55: Panel: How customer-centric are you?

Charlotte Ward: 0:12

Hello and welcome to episode 55 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. This week is another panel episode talking about customer centricity. So stay tuned for seven other leaders talking about that very topic. Today we have a big panel of previous podcast guests to talk about customer centricity. Welcome back first to Hilary Dudek. Hilary is director of customer support for North America at Gluco. Welcome again also to Craig Stoss. Craig is senior lead of Shopify Plus Escalated Support. And welcome back to Matt Dale. Matt is VP of Support at Illuminate Education. And welcome to Ash Rhodes. Ash is Director of Customer Support at VidIQ. Welcome again to Simone Setchi. Simone is based in Berlin where he heads up customer support for Doodle. Warm welcome back to you to Lauren Rose Eimers. Lauren is a support lead from Big Cartel. And finally, welcome to Josh Magson. Josh is Director of Partner Operations at Partner Hero. Let's jump right in. Welcome panelists. Thank you for joining me today. The topic for this conversation is customer centricity, and I'm particularly interested to go through a number of points with you. But really, our our overarching theme is to talk about uh how custom how customer centric you really are and your organizations really are right now, or his historically organizations that you've been involved with. So the first thing I'd like to talk about is we hear so much about being customer first, about being customer centric. Is it really the right approach? We know there are other priorities we could give our businesses. We could aim to put our employees first. Many businesses we know put shareholders first. Um what's the value in choosing one over the other? Is customer first really the right approach?

Hilary Dudek: 2:20

I think customer first or maybe close to first is the right approach. Um I think there's a difference between putting customers first and perhaps saying the customer is always right. Um I also don't think it's a um either-or situation. I think you're gonna put customers first and maybe have them tie with your employees, for example. Um striving to put them first means you know putting out a product and providing support that improves the customers' lives. Um so I think it is very important to put them first or close to first. But I think, like I said, it the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. And there's a way to balance that with also putting your employees first, for example. It may call for compromises and some trade-offs, but I don't think it's impossible.

Simone Secci: 3:10

Um yeah, so my I will put the the things into this perspective rather than choosing one or the other. Um my point of view is that you should put people first. So that could be customers and employees at the same time. Shareholders, unless you're in a very unlucky situation, already believe in the company. So I hope you don't have to convince them too much, because otherwise you're you know, if you have shareholders that are a little bit shaky about the company, then you're in trouble. But um, you know, what I mean with with putting people first is that when I started working in in tech in general, I believed that you know the the whole field was a lot about technology. And I remember reading articles about how, you know, um a lot of the a lot of startups, especially around 10 years ago, were making products that they liked rather than products that people liked or people found useful. And I, you know, and so I see that maybe the issue that you should avoid is focusing on features, focusing on technology, focusing on the sort of like artificial environment, and more focusing on what works for people. And you know, uh if you will people at the center fold of like your operations, that being the way you treat your employees, the whether you treat your customers, the bottom line is listening. So, you know, I went around before this panel and asked people in my company at different levels what's customer-centric from your from your point of view, right? So for sales is like a thing, for product is a thing, for support is a thing, but what we have in common is that we listen. You know, we're in a sales call, we listen to the customers, where you know, um product, we do a lot of extensive testing on on people. Um trying to listen to them and gather all the evidence that we have to base our product choices on. And in support, we try to gather the feedback, funnel it in, listen to people when you know when we have to say no, especially it's always you know, from my point, I always tell agents why don't you ask more? Like uh even if somebody is leaving, like why are they leaving? What can we do? Like, what didn't work out? So to me, it's all about this putting people first, it's all about listening.

Lauren Eimers: 5:42

I love that. And I have to echo um what you both just said. And I don't think it has to be an either-or situation or uh customer first or employee first. I think we have to understand that you know, companies, corporations, businesses are living, breathing things, and we have to pivot with the times and having this like either-or situation, um, this very um defined like who gets to come first, I think that's detrimental. And if we hail from a place of empathy, um, and if that can direct our decisions, I think that it benefits everyone. Even even if you are um working for a place where shareholders do have a lot of say, hailing from a place of empathy and care and trying to make you know the best choice again, like you were saying, people-centered. I don't think you can go wrong in that respect. So instead of it being like this binary way of thinking, why not a spectrum? And there are going to be days and weeks where you have to focus more on your employees because as a leader, aren't they your customers too? Like you need to be putting your team first and you need to be advocating for them. And then there's going to be other quarters or months or weeks where you really have to drive and put those customers first. And people might be having to put in extra hours or, you know, maybe having to um, you know, log in during an outage. But again, if we're able to pivot with the times and if we're hailing from that framework of empathy and putting those people first, I think that that really is a winning scenario, um, says the therapist, of course. But I really don't think that there's um a lot of places you can go wrong if you're trying to do good by your team and the people that you're serving as your customers.

