170: Slack Support with Mo McKibbin

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 170 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is Slack support, so stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Mo McKibb and Mo, it's lovely to have you back again. This week we're talking about Slack support.

Mo McKibbin: 0:41

I'm so excited.

Charlotte Ward: 0:43

It's great, right? I'm having such fun this week because I'm learning such a lot as well. And uh I know that you inherited support through Slack in a previous life.

Mo McKibbin: 0:55

So several previous lives, actually. I've uh inherited Slack support at Help Scout, Right Back, and Moxian. So the last three companies that I well, I think part of it is has a lot to do with like the stage of companies that I typically start working with. So um I started helps, I started at Help Scout when it was a relatively younger company, could definitely still be called a startup at that time. Um and uh we had in uh we had Basecamp, Wild Bit, and really um used it for kind of almost like our design partner, ideal customer profile type um customers. So anybody who it's like this is exactly the kind of customer that we want to attract and keep happy. Um, we had a Slack channel for them um as sort of like uh, you know, like a premium. We didn't we didn't call it a premium support offering. We just rolled out the red carpet for them because like we were really excited to have it.

Charlotte Ward: 1:58

That makes sense. Well, you're getting quite a lot of getting quite a lot of value yourself out of that relationship, aren't you?

Mo McKibbin: 2:04

Then so there's like yeah, absolutely. It's I mean it was it was both helpful for them in terms of help, but also helpful for us in terms of just having a steady uh stream of feedback, um, customer feedback from exactly the kind of customers that we wanted to serve. Um, and that was actually similar for Brightback too. We had um well, actually, no, at Brightback originally serviced all of the customers through Slack and almost only Slack, which that did change um because that is not scalable. Um, it's definitely not scalable to service every customer through Slack. I think you'll drive yourself pretty bonkers eventually. Um uh just due to like, I mean, apparently there are tools you can get like analytics through Slack, but at the time we didn't. So it was just really challenging to track feedback and keep up with um closing the loop also with customers, just in terms of being able to uh and I can talk about how we did end up doing that too. Um and then now at Noxian, we have uh again, it's very similar to how we did it at Help Scout, where we have um like Netflix has a channel. Um, we'll probably bring Amazon in there uh because Amazon is used, we well actually used to service Amazon through uh their own chat, which is called Amazon Chime, but now they're moving from Amazon Chime to Slack. So we'll hopefully have a Slack channel for them. Um but yeah, so we we use it also in the same uh kind of vein as we did at Help Scout, as like this is exactly kind of the customers that we want to keep a close relationship with their feedback. They're almost helping us develop as we go. And um and so, and it is also, I think, eventually what we're gonna uh as we're now that we're scaling, um, we're going to probably keep Slack support as a premium tier offering.

Charlotte Ward: 4:06

Yeah, I think I think that's um I think that's really interesting in the early stages is is uh still having control over who you provide Slack to, but identifying those as a form of ICP for all the reasons you just said around, you know, that that really tight feedback loop and all of those um all of those other advantages that that come with just having more and closer relationships with your customer, right?

Mo McKibbin: 4:32

I think Yeah, yeah. Sorry, and not to cut you off, and I'm I am working on that because it's a problem of mine. Oh, me too. Me too. I get really excited and then I want to like jump in.

Charlotte Ward: 4:42

I think um I think just to jump in on your jumping in. We were just chat chatting, weren't we, before I started recording about whether we should just release an episode that was just you and I having a chat every now and then. But I don't know how far that would progress, whether we would just jump over each other all the time.

Mo McKibbin: 5:00

Yeah, that might be kind of challenging to follow. Uh anyway, to um to be very excited. Uh in that, yeah, in that early stage with that ideal customer, and it does because it almost creates, and this is what I love. This is of the things that I love about Slack support. What I absolutely love about it is it brings almost like a you are a team partnership, collaborator, workspace um partnership uh feeling to your customers. And I think for you know, the right customers, that is a not just an incredibly powerful thing for the customer, but it is an incredibly powerful thing for the company. I mean, so uh like like I said, we have uh Netflix in our um Slack at uh Maxianne. And there's honestly, I am actually as a support person and a success person, I love that there is a channel in there because honestly, sometimes Netflix asks some deep color knowledge questions that I am like, uh uh let me go back to let me go to film school, take uh advanced courses in color correction, and then maybe I'll know what they're talking about. So, but because it's in Slack, we have like an engineer who specifically is super knowledgeable on color spaces and also um built our transcoder for color spaces. So anytime they ask about something so nuanced and technical that requires such specific knowledge, it's like he'll just jump in and answer it. So, like it actually makes my job easier because it's like the people who are instead of having to go back and forth like for like as a go-between, like it almost brings like this whole company support of this super knowledgeable base that's there to help and understand your customers and work with them.

