220: Building a Team from Scratch with Matt Dale

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 220 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is building a team from scratch. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Matt Dale. Matt, lovely to have you back as always. And it's been a while. So um thank you.

Matt Dale: 0:41

It's always good to be had on your podcast. It's always fun.

Charlotte Ward: 0:44

I think it was solidly winter when we last spoke, and we've just been commenting how hot it here is here in the UK, which you know, I know that you know you're uh you're kind of from much warmer climes than I am.

Matt Dale: 0:58

So it was a hundred last weekend, and that's in in the the wrong kind of system for whatever you measure. Like that's our system and not yours or your old system, your throwaways, rather. So uh yeah, it was a hundred over the weekend. So it's a little warmer here than it is probably there in the UK, but we also have air conditioning. So, you know, that's true.

Charlotte Ward: 1:15

We we've got no modern conveniences and all of the complaining.

Matt Dale: 1:19

It's daub and waddle, right? That's that's how that works, yes.

Charlotte Ward: 1:21

Yeah, what what there we go?

Matt Dale: 1:23

Yeah, there we go.

Charlotte Ward: 1:23

Wattle and Daub. That there's a reference that no one's gonna get because they did not Google it. Yes, yeah, yeah. They were they weren't party to our previous conversation. Much like do you recall the time, and I'm sure some this will be in an outtake segment somewhere at some point. Do you recall the time we spent 25 minutes talking about the speed limit of 38 miles an hour in Windsor Green Park?

Matt Dale: 1:44

And it was lovely. And I think it was actually in the in one of the outtakes. I think you had an outtake episode that got mentioned in.

Charlotte Ward: 1:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Dale: 1:51

Not the whole thing, but yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 1:52

No, see the heat's playing with my head. It's around, I think we've just established that in what I would call old money, it's around it's around, which is another peculiarly British reference, that it's around 78, did you say, here today, which is super hot for me. Way too hot. 26, 26 in in Celsius.

Matt Dale: 2:12

In real ways of measuring temperature, yes.

Charlotte Ward: 2:15

Proper measurements.

Matt Dale: 2:16

Yeah. Good, good.

Charlotte Ward: 2:18

Anyway, none of that. I mean, I'm sure we'll get to measurements today, one way or another in this conversation for the next 10 minutes or so. We're gonna be talking about building a team from scratch, aren't we?

Matt Dale: 2:28

Perfect. Yeah. So kind of jumping in the time machine, probably for both of us and going way back in time to when we had small teams, yeah, starting out uh early in our careers or or early in our time at a new company. Um, and and yeah, I think, you know, kind of when when we talked about this um from my perspective, I was kind of thinking, hey, what are the things that I wish I'd known about? What are the the key points that I should have been looking at as a young manager or a team of one or a team of two? Um and I I think I came up with a few different topics um or a few different concepts. So I'll share those with the group, and I think we're gonna dive in on one or two and kind of do a little more detail. But the the first thing that I that I think about though, as as you as you're building your team, it's really easy to get caught up in the day-to-day. Um you're you're the single person doing support, or you're there's a couple of you, and it's like we're we're dealing with this mountain of tickets that are coming in, or chats or phone calls, whatever channels you're supporting. Um, and and product is doing their stuff, the company's moving quickly, we're everything to everyone, and and just doing our best to keep our heads above water. In that time, it's it's really important to take a minute outside of the queue, take a step back and think about building processes that scale, doing things that you know you don't need to do right now because you're a small team and you're just kind of like, hey, we can get by with doing these things that are a little sloppy. Um, but if you maintain that sort of um that process, as the team gets bigger, you're gonna find yourself in a position like I have and Charlotte that you may have as well, where it doesn't work anymore. And that's and that's a huge problem. And so if you can kind of approach it from the outset by saying, hey, how is this gonna work when we have twice the number of clients, twice the number of tickets, five times the number of phone calls, like whatever those things are, how how will this process work? The next topic that I think is really important is getting things out of your head and onto paper. Now, I don't necessarily mean putting them on physical paper, but you know, we have this bad habit as human beings of knowing things in our head. And once we've learned it, we don't have to think about it anymore. And so again, if you're a small team and you've you've got everything in your head and you know how to answer things, you know, to go talk to John on IT programming to get this thing done. It's all it's all there and you know what you're doing. What you really need to do though is think about those different processes and document them in such a way that someone coming alongside you is able to look at that document and go, ah, this is what I need to do. They don't need to ask you the question. They just can go, hey, here's the reference, here's the resource. Um, so I think that's a that's another thing that I wished I'd done more of in in my uh earlier days. Um, the next one that I think is important, and this is one I think we want to come back on a little later, talk a little more detail, but really identifying the thresholds or metrics or or ways that you know when it's time to hire someone. Um, because typically when you find yourself in those positions, you're running crazy, you're doing the best you can, and suddenly it goes from being a 40-hour work week to being a 50-hour work week, and then it's a 55-hour work week. And by the time you realize, oh shoot, I need someone else, you you're already running at 115%. And there's no extra room to say, I've got to take time out now and build a hiring process and build an onboarding process and find someone that's great to hire and get them up to speed and on our on our product. And so um, and again, I think we can kind of dive in on this a little bit more, but but that's a really key part of understanding, hey, how do I how do I get ready for a team that's gonna scale? The last, the last thing that I think is is essential or really important to think about would be to put together a training plan uh and and resources, kind of have things laid out as this is how I want to train or onboard someone. And this goes back to the stuff that you've put on paper uh digitally or whatever, that you've been working on as you learn things, you're putting them down, uh, but but actually having kind of a formal plan in place. When we when we're ready to hire someone, these are the things that I want them to know. That's really important because again, typically that first hire, the first few hires, you're underwater and and you're just being asked to do more work. And and when you get that new person on board, you don't go from one FTE where you're where you're able to do, you know, 40-hour work. We you suddenly are hampered and hamstrung in your ability just to do what you're doing. You've got to onboard them, you've got to answer their questions. And so you go from being 100% effective to down to 60 or 70 percent effect effective ethic, however you would say that word, yeah, efficacy there. Um, and and and you're you're not able to be as efficient as you should be. And so the the the cue is already a mountain that you can't climb on your own. You've brought this other person to help and you're underwater. So I think those are kind of my big things that I wanted to to share with the group as as things to think about as you're engineering your team and stuff to plan on.