Matt Dale: 7:32

I think as you develop kind of your strategy too, when you're when you're thinking about what do we mean when we say customer first or sharehold, like any of those terms, they have a lot of uh baggage probably for each of us. And if you asked each of us, we might mean something slightly different. Um, as we talk to our team and the people that are actually on the front lines, you know, talking to our customers, um, it's important that we have a clear understanding in our organization of what does that actually mean when we say, hey, like if, for example, we said, hey, we're a customer-centered company, you know, does that mean um the customer, any customer, we have to do whatever they tell us? Like, and I think that would be a way that a person on our teams could see that and say, yeah, I need to, this this customer is saying they need this, so we need to do this for them. In reality, though, I think what we're saying is looking at the customer base as a whole and saying, what is actually good for them, um, both from kind of our perspective of we know how we built our product or how our service works, and we know how it's intended. What makes the most sense from that perspective while at the same time being really open to hear how people are using and what their actual needs are? Because I think it's very easy. You know, I work at a software as a service company, and it's very easy for us to get in this mindset. Like the engineers are like, this product is perfect the way it's shipped, as long as nobody uses it, we're great. And then on support, we kind of come up against that wall where the customers are using it and they're saying, hey, like this doesn't work the way I'm expecting it to. And so I think on support, our role is to to hear and be the voice of that customer, hear what they're saying, hear how they're experiencing it, marrying that with our wisdom and understanding of how the product built to kind of say, cool, how can we help, how can we make it a better experience for for the customers as a whole, not just this person who's calling in right now, but but but our whole customer base, and how can we prioritize it appropriately? This feature versus this feature, how which one should we focus on? And unless we have some clarity on our teams and in our in our guiding principles to say this is what we mean by, I think it's going to be very hard for us um on our teams and also as a company as a whole to make the right decision for our customers.

Charlotte Ward: 9:27

Awesome. Yeah, so listening. Listening is absolutely the key, isn't it? Um I think that it takes us really nicely into the second uh discussion point I want to hear, which is if we are listening, which I think we're saying is really the the tr true exhibit of a customer-centric company and a customer-centric approach, what value does that customer-centric approach have for your company or your team or even just you?

Craig Stoss: 10:04

For me, the to me it's all about providing an environment where your employees are free to explore uh the actions right for a given situation that arises. Um often you talk about customer centricity and then you start putting restrictive policies around well, you know, you can only give refunds and this set of 10 criteria are matched. Or, you know, if someone takes 20 minutes on a phone call and your guideline is 12, they get reprimanded. Um you can't start putting in these types of policies and then talk about being customer centric. So you know, when I talk about value of customer centricity, it's that people are allowed to solve the problems. And um, you know, you create as a leader the ecosystem that they don't fear management of reprisals. They don't uh they don't have a playbook, they have a set of guidelines and are judged based on the outcome the customers achieve, whether that be a CSAT score, whether that be, you know, using your software more or using your product more or getting a feature they want, whatever it might be. Um I I kind of talk about providing like meandering lines in sand that can move by the wind, not hard brick walls. And and I think that's the the value of being customer-centric is driven by that type of attitude in ecosystem.

Charlotte Ward: 11:27

Yeah, that echoes exactly something I heard somebody say at a presentation like a year ago. Um, I think it was the head of support at Rafa Cycling in the UK, when um I asked him how he formalized such a customer-centric approach. And he said that he defined procedures that were pretty bare bones, but that he gave his agents the freedom to zigzag across those procedures, which I felt was a really nice way of putting it.

Craig Stoss: 12:05

I've always used uh uh the analogy of a of a planet, right? Every company has its core policies that you know, without that the planet couldn't exist. You know, then you have the mantle, which is kind of the the land that we all live on, and and that's kind of you know, we can kind of tangibly see things around us and and maybe can reach out to the next door neighbor or the store and and get the few tools that we might need, but they're all within reach. And then there's kind of the airplanes that fly through the the first layer of of what you know uh the atmosphere, uh the sky, and they can see the breadth of everything. They see all the tools, they see all the things that are that are available to them um and to and can access it at any time, and they have that freedom to explore the whole planet. Um, and then you don't the you know, the too far you get into the out out atmosphere where there's not enough oxygen to breathe, and there's chaos and uh fire and things burn. And and so you know, you have to find that happy medium of letting your employees fly through the sky without flying too high or being stuck on the ground, or worse of all, being chained to the to the core.

Ash Rhodes: 13:09

I can honestly say I have never heard that metaphor before, but I dig it. Other other than things on fire in the upper atmosphere.

Simone Secci: 13:18

That's that sounds unpleasant.

Charlotte Ward: 13:22

So Ash, what about um what about you? What value does being customer-centric bring to you?

Ash Rhodes: 13:30

Being customer-centric is um it provides a core uh it prov it allows our customers to know that that we are always a resource to them. It will we uh my current company has not only a very strong competitor, it is a very quickly growing competitive market. So we have to build our our value proposition based off of more than just the fact that we exist. So we have to have things like um fantastic I I mean obviously fantastic customer service, but also just the the the best data and the best X, Y, and Z. Um being always customer obsessed, being uh we in fact it is one of our core values is we are creator obsessed. And so uh this entire uh conversation being uh customer focused is what we do, what is what I preach to my uh my employees is I will always have their backs, which is refers back to what we were just discussing, um finding that that delicate balance. Um but also we have to always be trying to uh help our customers um be uh be successful in in whatever way they possibly can be. We're not gonna roll out entirely new features just for uh one individual person. We have four million of them, but we're going to do whatever we can to find the solution that that will work for them. So there you have it.

Charlotte Ward: 15:37

Yeah, yeah. That's quite an interesting uh uh challenge when you've got that volume of uh of subscribers or customers uh to deal with, um, particularly when they're uh as an eclectic a bunch as I imagine creators to be. Um there there are other balancing acts, aren't there, Josh? And maybe you've got something else to say here as well. But uh Partner Hero, you're kind of dealing with two sets of customers as well, aren't you? You're dealing with the your partners, the people who really are buying your services, but their customers as well.