Charlotte Ward: 6:57

Um which is something to love, right? Which is something to love, like just being able to like thinking of it as I know you do the same as I do, is like think putting yourself in the customer's shoes in an experience like that. They have such access to the expertise they need very quickly, they don't have to wait for the kind of the the barrier system that some support can sometimes be if it's operating in a very siloed space, right?

Mo McKibbin: 7:25

Well, and it's uh like avoids a game of telephone, right? Like there's definitely certain times where I um like I'd like to think I'm a relatively technical person, but there's definitely moments where like if when you're dealing with people who are veritable experts in a technical space, um, like color correction, for example. Like, so just uh you know for everybody listening who doesn't know, I work with my customers are like filmmakers and um like Hollywood film production, post-production teams. So um color correction is a very technical uh the documentation for Dolby Vision to like understand it, like makes your brain want to bleed. Like it's like all letters and numbers. And it's like, and of course, you know, of course, as a team, we build expertise in this, but you know, this is the people who are talking to us are like literally the best and the like in their business. They live it. Yeah, so they're they're asking us the most technical expertise questions. Um, and so to to be able to connect that directly to like an engineer who has exactly that same technical expertise because they built the system to accommodate it is just so valuable.

Charlotte Ward: 8:46

Yeah. So valuable. Um so so uh loving that side of it. Um and and you know, um, just more generally speaking, about like that that sort of speed of service and the and the access to the wider team, access to expertise, all these positives. What do you hate about Slack support?

Mo McKibbin: 9:10

Yeah, so this is what and you know, you know, referring to how it was handled at right back, where originally it was all of the customers, it's definitely not that's not a good use case for Slack support. And it is um, you know, and like I said, we eventually did eclipse that and focused only on our like highest value slash design partner type customers. But in uh, if if that were to continue, if people are interested and curious about implementing Slack support, you I would not recommend doing it from a scalability level, it is not ideal for a large volume of customers. Now, here are the reasons why. And please, for all the like help scout product managers listening to this or Zendesk product manager, actually, I do think Zendesk does have this feature, which so there you go, get on it help scout, because that is the tool I use.

Charlotte Ward: 10:09

You tell them.

Mo McKibbin: 10:10

Um is the closing of the loop with the customer. So, like the way I try to um, I like having an aggregated system for as much customer data as possible to not obstruct um, to not have siloed information and obstruct the path of the customer journey. So, like I'm definitely very much like if if it were up to me, I would have all pre-sale conversations in Help Scout. I'd have all, you know, like customer success conversations, uh support, like whatever type of customer-facing conversation is happening, I would like that all to be in one place, which for me is Help Scout. Um, obviously there's then different tools, like, you know, some uh, you know, Twitter, like Facebook, Facebook or whatever, but as long as you can aggregate that information so it can all be tracked to the same sort of in the same way, then you can start to really see what the trends are in terms of like feature requests or common problems or whatever, because you're seeing it from the like that, and you can segment it like to these different parts of the funnel, but like that's when you can start to see a story emerge. So, what makes Slack support challenging is you kind of break that. There's there's not a great way to um not break that story with so like the way so the way I'm currently doing it is customer has something on Slack, it's something that I want to track, like it's a feature request or a bug or something. I will make a new conversation note in Help Scout and I will post a link to the Slack thread. And so that, and then I will connect the that to Jira. So like then Wow, that's I mean fortunately, Help Scout does have a really good Jira integration, so that part is not hard, but like, so like um the you know, the go the Help Scout to Jira and Jira to Help Scout really, really easy. So like that that part is so then when that's fixed, we will close the loop with the customer by getting the notification from Jira that that is done, um, in which case I can just open the Help Scout conversation, but then it's like then it's like a link to the Slack conversation that then I go back to. So what I would love is just a way to push things into Help Scout as a note from like from Slack or push things to Jira and Help Scout from Slack. If there was some sort of way um that I could just create it, like just create that like with a Slack integration. Um that exists for other tools, it doesn't currently exist for Help Scout. So I am doing this really wonky workaround to make sure that we close the loop with the customer easily.

Charlotte Ward: 13:01

I mean, that I I've talked to vendors this week who sit quite happily in Slack and like Zen desk and things like that. I I I can't speak for Help Scout, I've never used it. But is that like just throwing an idea out there? Would would a zap not be able to take your place in this?

