65: Onboarding New Hires with Ackerman

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 65 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is onboarding new hires. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome to the podcast today. Ackerman. Ackerman, would you like to introduce yourself?

Ackerman: 0:37

Yes, thank you. Thank you for having me on the podcast. My name is Ackerman. I am the head of client experience at Wiseley. Wiseley is a restaurant app that helps uh your front-of-house operations from wait lists to reservations. We have a marketing automation suite and also the sentiment. So all points of interaction with your guests to help you leverage your data and give them the best client experience. So that's what we do. I've been at Wisele uh since August of 2019. So not a very long time, but have had a lot of onboarding experiences with them. Before that, I worked for uh Emma Email Marketing on their support team, on their onboarding team, and on their renewals team. Um I've been working in tech for for quite a bit.

Charlotte Ward: 1:19

So Ackerman, thank you for coming on the podcast. The topic for this week is onboarding new hires in support.

Ackerman: 1:26

Yeah, I've I've had experiences, obviously, we've all been onboarded into companies as individual contributors, and a lot of us have have onboarded employees that are working for our teams. Um, my experience, my opinionated nature, comes from the um from the places where I have have been onboarded, and it's been confusing or um frustrating, or it just lacked structure. So I've tried to make sure that when I onboard new folks and I it hire new employees, that I give them a structure that's not micromanaged. So it's it's always the balance between providing structure and providing um flexibility in leeway. Some of my experiences at at Emma, it was actually really, really good. Um, we I had a dedicated senior supporter that walked me through and he was my trainer for two weeks. And it started with, let's just talk about the product, let's take some quick quizzes, let's do a lot of shadowing on at different times of the day when different types of tickets would come in. Then then there was like the you need to get on the phone now. And I was very afraid of this. They're like, okay, let's let's back up a step. They didn't just push me through it, they were like, let's back up a step. So I answered emails for several hours and they're like, okay, let's get on the phone now, let's do a mock call. They they seeded me a fake question and I was talking to another supporter who was in a different room. So just like helping me get through those moments of fear, and then eventually it was, you gotta do this. You you wanted the job.

Charlotte Ward: 2:50

You've got to go alone eventually, right? Yeah.

Ackerman: 2:52

Yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 2:53

Yeah.

Ackerman: 2:53

And I think that was a really interesting um intro into the support world. That was my first foray into support. Um, and some of the other experiences that I've had have just been like, hey, you're here. Uh let's figure out what to do with you. And that's that's never good. So one of the things that was really interesting um at one of my jobs was they set out in advance, they sent me an email and they said, here's uh what you can expect from today. Here are the hours that you're gonna be working. We will provide lunch on the first day. This is the type of attire we wear because it was it, it was in an office. So they were helping me feel comfortable walking into the building first day. So I knew what to expect. And that just eased my nerves a lot. And I've tried to employ that in in the onboarding I've done with with employees that I've hired. So again, make your people feel comfortable, let them know what to expect, especially on the first day. Give them a structure, but also have some flexibility in that. Some people can go hard for eight hours, some people need a 10-minute break every now and again.

Charlotte Ward: 3:51

Yeah, actually, you said something there about being walked into the office almost. I mean, uh, whether it's a virtual office or not, I think that's an interesting way of putting it. It's kind of guiding them through those opening minutes and hours, isn't it? So they don't feel immediately lost. Kind of giving them them a sense that they're being introduced, actually, is really a big part of those early hours, isn't it?

Ackerman: 4:11

Yeah, and I think that in support in general, it has to be a family. You have to be able to rely on your fellow supporters, on the documentation, on the engineers in your company. You have to be able to find the information and you have to not be afraid to do so. Um, so I never want to create an intimidating environment of this is our SLA, you got to get your tickets done. That can't be the off-the-bat way of approaching, at least in a company that I want to work for. So again, making people feel comfortable, helping them understand what they can expect. We also do a two-week onboarding, and at the end of the second week, you're off to the races. Of course, you can ask questions in Slack and in our knowledge base and all those things. But day one, you come in the office, you meet me, we sit down for 30 minutes, I give you the rundown. Here's what it is, here's who I am, here's how the team works. And then every hour is scheduled on the first day. The first hour you're gonna talk to HR and get your benefits package done. Then you're gonna meet with one of our implementation specialists, and they're gonna give you a demo of one of our three products. After that, you're gonna have time to sit with the product for about 30 minutes, develop any questions you have, and then go into your first your first uh shadowing session with a supporter. So now you have some context. Go into your first shadow session. After your first shadow session, go back and talk to the person who implement who gave you the implementation training. So now you have questions to ask. So I like to do a back and forth kind of like a spiral education.

Charlotte Ward: 5:33

And you almost skipped over it, but you said a little bit in there, which was that you get a chance to sit down with the product and just form some questions. So that that's a combination of a learning experience and a little bit of headspace as well, which is what you were talking about before, just about building some gaps in to allow people to just to have a little bit of breathing room, right?

Ackerman: 5:53

Right. Yeah, I think I mean we could we all know somebody, probably a lot of people, on their first day, they come home from work and you say, How was your day? And they're like, I don't even know. It was there was so much. I learned so much. It's like drinking from a fire hose. And of course, we want our supporters to get ramped up as quickly as possible. But I think it's also like the way that humans learn and the way that people in intake knowledge. I can I can give you a bunch of stuff right now, but how much of it are you going to retain? Let's break it into bite-sized chunks. We have our product and then we have specific features. So let's give you a broad overview of the product. Let's focus on one feature right now.

Charlotte Ward: 6:26

Yeah, yeah. Breaking it down or almost into features or modules or something that has a natural breakpoint that allows you to absorb it and and and sits as a cohesive kind of bubble in its own respect. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash sixty-five for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.