Josh Magsam: 16:15

Yeah, you know, um, and I that's that's an interesting balancing act that we have to pull. And I think there's also something I want to reach back to in a minute, too, you know what Ash and Craig were saying about I think relationships, because I think, and this is something we we practice at Partner Hero, um, for sure. Business has always kind of been about relationships. That's kind of a truism you can sort of slice back through any disruptive tech paradigm, whatever you have, and really the relationship is at the core of it. But um yeah, with with partner here, I mean we we definitely have you know a number of situations where we're in my role and our managers, we're working with our partners, we're trying to figure out what they need for the success of their business. We we try to be strategic. Um, their business, the success of their business is the success of our business. So, you know, we're not gonna spend our time trying to sell them on a new line of services or um sort of calculate, oh, what if we just added a few more folks to this team? How would that look for our bottom line? We want to understand what they need to do, where they're going, how their business is evolving. Do we need to plan to add a service to help them? Do they know that we already offer that service? You know, so that that does tie back to that relationship. If we keep in close contact with our partners and know where they're going and what they're doing, um we can help serve them in the ways that they need to. And and in the current economic landscape, that's being flexible when a lot of them are coming to us saying, hey, things aren't looking great. How can we kind of keep this team together? But, you know, um kind of figure out what that looks like for the six months and saying, you know, absolutely we want to be here for you. Um, but yeah, we're at the same time sort of coaching our people, whether they're based in Boise or HQ, if they're in uh our Manila Hub or one of our Honduras offices, that um if if they're with a Boston-based e-commerce company, um, you know, they need to work with our partner contacts and understand what they need and service them, but they need to understand how to service that business's customers first and foremost, and and then how to be the voice of the customer. And that's been one of the things that's been interesting is um where some of our teams have um eventually kind of taken over sort of a full line of product support and to where the the partner has kind of transitioned most of that to us. And for our team to you know, understand, hey, partner, your your customers are asking for this. Um, let's put together sort of a presentation to show you what your customers are asking us for. And we can't deliver that, you need to take this back to your engineering team. So it it definitely is multiple levels. They need to understand, hey, is the partner happy with my team's metrics? But also, do they know what their customers are transmitting to me? How can I pass that on up to them? Um and again, that for me that keeps coming back to that relationship question. Um Do you spend time with your with your partners, with your customers? Do you get to know what they want, what they need? Um at Discogs, we would go to record shops, we'd talk to record store owners. Sometimes we'd be in a city, we'd drop in, we started our own um, the business started its own brand of uh record fairs to bring sellers together and to talk to them and say, hey, we get support requests from you folks all the time. But you know, what when we're on the floor in real time, what what do you guys need to do? What do you guys need us to build? Um, you know, and and uh I for me fundamentally, I grew up in a small town with a family business, watching my dad interact with other business owners, go into the small town. Bank to get his loans and work with things. And it was all based on relationships. And I never knew anything different to the point of um when it came time for me to get my first car loan. I just drove down to the bank and and walked into my dad's banker's office and said, Hey Rick, I need a car loan. And he just was like, okay. And then he called my dad later and he's like, that was great. He's like, he has no idea how this business works, does he? You know, because I just knew Rick. And I went in there to talk to Rick, right? And I got my car loan and it was a sweet car, so that was great. But um, you know, it I just had this innate sense that's like, I know Rick, Rick's gonna take care of me, and and and he did. He did have to tell me how who I needed to talk to and how that was gonna happen. But you know, it was really about that relationship, and it wasn't about the name on the outside of the bank. I ended up leaving that bank when I moved to Oregon because I didn't like the way that Branch Out here handled my business, right? So it if you don't keep in touch with that, um you lose that that contact, it's over.

Charlotte Ward: 20:59

Yeah. So and building those relationships. So so that kind of act of listening and and and that two-way communication that you can build over time is about trust, isn't it? So you know you you absolutely you might you might well be approached to handout alone at some point or something.

Josh Magsam: 21:16

It's gonna be a very small one, I'll let you know that.

Charlotte Ward: 21:20

Lauren, as a uh another organization that deals with creators of a very different sort, what's your take on uh what you know what the value of being very customer-centric is?

Lauren Eimers: 21:34

Well, um we are given as the customer support team, we are given a lot of autonomy in how to help our customers. And back to kind of you know, the airplanes flying over, you know, are our leaders and they're giving us boundaries in which we can operate from. I like to kind of liken it to um women's lacrosse. If you've ever seen a women's lacrosse game, there is no out of bounds, but we all want to kind of stay together so we can play ball, right? But you can really go, you can really go way out there to try to, you know, reach your goal. And as long as we're given these boundaries um and we operate within those boundaries, you know, we're given a lot of autonomy to better help our shops. And I think that, you know, it kind of echoes, I don't know, um Craig, I think it was you basically saying like micromanaging is the way to kill that kind of autonomy to be empowered to help your customers. And boundaries are healthy in both directions, though, because we aren't doormats in which customers can um, you know, take out their um, you know, profanity or the bad day that they're having. Like we are also allowed to stick up for ourselves and say, like, you know what, if we can't keep these conversations civil, I'm a real person, I'm not a bot, and I reserve the right to cease service with you if you do not treat me in like at least with a modicum of respect. Um, and it's been interesting, once you know the team was super clear on that, not only the morale that was boosted for us, but to see the respect that was also returned from you know, shops like once we did set a boundary. I have an instance where a customer who he did think that I was a bot. Um, and I own that my verbiage in my email was very bot-like, emailed back with all sorts of colorful language. And I set a very hard boundary. I was like, listen, I'm here to help you out, but you have to be respectful. And the conversation that ensued, it turned out that he was a struggling artist in Australia, and the monthly fee that we had just charged him had caused his bank account to overdraft, and he was rightly, really frustrated. So again, since I had been empowered by leadership to like help this artist out, I pushed out his billing, I refunded his payment, and I said, I'm so sorry, like we're here for you. And he's been using us for years now. Um, so I think going back to that, you know, having boundaries is so important in every human relationship, right? We don't want codependency in any type of our interactions. But giving your team boundaries, allowing that autonomy to operate within those boundaries, that again, that women's lacrosse game, like we're all trying, we're all in the same team. We're all trying to like, you know, get that ball in the goal. Um, but let's do it in each in our own unique ways. And so, especially when it comes to like helping artists and people who are creating their side hustle, it's been really, it's been a wonderful experience to have those boundaries so I can help them, but also help myself when those boundaries are being breached.