Charlotte Ward: 6:54

I I think they're all really important. I think there's a couple of broad categories and fact and considerations that I would bring to bear on all of those. One is that uh the the biggest consideration is that I think they all require the investment of time. You actually have to carve out the time, and the longer you leave it, the harder it gets. Exactly as you were just saying. This is gonna be a problem when we've got 50% more customers, 100% more customers, you know, when we've got four times the engineers or the agents, this is gonna like magnify. Um, and then you're fighting a losing battle, effectively. So I think that my observation is that all of these things require the investment of time and you're better getting in that getting that time in early, actually. And I think that um three of them I would almost put in the same category. I always say, I've said in so many forums, that I see processes as knowledge in motion. All a process is, is a document that tells you what to do next. It's just another form of knowledge, right? Um, and so I would say that really processes, clearly documented processes, um, and knowledge management and onboarding um really all fall into the same category of being very clear about what you're doing and how you communicate it and making the all of that knowledge and those types of knowledge accessible and you know, relevant and up to date. And and you know, I mean, we could talk for an hour on accessibility and relevancy of knowledge, I'm sure I certainly have in other forums. Um, but um, but so it strikes me that that those three pieces are really really particularly about knowledge and time. And and those are two things you really do have to invest in early. But but the the other, the the third point you made out of the four around thresholds and around making those judgments, which are really hard, particularly early stage, when you might have actually not much data to kind of go on. It's a bit more uh hunch-based, isn't it? I think. I mean, unless you're very lucky and you're in a super high volume predictive environment from day one. How do how do you even begin?

Matt Dale: 9:10

Yeah, I think it's kind of one of those challenges that and I think all this advice too is much easier in hindsight than it is as you're kind of planning forward. So your comment about you need to take time out so that you can focus on how do I make this thing something that I can scale with. Um, I think that intentionality is really important. Um, I think there's a a lot of different ways one could approach kind of metrics and and and thinking through um you know capacity analysis and stuff like that. And you can get really crazy hardcore. There's there's some great software out there that can can do things that for you um based on kind of your workforce management. There's there's spreadsheets you can do. I did I did one series of calculations for a former uh CFO several years ago where we're using the Erlang C calculation and doing all these different models based on you know when calls are coming in and and how many people you need to have to staff peak calls. Like you can get really crazy about that. But I think being able, especially at the early stage of a company, being able to say, this is what it feels like right now. You know, we have you know X number of dollars in revenue coming in in ARR, or we have X number of clients, and and those are resulting in Y number of tickets or client interactions. Um, and as a as an agent or as a person involved in this, I'm able to handle you know this this amount. Like it's super comfy right now, about about 50% of my time is being spent on tickets. Cool. If I look at, if I look at our our our whatever our metric we use as a measure for our company, contracts, ARR, number of clients, whatever that is, and I look at where we're at right now, I can very easily say, okay, I feel like I'm at about 50%. Um, so if we double this, I'm gonna be at 100%. And, you know, realistically, you want to leave about 20% margin there because you have things like being sick. It's important to be able to use the restroom sometimes. It's nice to take a lunch break every once in a while. We do have a thing like vacations.

Charlotte Ward: 11:00

Yeah. And actually it's important to have that 20% to do everything else we just talked about, right?

