those situations, that we're giving them what they need, that they're giving us what we need, uh, and really ensuring that my team has what it needs to succeed. In doing that, I don't have a lot of extra time on my calendar uh to sit down and dive in and say, hey, let me work on the queue. And as a company too, we've grown quite a lot. We we've had several acquisitions. I I've not actually used some of our products. So I guess uh to answer your question, um, I don't think it's essential that that someone has to still be in the queue doing the things. But I think that as a leader, you need to make sure you have your finger on the pulse of what's going on with with your frontline agents, with their experience in using whatever systems you have in place. You have to understand kind of what they're going through so that you can appropriately serve them and make sure that their needs are getting met.

Hilary Dudek: 13:57

But I think that's where doing frontline support really is impactful because I can't advocate in these meetings with other directors or with the VP of product and business development. I can't advocate for changes if I don't know how my team is being affected by the product as it is today. So I've made it a huge effort to get in there, to listen to their feedback, to collect their feedback. Um it's a work in progress. I can't tell you that I could troubleshoot everything like my team can. They are the true heroes here, but I'm I'm working towards it.

Charlotte Ward: 14:29

And you know, I'm not sure it is necessary to be able to troubleshoot everything that your team can because otherwise you you are, I mean, that is presumably a full-time job. Um, and if you get too close to it, you're it's gonna be difficult, I think, to step away from the queue if you get that involved, don't you think? And then how do you do the other 95% of your role, which is uh the leadership, which is, you know, although the people management, the operations, the tools, the the strategy, the the business side. That that kind of I think it it has to be the bigger part, definitely. But also I think um if you get too embroiled in day-to-day cue stuff, y A, it's a matter of time, but it's probably a matter of some kind of uh distance as well, I think.

Hilary Dudek: 15:21

I would agree with you there. Um, you know, knowledge is power, but if I have all this knowledge, I'm going to be tempted to just jump in there, um, you know, during meetings or during random breaks in my day when I should be focusing on what I was hired to do.

Jenny Dempsey: 15:37

Like I hate micromanaging. I am not that type of person. I want to trust my agents and be like, you do you, you you know what to do. Like you, you do it. Um, and then I check up maybe here and there, and I'm always there, we're talking our one-on-ones, blah, blah, blah. But it's like they just know what to do. Um, and so it's just nice to be able to have, you know, the team that I can trust and and they do a great job.

Charlotte Ward: 16:04

That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash one five five for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.