Charlotte Ward: 24:47

I think that's uh something that's slightly peculiar to being a woman in support, right? Some of the stuff you described there. Um, and it moves us very nicely on to discussion point three, which is talking about pitfalls and difficulties in focusing on the customer. And you hit some really nice points there about uh, particularly as a as a female in the front line, some of the some of the interactions you can have. Um and how free you are to deal with those, you know, as you want in an appropriate manner, how how far you are supposed to support the notion that the customer is always right and that you do everything for the customer. These are all things that we have to think about, all of us, whatever our gender on the front line. But I think there are um peculiar difficulties to being a female in the front line. Hilary, you know, I'm coming to you with this.

Hilary Dudek: 25:43

Yes, I do it. I mean, that is one of the pitfalls, is that you can't please everyone. And I think as a woman, you feel this pressure, especially to be a people pleaser. Um, it also doesn't help when I know there's other people in the support-driven community that have written about, you know, how uh customers respond to email messages from a female signature compared to a male signature. Um, so it's added pressure on us to please everyone. Um but if a company or support team does try to focus solely on the customer and pleasing the customer, it's so easy to fall into this place where there is no respect and the customer is kind of riding roughshod all over you. They're depending on how far it goes, they're dictating your product roadmap being your business goals. So, like she said, it's it's like any relationship. If you're building solely to please the customer, um you're gonna lose sight of your own vision and goals and you're gonna lose credibility, both as a support agent and as a as a team and as a company. Um, I don't know, to quote Hamilton, if you stand for nothing, what will you fall for?

Charlotte Ward: 26:54

Very, very true. Does anyone else have any other difficulties in focusing on the customer actually?

Ash Rhodes: 27:02

I do. Uh without throwing anybody under the bus in my own organization or previous ones, um when you become more focused on um doing the right thing by the customer, I mean there there are associated costs with it. There's people costs, there's actual financial costs in refunds or developer time and so on. And um I mean there can be pushback. There can be significant pushback both in the developer departments, uh, engineering, uh, upper management when your uh you might find your refund or churn rates go up. Ideally, churn rates won't go up, but refunds might. Um man, that like it can be a hard sell uh to for all of that. And ideally, people will share your vision. Ideally, people will understand the larger picture uh of what you are doing and that it is going to have a longer term benefit for everybody and everything. But it can it can be problematic uh to to get that sell um that that this short-term pain it has a long-term benefit. Uh and um it's it's caused me problems. I don't know about the rest of you guys.

Simone Secci: 28:27

So yeah, no, I'm I was just thinking of something related to this, that um one of the the beatfuls is also related to how do you help your organization grow. Right. Um I've been in different like environments uh in in so far. You know, I started in social media, a very emotional relationship with people, uh adspace business, this type of thing. I've been in e-commerce, uh, I've been in account management, similarly to you know, what Josh was talking about before. This dual relationship. Um, and it's also like where do you want the organization to go? What set of customers is more important? Because people know what they know what they want, what they like now, but markets evolve, technologies around you evolve. So maybe you want the product to evolve and change, and then in order for that to happen, you need to focus on a certain set of customers to help the organization to evolve and change and give people a better product, you need to make difficult choices. You know, maybe you are uh you have a certain uh business model, right? We I mean it it it's from a support perspective, it's easy to think you know, make the assumption I put customer at the centerfold, I always want to get the the best to people. But like they don't necessarily always know what's best for them in time, you know, and then that might change, and you want to be able to proactively know what's best for customers, right? And so you have to find this balance, allowing your organization to evolve. Maybe you start from a business model like uh with ad space, you want to evolve into SaaS model. You have B2C, you want to go in B2B. How you do that? Like, how do you accompany this process focusing on what type of customers? So I think it's not a resolution, but like understand this, it's very complex. Like, how do I leave people behind, focus on these people now, help the organization move in the right direction, understand what the right direction is for me, for the organization and for the customers. I think this is a very difficult uh balance. It can be a pitfall, so I'm focusing on the wrong set of customers.

