64: Onboarding New Hires with Kaylin Bailey

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to the Customer Support Leaders Podcast, episode 64. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is onboarding new hires. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. So I'd like to welcome to the podcast today Kaylin Bailey. Kaylin, would you like to introduce yourself?

Kaylin Bailey: 0:39

Hi, Charlotte. Thanks for having me. My name is Kaylin Bailey. I am a director of customer support at Illuminate, which is an education technology company that does pretty much anything a educator should need to log into the computer for for K through 12 districts. And prior to that, I did customer support at GoFundMe.

Charlotte Ward: 0:59

So, Kaylin, the topic for this week is onboarding new hires in support. And I'd love to hear your particular thoughts and wisdom on this area. What do you think is the big piece of advice right up front that you could give us all?

Kaylin Bailey: 1:13

Awesome. Well, you have great timing, Charlotte. We are in week three of onboarding new support agents. So this is very fresh in my mind. One of the first things that I've learned through a few years of onboarding is when building out the onboarding calendar, to leave some room in there for when you do a review at the end of the day and they say, hey, I didn't understand this subject and I want to come back to it. That that happens a lot and we didn't have it built in to where the review sometimes happened, you know, weeks after they needed the follow-up. But if you have it built into your schedule, you can go in the next day, make sure they feel confident on it, which will help them learn the next item on the agenda. You know, and a lot of times the way we set up onboarding is that you have to fully understand assessments, for example, to go into item bank. And if they have questions about assessments, we need to address all of those questions before we jump into item bank. So leaving that time on the agenda. And if we don't use it, it's time for self-reflection. They can go through tickets. We we always fill that time, but just really not using every single hour and onboarding, but but leaving those gaps.

Charlotte Ward: 2:17

Yeah, that's great advice, actually. It allows you to do those little knowledge checks periodically enough that you can reset, right? And relearn and regroup on something. Yeah, that's uh that's a really good piece of advice. I'm gonna I'm onboarding someone in a couple of weeks. I'm gonna use that piece of advice. Definitely. There you go.

Kaylin Bailey: 2:36

Yep. And the way we uh track if they need help or didn't understand something fully is we do a little 15-minute wrap-up at the end of every day. So how did things go? What did you understand? What did you not understand? Uh, etc.

Charlotte Ward: 2:48

That's awesome. These little mini knowledge checks, you have do you have bigger waypoints in your onboarding process?

Kaylin Bailey: 2:54

Yeah, we definitely take notes from those and go, okay, next year when we do training, they said the order of this didn't make sense or they needed more time, and and we take that in for the next year as we onboard.

Charlotte Ward: 3:04

And and what what's the end point of this then? Um as you do all these mini checks? How how do you how do you get to the point where you say, you know what, you you know everything you need to know now?

Kaylin Bailey: 3:14

I think if we've covered things twice, the way we help them from there is giving more examples and phone calls. So maybe, or oftentimes the fear that they have at that point is, oh my gosh, I'm questioning myself and not feeling confident, the way you build that confidence is to give them those examples and have them work through them. And then they start to realize often that they do know this and in that quick, you know, point in the right direction. They do actually understand the concept behind it.

Charlotte Ward: 3:41

So so as you work through all of these little checkpoints and you have all these refreshes and you've got all of this um contingency in the program. As you get to the end, is it defined? Is the endpoint of this onboarding program defined by achieving all of those checkpoints? Or is it typically like a set time span? Or how does that work?

Kaylin Bailey: 4:02

So it has varied depending on the year. This year, for example, we're doing three weeks of onboarding, which is significantly shorter than we have done in the past. But the new trial that we're doing that I'm super hopeful is gonna be a big success, is doing a little graduation for the agents that have gone through training. So oftentimes it has felt like, cool, you've trained and drank from the fire hose and practiced a little bit, and now we're gonna push you into the deep end and you're now on phones and tickets. And reflecting back, it was really important to me to make that transition feel more gradual and more natural. So, what we're gonna do is have them have some test tickets and phone calls come in, five each. And once they can do five in a row that are quote, perfect, that's when they graduate. And by perfect, I don't mean that there was absolutely no grammar mistakes. What I mean is if a client had this interaction, would they be okay with it? Were there any big mistakes? Did the agent know enough to either know what to ask or to answer their question?

Charlotte Ward: 5:05

Yeah. So you so you're checking sort of the obvious things around, you know, whether they comply with your style, tone and style guides, whether they're delivering the right knowledge, so whether they're accurate enough. And uh, and I guess may I I there might also be a compliance thing there for a company like yours as well.

Kaylin Bailey: 5:22

Yeah, it's definitely making sure that they're answering the question that we need two for educators because there is FERPA laws and all that, and it's equal parts for them, making them feel more confident, like, oh yes, I did have those perfect phone calls and tickets, and I am ready to go onto the floor. So it's it's for both reasons.

Charlotte Ward: 5:38

Graduation is a really nice way of putting it because it does kind of define an end endpoint to the process, right? It becomes not just a series of little conversations and knowledge pieces and articles that they've just got to work through and kind of it it becomes a more meaningful and finite thing. Yeah, that's a really good idea.

Kaylin Bailey: 5:57

Exactly. Yep. And then even on top of that, after graduation, we're also going to have them have a buddy on the support team. So someone that supports the same product as them is going to be their main point of contact. So, oh my gosh, I'm stuck on this issue and I know I I know it and didn't imagine the right direction, or oh my gosh, I'm completely thrown off. They've got a first point of contact there, and then um, as needed, they can guide them in the right direction for troubleshooting.

Charlotte Ward: 6:22

Awesome. Yeah, yeah.

Kaylin Bailey: 6:24

I mean, the end of onboarding doesn't mean that you know everything, right? Certainly not. Yet we we joke with our new agents, but aren't really joking that for this first six months you're useless, and that's expected, and you have to be okay with it too.

Charlotte Ward: 6:37

So that's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash sixty-four for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.