Matt Dale: 11:04

Right. There's all the other stuff to think about. So, so kind of plan something like that. So when you're looking at somewhere around when I hit 80%, which would be in, you know, a very back of the napkin calculation based on our current size, that's when I need to start thinking about another person. And and I need to already have my senior leadership prepped, um, whether that's a small company that's a CEO or a CFO or the important people that can say yes to my decision, I need to have them ready for that idea. Because at least from my experience, and and yours may be similar, a lot of times founders and people in that situation aren't thinking, how do I spend more money on support? They're thinking, I've got all these other problems. Support seems like it's fine. Why are you worried about this right now? And if you've been able to tell that story and been able to prepare them and prepare their minds for this is what we need to do as we grow, and this is as we make sales, especially in the early part, it's a very linear relationship. As you get bigger, obviously you don't want to be, you know, for every X dollars we need Y people. You want to have that kind of a different kind of a slope, not a linear slope. But I think in the beginning it's pretty easy to do that and just kind of saying, hey, let's let's stay in front of this rather than trying to play ketchup. Because when you're playing ketchup, you got frustrated clients, you got burned out people, and everyone's having a rough time.

Charlotte Ward: 12:16

And you can't invest the time in all of the other things we need to scale. Yeah, absolutely. You you touched on a couple of things. Um, one is um you talked about, you know, getting an early sense of what it feels like. And I really like that. And I'd actually even perhaps say you can simplify it further. You can even say, I don't need to know how many tickets I'm doing in a day, right? I know that I know that this is this this level of of customers, this level of clients or whatever, or this level of ARR, feels about 50% of my time or 80% of my time. And just multiply that up. If you need two of you, you need two of you for double the revenue or double the customers. Because, you know, maybe things are less predictable in the early days. Maybe a ticket isn't a ticket, isn't a ticket, you know. Um, so I'd like I I would almost say if you're really super early stage, really simplify it and say this is a full-time job. I'm I'm doing a full-time job, I can't do two full-time jobs, you know, and just and then and then like refine with tickets and then refine with like building in all the efficiencies that you're doing because you've saved that 20%.

Matt Dale: 13:28

Well, and I think it's important too to realize that your 100% or your 50% is gonna likely be more efficient and more effective than the person you're bringing in to hire with you. Um, adding a second person to a team or a couple people to a team, they're less efficient than a team of one and in that small environment. And and and likely they're less efficient than you. You're gonna have to train them. There's a lot of um extra overhead when you have more people. And so when you're looking at those cut points and you're kind of coming up with them in your head, again, don't wait until it's like, well, this is a full-time job for me. That's probably like one and a half full-time jobs for the next two people you hire. And so don't just kind of go on a, oh, I'm adding one and I'm adding one and I'm behind the whole time, but but realize, be realistic with who you are and the level of drive that you have and kind of the environment you're in, and think about, hey, if if I if I could find someone else like me, which let's face it, there's not that many people exactly like us, you know, this would be where it's at. But realistically, like if I had 80% of that, this is be would be where I'd at. So yeah, you use the back of the napkin, use the feel. Um, but but definitely round up in in in in your needs. Make sure you're having more people earlier than than less, because it's going to give you that extra bandwidth that you're gonna need to be a leader of that team and to scale with the company as it's getting ready for big growth.

Charlotte Ward: 14:42

Yeah, and absolutely. It's not to be um underestimated the drain that onboarding someone, particularly in a complex environment, can have on a team of one or two, because that can take 20, 40, 50% of someone else's time, right? So, and if you've got a learning curve, if you don't expect people to be effective for three months or even six months or more, you have these are all things you have to factor in. So you have to say, you know what, it's gonna take somebody, it's gonna take me half my time. I'm gonna get ahead of the curve by 50%, right?

Matt Dale: 15:12

Yeah, exactly.

Charlotte Ward: 15:13

Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, I know we've talked about this before, just like that refinement over time. That comes, doesn't it? It's really easy to get a little bit overexcited in a spreadsheet, I find. Um, I don't know if you're the same, but I I can, I can, I can layer on so many factors. Like when you've when you've built a team four times, you you know that what it looks like two years down the line. So you know the kind of considerations you're gonna want to make around, you know, shrinkage or uh, you know, ticket numbers or efficiencies or anything like that. I I I I'm super guilty of like setting up that spreadsheet on like day three and thinking, right, I'll pile everything in that I've got and it's just too too complicated. And I've keep it simple.

Matt Dale: 15:57

Yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 15:58

Yeah, I found I can spend like a week engineering a spreadsheet and get a hiring plan that is more accurate by about, you know, a week or two weeks.

Matt Dale: 16:09

I and I I think that's it, that's really important too. That kind of concept of good enough is good enough, right? When when when I have I talked to my director ports, a lot of what we do is it's like, hey, let's get it to 80%. Let's not kill ourselves for the last 20%. Let's put 80% in and then move on to the next thing and kind of go from there. And I think it's really easy in the beginning to be like, I have to get this perfect, I have to make it right, I have to calculate every possible whatever. Especially early stage, it's it's good enough to do back in the napkins if you're able to communicate clearly what's going on, and if you're able to provide it in the language that the person that's saying, yes, I approve this can understand. Get it to that level good enough for them and then move on. And as the company grows and as your team scales, you're gonna have a little bit more time to go cool. Like now we can add in the complexities that we need to think about because we're adding second or third channels and things like that.

Charlotte Ward: 17:00

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