Matt Dale: 30:52

Yeah, I think kind of on those along those lines, I think it as I've seen our company grow from you know early stage startup to a much more mature company over the last 10 years, um I I really noticed kind of a shift as we've as we've gotten bigger. In the very beginning, we were doing things that we felt were customer focused, um, but but were probably kind of more in the uh almost abusive category of that, where a customer said something, so we'd do it, and we'd we'd make the change as quickly as we could. And it wasn't necessarily bad at that stage. Like we had 20 big customers, and if one of them needed something, yeah, let's let's focus in and let's do that. As we've grown, you know, we have you know more than 2,000 school districts across the country now, and I we can't be as responsive to if one district wants something a certain way, um, we can't just make that change unilaterally for everybody else that's using the product. And so we ended up finding kind of going through the transition phase where we got original early customers kind of having to help bring them along to where we need to be as a company now to succeed and to grow and to scale properly. Um, the things that we were doing that were unsustainable that were that were important in that early stage, but but kind of making that transition, I think, for our customers has been a challenge. I think that was something that was not an obvious pitfall, at least for me. Uh as as we've gone through it, it makes a lot of sense. But but it wasn't, it was kind of just like, hey, let's do the right thing for the customer. And then as we as we shifted, that the right thing is is a little different, and the customer expects, well, I'm I'm this important person, I've been with you forever, you need to make this change. And it's like, well, you know, we we we actually can't because of our bigger picture strategy, which is being customer focused, but it's not customer focused on you, it's customer focused on all of our customers and what's best for them as a group. And so I think that was an interesting pitfall that we kind of ran across and have been dealing with over the last few years.

Lauren Eimers: 32:30

Well, wasn't it Henry Ford that said, if I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse and he went on to invent the automobile, right? So I think you bring up such a great point in that um being customer-centric doesn't necessarily have to be the customer dictating your zigs or your zags or where you're going, but you can advocate for that customer. Back to my whole empathy framework that I do everything from. But if we can advocate for them while still keeping vision clear and what other arms of the company are trying to do and kind of, you know, heading towards that North Star, um, I think that's where success can be found. And I know those people that wanted a faster horse were stoked when they were able to get a car, right? And I'm sure there were folks advocating for them in my perfect little um envisioning of how the automobile was invented. We all know it wasn't that simple, but I I think that it there can be, there can be a an environment or a synthesis of being an advocate, but still seeing that North Star and being able to bring your company into the future and where you wanted it to go. Um, and yes, sometimes you do lose some of those folks that still want to ride the horse. And that's okay because there's other services out there for them too, right? Um, but again, it's that advocacy and empathy framework that I think can really help in that success.

Matt Dale: 33:56

I think we see a lot of examples of companies that have to have to do that or choose to do that, and are actually successful in in some cases because of it. I think I was going back through some some really old um Macintosh articles about when the iMac first came out, and people were losing their minds because it had this weird new you know uh plug for they got rid of the Apple Desktop bus. It was this universal serial bus. There's nothing written, like there are no products I got. There's 27 products I can buy for my iMac, and that's all that I can plug in. And printers don't work, and oh my gosh, this is terrible. And and the floppy disk is gone. What are we gonna do? The floppy disk, how are we gonna transfer our files? And you know, we we look back on that now and and and laugh, right? Like, has anyone used a floppy disk recently, right? Um, pretty much everybody's using USB of of some form or another. And and had Apple not said this is their direction we're going, then it would have taken longer for that standard to be adopted. And and so I think I think there are cases where we definitely don't want to be you know skating to where the puck is or where the customers are or what they're asking for. We need to be aware of what we can do, what we're trying to accomplish, big picture, and then and then being able to say, cool, how can we how can we get somewhere in that sweet spot that is really actually advocating for them and giving them something that they need, but maybe right now is going to be a little bit of a pinch and uncomfortable as we move them from where they are to where they gotta go.

Ash Rhodes: 35:11

Basically the difference between maybe capital C customer as a group and little c customer, the individual, and acknowledging the difference between the two and knowing that little C customer might get upset about it and and acknowledging with empathy that but also keeping an eye on uh on the bigger picture.

Charlotte Ward: 35:34

Yeah, absolutely. The uh the the product uh side of this is interesting, isn't it? Because as as several of you have said now, the the in different ways the the vision uh the visionaries in the product world really want to drive uh, in my experience, in a certain direction. And that is often a great direction, but it's not always a great direction. I think I think we've all encountered product groups or engineering groups who are just entirely fascinated with the shininess of their own product and actually don't necessarily produce something that's of value or interest to the customer, right? So I think that there that this is about there is some level here of listening and and responding to your customer, but also being an advocate for change regardless of what customer with a big or little C says.

Matt Dale: 36:29

Well, and if you kind of think back talking about Apple as a company again, they they've just kind of backed off on their on their keyboards that was the best keyboard in the world because it made the laptop super thin. As as they've moved on with the latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models, they've realized after you know four or five years of people being really frustrated with these keyboards that hey, keyboard is actually kind of an important part of the computer. Um we should probably ship it with one that's sort of best in class instead of this one that makes everybody angry in the brakes all the time. And so I think there are definitely examples in in a lot of situations where we think that we know what's best, but we don't really understand who our customers are and what they what they truly need. And so I think there's that that balance between the the arrogance of I know what's best for you and and the I'm gonna do whatever you say, and the sweet spot's somewhere in between those two poles, but but it but it's it's sometimes hard to see as you're in the middle of it, and and sometimes you don't even know until you you do that, and then then it's then it's really how do I respond if I've shipped something that is you know not working well or that we need to change? How can I be an advocate for the customer? How can I treat them with empathy, um, you know, in a in a less than optimal situation that I myself or my company, my team has caused, and and and what's my response there, and how can I be customer-centric in that response?

