185: Startup Support with Diane Garcia

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 185 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. This week we're talking about startup support, so stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome to the podcast today Diane Garcia. Diane, it's lovely to have you join me. For the benefit of our listeners, would you like to introduce yourself?

Diane Garcia: 0:44

Thanks for having me, Charlotte. I'm Diane, and I'm the head of operations at ScratchPad. We're an early stage startup, so that means that I literally do everything. Since my background is in building and managing customer success and customer support teams at startups, I like to say that my job now is really just customer success for the entire company.

Charlotte Ward: 1:07

I'm very excited because this week we're inhabiting a world that I've only really relatively recently ventured into, which is startup support. And I guess like over the last, for me, three, four years, I've been inhabiting this world much, much more, both like consulting and like just uh, you know, talking to lots of other leaders and now leading in this space somewhat myself as well. Uh before that, I I was all pretty much well-established teams, well-established organizations. But this is a different world, isn't it?

Diane Garcia: 1:39

Oh, yeah, definitely. It's my favorite world, though.

Charlotte Ward: 1:45

I'm glad. So, so tell me, I mean, first of all, I guess, why is it your favorite world? What's particularly special about it for you?

Diane Garcia: 1:56

I love startups because there is so much opportunity, and a lot of times you just have more room for growth. I've kind of worked everything from first hire to working at a team at a publicly traded company. And I love the fast-paced startup. You can always change something, everyone's on board for trying new things and experimenting, where with larger companies you just kind of don't have that freedom. And it's something that I personally like love about the startup culture.

Charlotte Ward: 2:25

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Um, you you you mentioned briefly there about being first hire. Tell me your experiences there.

Diane Garcia: 2:33

Yeah, so my I was, you know, a customer support agent, and I got the opportunity to work at a startup as the first, you know, higher-end CS. And it was an interesting experience. The founders didn't really know what to look for in a first CS hire. They were like, I want someone that's really good at customer support. And I remember going into my interview and they had no idea what to ask me. And so it was really cool. On my second interview, they had figured out, oh, we want you to have like an outline of what you would do to run a CS team. And I was like, oh, but I already have that here, and like just slid them a plan because I already knew what I wanted to do. And it wowed them because they had literally no like no reference of what they should be looking for or what they needed to do in order to support their customers at such an early stage.

Charlotte Ward: 3:28

Do you think that's particularly unusual?

Diane Garcia: 3:31

I think it's common because a lot of times support people don't start companies. It's you know, you have people with sales backgrounds, you have engineers. Um, so it's never been something that they focused or prioritized on. It's always kind of been on the fringe of whatever they're doing. So it's that's part of why I like startups, right? You get to come in and tell them how to run this amazing experience for your customers.

Charlotte Ward: 3:57

Yeah, yeah. You're right. Support people don't really start businesses that often, and particularly not big ones that then require whole support teams. Um so I think then that that's interesting that you're interviewing for a role with someone who really has probably very little idea. As you said, you have you've got a real direct experience of this, very little idea of what success looks like in that role, right? So I guess aside from saying, well, here's my here's my complete plan for the first year, because I know what I'm doing. How how do you like going in? How aside from appearing prepared, how do you convince them that you are actually the right person for the job if they don't really necessarily have the experience to understand what they're hiring for?

Diane Garcia: 4:46

Yeah, I think that that's something that you have this opportunity to educate them. And this is how you also come off really well, especially when you're looking to be an early hire, sharing with like founders what your experience is and how you approach customer experience and articulating the problems that you've seen, the problems that you want to solve, and just the way that I mean, I'm biased, you know, support-driven growth. But you know, CS teams really can help with revenue, building a reputation, building a brand. And speaking to that, it blows their minds, right? Because this is relatively new. Um and just being able to sell support and success within their organization and speaking to that so well, it just positions you in a way where they're gonna introduce you to the company and they're gonna be like, wow, that person knows what they're talking about, and they're gonna help me run my business.

Charlotte Ward: 5:40

Yeah, I I agree. I think it's a really interesting dynamic having um having interviewed in those kind of situations myself as well, where um, or or indeed like consulting in that space to some degree as well. Um, it it is an education piece, and I think that's a really interesting dynamic for an interview. Um definitely that chuckle tells me that you've been there as well.

Diane Garcia: 6:07

Oh yes, I interview the interviewer.

Charlotte Ward: 6:10

Yeah, yeah. When I'm job adding, and actually, you know, that's actually a fair point because going in as somebody who is experienced in this business function and is experienced in this space to an organization and a leadership team that doesn't have that experience, it is an education piece, but you are also interviewing them. I mean, every job search to a degree, you should be interviewing your potential employers, right? But I think maybe particularly more so in that set of circumstances that there is a kind of you're feeling out whether that is the right place for you in in so many more ways, aren't you?

Diane Garcia: 6:50

Yeah, definitely. And that was actually something I would speak to in when you're looking in startup support, is just ask the founders what their experience is with support. How do they view this? Because this is you also asking, are you gonna get the resources you need? Are they gonna view CS as an afterthought? Are they not focused on a great customer experience? Because if you're working with people that don't value support, like one, you're probably not gonna get like career growth, you're not gonna get resources, and you're probably not gonna like the job. And I think actually a lot of people don't take the time to interview and find out those things because they are so important. Like you need to be supported or at least have people recognize that they will need to support you when you're looking for a new role.

Charlotte Ward: 7:35

Yeah, that makes complete sense. Do you think that it's possible to turn around a organization that isn't entirely convinced of the the value of support if you do and if you do decide to take on that challenge of going for that particularly kind of uh uh of going for that particularly um oh, what's the word I'm looking for? I'm gonna have to edit this thing. Um do you think that that's something that is particularly difficult if you do decide to take on that challenge of going into a place where it's you haven't managed that early education in the interview process, you haven't convinced them, for example, of the value of support-driven growth and the and the value of support in an organization. If you decide to step into that role anyway for for whatever reason, um is it possible to turn around that organization and that leadership team to support-driven growth once you're in?

Diane Garcia: 8:35

I'm gonna say yes and be optimistic. Um, it's gonna be hard. And I think this is also coming like from my support background. This is something like personally that I've had to work through is like finding my own voice and having confidence in my ideas and my opinions. Because I mean, for the most part, like we're talking to customers all day, every day. We have like a gut instinct of what's gonna work, what's not, what resonates. We learn those through those conversations. And I think in like CS and in support, it's about really taking those findings and those gut feelings and learning about okay, let's get some data to back this up and really kind of earning yourself that seat at a table. So the challenge really is just being vocal and having the data to back it up so that you're seeing just as any other team in within the organization, where you're pitching your ideas, you're creating value, and it's gonna get executed.

Charlotte Ward: 9:31

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