Mo McKibbin: 13:20

Okay, so so I you can't see you can do a zap. You you totally can do a zap, but I think um I I need to go back and and look at how it's set up at Moxian. Um at Brightback, we didn't take the email address, and that's an option, like it so that is an option that you can set up in Slack or not, but I was not a Slack administrator, so like I and then I had to, I think I like asked for it, and it just never ended up happening. So I could go back to Moxian and do that again. I don't have as many problems in Moxie and with the tracking situation. Honestly, most of this uh most of the Slack conversations that happen are not necessarily things that I need to track and follow the close the loop with. They're actually just like really insightful conversations that are, I mean, they're not um, I mean to be honest, sometimes we we ask Netflix for help because they're really, really like really great at color. So they're like they have really developed color knowledge. So sometimes, sometimes we are asked actually talking to them. Um, but uh I don't have as many problems at Moxian on that, but like that was a huge pain point at right back. And the reason we couldn't use a zap is because we weren't capturing the email address, which is required to create the ID in Help Scout to be able to manage that. So that's why we were not doing that. But yeah, a zap would totally work. Um, should that uh should that be something that we do?

Charlotte Ward: 14:49

So I'm I mean you're welcome. Um but but also I think I I think also like what you're saying though just reflects back to something that you said earlier and the and the we were talking briefly about before we hit record on this session as well, which is just that there are different models that that that it works better for than others, and and the like the really high touch, high value model that you're operating at Moxian, you don't need every single thing to be a ticket, right?

Mo McKibbin: 15:19

Yes, exactly. Not yeah, yeah. It's it is definitely more of like a relational model. Um, however, yeah, so that is something too to think about is because we are so I'm so excited. We're probably gonna move into a more um because there's like a pseudo-competitor we have um called frame that's really popular. But the reason it's a pseudo, well, it I mean, I guess it's kind of a competitor. Um the reason it's like a pseudo-competitor is because it we focus almost predominantly, like actually exclusively. We focus exclusively on high-end Hollywood. And frame is really great for um, you know, like marketing teams, uh, like needing to collaborate on video, independent productions. Uh, you know, actually I have an editor because like I produced a pilot um last year, and our editor uses frame, and he's a freelance editor, and it makes total sense because it's like a like a low-cost self-serve sort of tool versus like a high security, high um, you know, like I mean, like we're like have unique Dol division capability, like the stuff that's happening under the hood in Moxian is very required by Hollywood sort of thing. Um, so we have exclusively a high touch, high-end client base. Although even it's so funny, it's like even in that high touch, high-end client base, there's still like tiers of like valuable. So like our super basically we what I'm doing right now because we're gonna start moving into the more self-serve space, which is ideal for me because that's like where I came from and I love that. Um, to kind of move kind of a little bit more into frames territory. Um, so we are uh right now what I'm doing is I'm actually specing out three models. So I have like our standard support promise, which is like the standard, you know, still like kind of Hollywood mix, like high it's high touch, but it's not like super, super high touch. And then I have the um pre then we'll have the self-managed model, which is like mostly just email support similarly to like how we did a Help Scout. And then um, and then we'll have the premium model, which is like the like roll out the red carpet, put on your white gloves, like servicing you is gonna get us an Emmy or an Oscar because tech Emmys and Oscars exist and we want to win them. So that's that. Um, so they get they're gonna get Slack support in my in my new model. Of course, of course.

Charlotte Ward: 17:56

Um well I I'm I mean you're welcome. Um but but also I think I look forward to hearing about the zap. Yeah, when we met. And maybe you're Emmy. And maybe you're Emmy. And um, and actually please come back and talk about white glove support at some point because I think that is high up on the things I want to talk about next. So, but it's been absolute joy as always. Thank you so much for joining me, Mo.

Mo McKibbin: 18:19

I'm sorry I'm not as skilled in the terms of implementing it like metrics-wise and all of that. Like I feel like yeah, we just use it to talk to people, but I need to get better. I like I love operation, like I love operations and metrics, and I like I just need to do some more research, I guess, by listening to your podcasts. Well, why wouldn't you?

Charlotte Ward: 18:39

Why wouldn't you? I I love that. I I'm like hyper operational, very metrics driven. I think that's been part of my fear of Slack support. I I just what you just said, I could almost hear I don't want because I don't want to stop recording now because what we're saying now is funny and interesting as well. But as you said it, I could almost hear the jazzy outro going when you said, we just use it to talk to people. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash one seven zero for the show notes. And I'll see you next time.