Simone Secci: 37:41

This uh uh this specific thing about Apple made me think of something that I've been dealing with for the last 10 months, um, which is about you know uh going into a different set of customers. So what in my company we did this shift to B2B to business to business, uh moving from B2C, you know, and then as like many uh startup environments, we're only 80 people now. When I started, we were like 40, I think 35, something like that. Uh you know, we're we all have our shiny Macs and like we're all like very much involved with that environment. We know a lot about that environment. I've been using Macs for work since 2011. I do have a Windows computer at home, but like I never did work things with it. And then when we started to have this very large customers who work in healthcare, uh in uh you know, in education, what's their main set of products? It's all Microsoft products, it's all Outlook, it's all you know, MS something. So we had to relearn everything. Now we have to become the biggest specialist in a product that we don't know really, we didn't know really well. We had to like, you know, we we don't have those machines, we had to figure out how to really research in that environment because that's the environment that they use and understand it better. Right? We had this like super incredible technology that we worked with with this max, but like our customers don't necessarily. They have computers with the Internet Explorer, you know, and and they have this like complex calendars, like it's not they're not Google calendars. They have you know this this uh Office 365 exchange, you know, some local, some online, like they don't really know how to explain it. So I feel like there was a lot of being customer-centric there, like put like putting yourself in their shoes, like understand what they work with. And and it was really like a sobering experience, I think, for especially a lot of our engineers, you know, like and and that they had to understand this environment. And uh, you know, to me, I I just had this this evening today talking with somebody because

Craig Stoss: 40:00

we were you know we i would just um bring a new tier two person technical support into the team and they were you know was trying to reassure them about their difficulty in in in understanding this outlook environment like you know i never had to deal with this before it it's it's so complex certain times i i'm really like feel like i'm behind and i was like i've been dealing we've been trying to understand this for 10 months we still don't understand it completely you know so just to give you an idea of like i don't know how uh uh it this is like a discovery process also in a way you know to understand what what people are dealing with what what you need to do what you need to understand the the the context um behind it yeah yeah well let let's think about it from the inside then um how how how can you support this kind of customer centric approach how do you build structures and processes that allow you to be customer centric in the right way at the right moment with the appropriate amount of freedom um and and is it is it kind of something you can measure or codify Charlotte knows I I like my metrics but uh um you know I one I mean the the typical CSAT and stuff and MPS these these metrics are ones that always bounce around when we talk about customer centricity I tend to think that you know maybe a uh not necessarily a better metric but a more business focused metric are the ones that the the business uses already you know revenue renewal rates repeat business um you know I was consulting with someone recently and and used the example of uh the Ritz Carleton Hotel used to or maybe still does had a policy where any employee could spend up to $2,000 um to solve a customer situation without any further approvals. And I mean that is clearly an example of the freedom I was expressing earlier about providing frameworks and and tools to to your employees but on top of that I would love to see the metric of customers who had this policy used with them versus the average of repeat business, repeat stays at the hotel. Because I think that would show that would be a way of showing that that policy has an impact that that freedom that you've given your employees has caused these people to return to your hotel more frequently than the average customer would. And and I would think that repeat stays is something that most hotels would would likely measure. The tools the documentation the escalation paths um providing test environments if you're in software uh training um budget like like I just said swag I mean you know everyone loves getting a pair of socks in the mail randomly um but providing you know those kind of things uh in the in the to build the structure around it and giving those employees a freedom again as as I repeated earlier um to me is the way to start doing that and then measure it using the the uh the business metrics you know if if uh if you provide too much freedom and and all of a sudden you know support becomes a a cost center or or um you know success is giving away too many pairs of socks for some reason uh you know you can measure those things against the business not necessarily uh against some specific customer focused metric that that people like to invent around you know um you know CSAT MPS and CES customer effort score being the kind of the three classic examples.

Hilary Dudek: 43:36

As a uh former front desk supervisor and receptionist at a hotel I can speak to that that it's very empowering um to have that freedom we didn't have a set budget amount um I worked for a boutique hotel at least 10 years ago as a while ago um in the heart of downtown Birmingham Michigan which is quite an affluent area a lot of um famous people stayed there um a lot of teams and such um so it the the hotel did well but all my my general manager told me you just have to have one good reason for what you why you did what you did and I'm okay with it. We can talk about it maybe it won't be you know maybe I'll ask that you handle something a different way next time. As long as you have one good reason you're good. And it was not only really empowering but it gave me the opportunity to be super creative in how I got people to um either calm down if they were super angry about something or got them to come back. I remember one time there was some that stayed he had saved a piece of chocolate cake in his room and he was saving that piece of cake housekeeping thought it was garbage and they threw it out. And I sent a Bellman who is about to be off his shift I sent him around the corner to Max and Irma's I got that piece of chocolate cake from put it back in his room that man came back for the five years that I was there at least a couple times a year. So um yeah that story didn't have much of a point other than that it is really empowering and I learned a lot of lessons from how people behave and react when you react with empathy and you have the power to do these things for them. And I've kind of carried that with me in my support career forward.

Ash Rhodes: 45:17

I I can't speak for everyone but I desperately want to hear more stories surrounding like this boutique hotel. So I appreciate it. But yeah the offline offline yeah totally uh but yes the the empowerment to to like if you have a good reason do whatever it takes type of thing. I've worked for companies like that and I've I've really loved being able to be that guy that's like do whatever you need to do and and I'll cover you just make sure that it's make make sure you give me a a a reason that I can pass along um and those are the best ones. And so if if you guys can set it up so that that's the situation that you've got for your guys like I think that those are really how you build lifetime customers um and certainly lifetime employees as well uh because they always know that they've got bosses who have their backs.

Charlotte Ward: 46:22

So that's that's my Tucson Yeah totally it's it's back to freedom and it's back to the the balance between employees and customers. Doesn't have to be a choice.

Matt Dale: 46:33

I think we've talked a lot too about kind of how about that balance between empathy and customers we haven't talked a lot about how do we look at this and how do we quantify you know the effect of what we're doing. And that's something that I've been struggling on my team is trying to say like hey we're we're we're really working hard to try to take care of our customers to have a customer centric approach. How can we how can we make a justification to my leadership team and say yeah this is worth this is worth investing in and one of the things that we've been working on sort of not quite getting there I'd love to hear if anyone has some suggestions on that you know Craig I know you love metrics and numbers but um on our team we're really trying to look at um better understanding where the areas of friction are for our customers and so you know we track things in our in our ticketing system where we have what area of the system is seeing the issue in what type of an issue was it was it a bug was it a usability issue and then we're really trying to kind of dig in and and use those to work partner with our our um you know our co coworkers on on product and and on our UIUX team to say hey where are we seeing these challenges what's going on and and then and then looking at those and saying cool we're going to release this as we look at this now and over the next couple months can we can we see a difference can we see a decline in the type of issues that we were seeing with this particular area did our efforts make you know did it move the needle or or or make a difference they're not easy from a like I just build a report in Zendisk Explorer and it's perfect and I don't have to think about it. Like it's not that kind of reporting but I think I think we can get into some of that and say look we're actually making making a positive change here because we're seeing a decrease in this type of an issue and that's something that we targeted with our with our team to try to say hey what what is actually good for the customer in this case and so um so I think that that is good and then and then ultimately what we're looking for is overall reduction in ticket volume or support interactions around issues in general to say yeah we're actually we're moving the needle and I don't know we're early stages of that but I think that's something that's worth kind of thinking about and digging into a little bit if if anyone else here has some suggestion.

Craig Stoss: 48:25

One of my favorite uh implementations that I was ever involved with it was a tool that we procured uh to measure and and monitor the clicks and actions taken by the customers of the the SAS product that that we sold and it would give you these complex reports that you could you know you could do anything with this data. How many times did they click you know A, B, then C, how many times did they click A, B, and D? When did this error occur? How often did it occur? All sorts of amazing data that was super rich. And to Matt's point, one of the things you know again I was focusing on business metrics a second ago but one of the things that I think is also important to metricize is if you're do if you put out a a new guide, a new knowledge base article or something that's meant to ha help your customers succeed, you can start measuring are they going down the right paths using this tool and and help them to be directed to be more successful. So if you know that ABD leads to some you know scary you know dragons um and ABC is the correct path and you put something in place to prevent that, whether it be a a you know better UI, whether it be a knowledge base article, whether it be a training program, whatever it is, and then you start to compare do people still do ABD instead of A B C as their clicks? You can start to see whether that worked or didn't work. And those tools there's many of them on the market right now that that accomplish that in the SaaS world and I think it's incredibly powerful when you start focusing on on making your customers more successful without involving support or um or even product changes in many cases.

Simone Secci: 50:03

There's a a number of things that I was thinking about um I was at a meetup a while ago with with a very good um support and uh and you know service leader um that work uh for a company that does um 3D molds. I forgot the name but it's a company that started in Boston uh pretty well known and he first brought to me the idea of customer effort score. At first I was very like doubtful of this you know like I am very like skeptical about it like uh the new shiny thing and whatever business work you know and so I I did a lot of research and I and I started from a place of skepticism which is always a good place to start and looking into things and and that also gives you puts you in a perspective that maybe like a product team is also in with like when looking at the UX uh is how difficult is to get the information that people need for example like we're looking we're talking about reactive support right but like what about proactive so you start looking at paths for example like so like like Craig was saying like people need to get from here to here how difficult is that it's not just for example like um what we say but where do we put that that um chat window like what's the best place to put it like what's the strategic place to put it and then measure it in time we made this change how did that change impact the business like how did did that change impact like the number of contacts whatever those contacts might be depending on the on the support model like uh you know uh phone calls chat conversation tickets you know I made this change in the in the ticket field like on the in the form like what happens and measure that over time like how do these changes impact right this is very much like a product team works um you made a change what impact that that change had you know so thinking also like this way and and and then to relate to the idea of like churn for example you measure churn in uh you know for your for your uh for your customers right that's also an idea that's you're gonna um apply the same idea to a team what's a short rate on the team right how many people left in what time like how uh choices that we're making an impact in the team right you know for me I apply a short rate to the customers and a short rate to myself like if I lost a certain amount of people what's my turn rate on the team and and it's it's a customer centric approach like you know from that puts together sales and marketing and support the churn rate or and success and it's also an approach that you can have with uh with your team so this is just you know and this is a number of uh of ideas and this is there's many things that you can measure but like for deflection for example um there's there are ideas in in the path of deflection like how many people uh you know went to your uh to your ticket form they had some AI suggestions and then left or found the answer and didn't write the ticket uh if that works for that many people you can think that that also works for a lot of customers they can service themselves you make better articles you need to change the articles like a number of things that can inform your decision.

Charlotte Ward: 53:48

Yeah absolutely some really good pieces of advice and we're straying into my final topic which is a quickfire round on this panel uh which is just as a a closing notion or statement or two what what is your one good piece of advice in this area about being customer centric?

Matt Dale: 54:11

I'll start off um I think my my advice would just find that sweet spot between being overly focused on this particular customer's needs and and and then not caring at all about anybody. So try to kind of get in that sweet spot and figure out what what what is actually really good for for your customers as a whole and kind of think through it from a 360 degree view instead of just that single focus that you might have if you're thinking about your product or thinking about the customer experience. Kind of try to get a holistic approach and and uh you know look at the big picture.

Craig Stoss: 54:40

I think to pull this off you need to um hire employees and then and then play to their strengths. You know if you have someone that's more tech writing focused or or has a background in that you might make sure they're more involved in the knowledge base versus someone who maybe has more customer experience background and let them engage at the escalation level. You know if you by doing that you're gonna engage with those employees more deeply you're gonna build um fit the job to the person not the person to a job and and allow them to be the best people they can be. And by doing that they're gonna be more engaged your customers are going to be better served and ultimately that's going to help your business. I think that's how you achieve a proper customer focus.

Hilary Dudek: 55:21

I was gonna say I agree with everything that's been said so far. And I also think um having company values or if your company doesn't have any uh maybe team values can really help drive home where the focus should be so you can help guide your team and kind of keep it top of mind for them. For example at my previous company was in the ed tech space one of our values was students first we obviously had multiple user types employers schools but knowing as a company our students came first helped set those clear expectations when working on projects I would actually be in meetings where we decided business questions with those two words students first. So I think having values that can be quickly recalled would also help.

Ash Rhodes: 56:04

Kind of sort of along those same lines uh I alluded to it previously but um we can't just just because we are the the face of the customer um and the face of the company to the customer doesn't mean that we can do all of this alone um we have to have a strong uh backbench um within the company and so make sure that that you have buy-in like throughout the the company and and spend the time um building that buy-in of of company customer centricity uh because if you don't have that then you're not going to be able to get the the developer help the the buy-in for refunds for for absolutely everything that you're gonna need down the road um one one thing um that I think is has been important for me across multiple organizations is how you speak about the customer and how you model that side of the relationship to your teams um you know partner hero all of our clients are our partners that's in our internal documentation that's in our internal planning sessions that's our internal conversation they are partners with us and we try to frame the conversation with our entry level associates on up to a senior manager how are we upholding that partner relationship rather than are we serving the client um you know at Discogs it was whether it's a product presentation whether it's a support strategy session we do not refer to them as users they're not platform users they are community members right and we were going to talk about the folks that are in our community and how we are part of that community and how we serve them.

Josh Magsam: 57:50

And you know it sounds a little bit like you know rhetorical games playing semantics but it really is meaningful and it really does provide a framework for how you think about the relationship that you have with these people and these organizations and how you service them. If you get into the mindset of what's up with the users today, it just feels cold, feels distance when you when you're saying how's our community doing today, it just has a very different feel to it. And the more you reinforce that the more your team will live it.

Lauren Eimers: 58:22

I love that. And I think words have power um and I think kind of just dovetailing off of that my advice would be if you can operate from a firm foundation of empathy with you know healthy boundaries um empowering not only your team um but giving them you know the autonomy to serve those customers but also having that clear North Star from your leadership in the absence of micromanagement I think you've got a really great little stew of um success, customer success, customer centricity, team centricity and kind of that people first attitude. But words have so much power so I just have to like give all the hearts to that statement Josh that was amazing. So I I do feel like that makes such a difference in how you speak about who you are in a relationship with.

Ash Rhodes: 59:10

You are in a relationship with your customers and it's a two-way street and we strive for healthy relationships with healthy boundaries with a good smattering of empathy record I was going to wax eloquent about empathy but I did not I I have already gotten to know Lauren a little bit and I did not want to steal her thunder.

Matt Dale: 59:32

So very empathetic of you very true.

Simone Secci: 59:35

Simone did you have a final piece of advice for us I'm thinking of something that is in a you know in on the topic of communication I'm thinking of something that has been in our internal survey we have a a survey that we know that we give to the entire company to employees um and one of the questions that I think it's always important to me is is the mission that we have With this product clear to you. Not that it's if it's important to you, but is it clear to you? Like to understand why we're doing what we're doing. So I think if you're working in an organization where it's not really clear why we're doing something, there is no really good communication starting from all at all levels of the company, right? How can you uh like help your team help these customers? Uh I think that it's it's all coming from a place of understanding where where we're at and what we're trying to do and cascade this communication in an effective way to everyone, you know. Um and not everyone has to be convinced of everything all the time. We're all individuals, we have opinions, things sometimes work, things sometimes don't work. But you know, um we ultimately we need to provide a certain message, uh a certain idea of a certain service that you provide to people, and that communication needs to be as clear as possible because you're working with a team that needs to communicate to people somehow. So they need to have the tools to communicate to those to those people effectively. And it all starts from the you know uh the higher level of the company if we want to put it in a hierarchical sense. I don't really believe in that, but you know, it has to start somewhere, it might start somewhere else, but it doesn't matter where. It's all about how it propagates and how uh everybody is on board with it. And then I think in Nashville organically gets to your support team, as a leader you facilitate that communication and you help the customers also understand better the product because communication in your company is good in general.

Charlotte Ward: 1:01:55

Yeah, I think that you asked a really important question of every action that we we take in our organizations there and every action we empower our people to take. And that is why are we doing it? And I think that's a question we should ask a lot. Why are we doing this? What value does it bring to actually not just our customers, but all of the people that we're involved in these relationships with? So our our coworkers and and you know, every part of the organization. I think what this boils down to for me is if we're doing something that doesn't benefit either our customers or our employees or our staff, why are we doing it? Actually seems like a monumental waste of time if it doesn't benefit one of those two groups. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash fifty five for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.